The Fifth Lion

Friday evening, a Somali-born teen was arrested in Oregon for attempting to blow up a car bomb at a Christmas tree lighting. Predictably, he screamed “Allahu Akhbar” before his plan was foiled. Fox News reports:

According to a federal complaint, Mohamud was in regular email contact with the “unindicted associate’ in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier starting in August 2009.The complaint states that in December 2009 Mohamud and the “unindicted associate” used coded language in an email in which the FBI believes Mohamud discussed traveling to Pakistan to prepare for “violent jihad.” The document says in the months that followed Mohamud made ‘multiple efforts” to contact another “undicted associate” to arrange travel to Pakistan but had a faulty email address for that person.

Appropriately, I saw this report as I came out of ‘Four Lions,’ a British comedy about four painfully stupid terrorists in Sheffield. The film was absolutely hysterical. As Duane Byrge of the Hollywood Reporter observed, “[they] are straight out of the Three Stooges, embarking on their grand quest of blowing up a marathon or, more crazy, blowing up a mosque ‘to radicalize the moderates.'” It’s a hilarious take on the imbecility of fanaticism and mocks the idiotic rationale of terrorists. (“When their ramshackle car breaks down, the leader of the gang of four declares it’s because the spark plugs were made by Jews, which is part of their plot to control global traffic.”)


Terrorist threats are, of course, not something to be taken lightly. However, it still feels pretty nice to take a satirical look at the insipid worldview that these nefarious goons harbor. After all, being the butt of a joke is the last thing they want to incite.

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