Toure Doubts Guest on Sydney Siege: ‘Is this Really About Islam?’
Toure on Sydney: "Is This Really About Islam Or Maniacs Who Twist The Koran Into Their Own Sort Of Desires?" (RealClearPolitics)
TOURE: Dan, Jim is putting it in a really in a bow in terms of saying we have a guy, a single guy who wants to be a terrorist and thus he's acting in a way that perhaps ISIS would want him to, even though they may not actually even know him. And we see similar things happening here and there, around the world. How are we, as the sort of civilized community, going to deal with a world when any lone wolf can pop up in the name of ISIS, in the name of al-Nusra, what have you, and start doing terroristic things?
DAN O'SHEA, GROM TECHNOLOGIES: Well, again, all these great feedbacks brought up by my two colleagues about the escalation of the violence, the threat ISIS is posing and you're absolutely right. This was a lone gunman. It could have been far worse. But the reality of dealing with the larger issue itself, that this is a fight within Islam. There must be a much more aggressive calling out because these gentlemen, they are quoting the Koran, they are calling it -- that's what inspires them to do this. So, this is going to be a very long hard look within the Islam community and Australian Nationalists asking the hard questions.
TOURE: But, Dan, is this really about Islam or about maniacs who twist the Koran to their own twisted sort of desires?
O'SHEA: Well, you have to understand, this guy and others are being radicalized -- call it what you will, but being radicalized by the exploitation of social media. And this guy was using all avenues, from posting on YouTube, he was having his hostages calling into local radio stations. So he was taking a playbook right out of ISIS to basically spread the word. And that's the problem, it's inspiring more and more of these attacks. Again, this was a lone wolf, a crackpot, a claimed cleric, if you will, a Muslim cleric, but by all indications this guy was his guy was really a criminal leading down to probably a terrorist and the jihadist calling. But it's growing.
The fact this guy is from Iran really probably a Shia (Editor's note: He was Sunni), I would assume, with be making no connection to ISIS makes no sense. The majority of people getting killed in Iraq and Syria today are Shia, being killed by ISIS or ISIL, they're predominantly Sunni and taking that Sunni strand. So this is a larger fight within Islam itself about addressing these problems and how are they not pushing this out because people are getting radicalized. And it's not just happening on social media, it is happening in mosques around the world as well.
TOURE: We know he was Shia and converted to Sunni.
