NY Post: Young Muslims Targets for Jihad as They Become ‘Devout’

Paul Sperry in the New York Post analyzes why devout young Muslims like Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik are especially vulnerable toward radicalization and recruitment for jihad.

From the New York Post:

‘We see growing efforts by terrorists to poison the minds of people like the Boston Marathon bombers and the San Bernardino killers,” President Obama said while addressing the nation in the wake of the latest homegrown massacre at the hands of Muslims.

But is that really what’s poisoning their minds?

FBI investigators are now operating on the belief that San Bernardino terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik were individually “radicalized,” and for “quite some time,” possibly starting as early as 2013 — before the rise of ISIS and its Internet propaganda machine. So it wasn’t ISIS poisoning their minds, as the president suggests.

So what was it? The feds are still scratching their heads, willfully blind to the obvious religious factor.

But this much they know: “These two killers were starting to radicalize towards martyrdom and jihad as early as 2013, and so that’s really before ISIL [ISIS] became the global jihad leader that it is,” FBI Director James Comey testified Wednesday. “They were actually radicalized before they started dating.”

Unlike other mass murderers, who exhibit antisocial, paranoid, narcissistic or schizoid traits, Farook and Malik do not appear to be natural born killers. Neither had a history of violence nor criminal record, and both generally were described as pleasant people.

In fact, friends invariably called the 28-year-old Farook a “very nice person,” while his landlord even described him as a “very gentle person.” He enjoyed working on old cars and shooting hoops. For her part, the 29-year-old Malik was seen as “a good girl” and a good student who aspired to be a pharmacist. Before dressing in austere Islamic clothing, she was even viewed as a “modern girl.”

Muslims and non-Muslims alike spoke highly of them both. Then suddenly a switch went off, and the couple went medieval.

Read the rest of the story here.