The L.A. Schools' 'Not Credible' Threat

From Robert Spencer, at FrontPage Magazine, "“I’m kinda tired of hearing all this ISIS,” but they’re still coming":

When the Los Angeles Board of Education closed all its schools Tuesday because of a terror threat, officials in New York City, which had received a similar threat, were contemptuous. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio characterized the threat as “so generic, so outlandish” that it was beneath serious notice. “It would be a huge disservice to our nation,” he declared, “to close down our school system.” New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton said “we cannot allow ourselves to raise levels of fear. Certainly raise levels of awareness. But this is not a credible threat.”

Fair enough. But there is enough of a credible threat in general to warrant taking every precaution. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-California), said that the threat (which was initially reported, of course, as a generic “terrorist threat,” with no indication that it was Islamic,” lacked “the feel of the way the jihadists usually write.” He pointed out, according to the Los Angeles Times, that “the roughly 350-word message did not capitalize Allah in one instance, nor did it cite a Koranic verse. He said the elements of the threatened attack also seemed unlikely, such as the claim that it would involve 32 people with nerve gas.”

Sherman claimed that “there isn’t a person on the street who couldn’t have written this.” Smearing the flyover states with Hollywood insouciance, he added: “Everybody in Nebraska could have written this.” He even suggested that an “Islamophobe” wrote the threat: “I don’t know whether this was sent by a radical Islamic jihadist or somebody who had an anti-Islamic agenda or just a prankster.”

Maybe the threats did come from someone with “an anti-Islamic agenda or just a prankster.” But those with an “anti-Islamic agenda” don’t really need to work that hard. Islamic jihadis are doing a fine job of issuing threats all by themselves. In September 2014, the Islamic State issued a lengthy communiqué calling upon Muslims in the West to murder non-Muslims. It included the exhortation to “strive to your best and kill any disbeliever, whether he be French, American, or from any of their allies.” It followed this up with a quotation from the Qur’an: “O you who have believed, take your precaution and [either] go forth in companies or go forth all together” (4:71).

The Islamic State exhortation continued...

More.

And previously, "Don't Let Fear Undermine Freedom?"