How important is it that we know the identity of a killer beyond that he is gaining more notoriety than he could have even gotten as a computer programmer or a rapper. The most important issue is perhaps that his radicalization as a violent extremist happened for reasons more homicidal than even political or religious belief, as if
barbarism ever has a human face.
The mother of the man identified as "Jihadi John" recognized immediately from his voice that her son was the alleged killer when he appeared in his first beheading video in August, Kuwaiti government officials told ABC News.
The parents of Mohammed Emwazi, who were questioned recently in Kuwait, told authorities they last heard from their son in mid-2013 when he called them from Turkey. Emwazi said he was going to do humanitarian work in Syria, the parents said, according to the officials. Emwazi's father, a former policeman, said he's been waiting for news of his son's death ever since.
Instead of doing humanitarian work, Emwazi allegedly linked up with ISIS and has appeared in videos online apparently beheading Westerners, including several who were actual humanitarians.
Today’s anti-immigrant populism has replaced direct barbarism with a barbarism that has a human face. It enacts a regression from the Christian ethic of ‘love thy neighbour’ back to the pagan privileging of the tribe over the barbarian Other. Even as it represents itself as a defence of Christian values, it is in fact the greatest threat to the Christian legacy. ‘Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity,’ G.K. Chesterton wrote a hundred years ago, ‘end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church … The secularists have not wrecked divine things; but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them.’ Doesn’t the same hold for the advocates of religion too? Fanatical defenders of religion start out attacking contemporary secular culture; it’s no surprise when they end up forsaking any meaningful religious experience.
In a similar way, many liberal warriors are so eager to fight anti-democratic fundamentalism that they end up flinging away freedom and democracy if only they may fight terror. The ‘terrorists’ may be ready to wreck this world for love of another, but the warriors on terror are just as ready to wreck their own democratic world out of hatred for the Muslim other. Some of them love human dignity so much that they are ready to legalise torture to defend it. The defenders of Europe against the immigrant threat are doing much the same. In their zeal to protect the Judeo-Christian legacy, they are ready to forsake what is most important in that legacy. The anti-immigrant defenders of Europe, not the notional crowds of immigrants waiting to invade it, are the true threat to Europe. http://www.lrb.co.uk/...
So we can perhaps also verify from scant information that her son is not a fan of the
Miami Dolphins but instead a fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates. And as usual, we can perhaps expect even the most simplistic iconoclastic analysis to note a family resemblance to a noted NFL player much like the use of the "terrorist fist bump" by POTUS and FLOTUS.
'Jihadi John' Unmasked: First Picture of Mohammed Emwazi as an Adult Emerges