The shout of “Allahu Akbar”
Mayor Mamdani tries to downplay an Islamic phrase’s significance when it’s associated with violent crime
Authorities escort Raul Morales out of the NYPD 20th Precinct in New York on Friday.
Associated Press / Photo by Ryan Murphy
The shout of “Allahu Akbar”
Two men were stabbed within two blocks of each other on the Upper West Side. Witnesses heard the same phrase both times: “Allahu Akbar.” One victim was wearing a Jewish kippah. The suspect fled, barricaded himself in an apartment building, and had to be taken out by an NYPD emergency services team. New York’s mayor, briefed on all of it, reached for a single phrase to explain what happened: mental health.
Zohran Mamdani’s statement on the July 23 stabbings was, on its surface, unremarkable mayoral prose—grateful for the NYPD’s swift response, relieved the victims are stable, certain that “these hateful and despicable attacks have no place in our city.” But buried inside that diplomacy sat a sentence doing real work: “The NYPD’s initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor.” Not “we don’t yet know the motive.” Not “detectives are investigating what he meant when he shouted the distinctively Islamic phrase.” Instead, “mental health.” Two words that explain everything by explaining nothing, and that happen to be the two words capable of making an Islamic battle cry sound like noise.
We need to start with what the record shows, because it does not cooperate with the mayor’s framing. Raul Morales, 51, has at least seven prior arrests, two of them drug related. He had no documented mental health history with the NYPD—a detail the department itself included in its statement, seemingly aware of how the “mental health” line would be received. After stabbing two strangers who had no connection to him and no connection to each other, he did not wander in a daze or turn himself in. He ran, and when police found him, he barricaded himself and made them send in emergency services to end the standoff.
That is not the profile of a man untethered from reality. That is the profile of a man who understood exactly what he had done and did not want to be apprehended for having done it.
https://wng.org/opinions/the-shout-of-allahu-akbar-1785309084
