My latest at PJ Media:

Idris Abdus-Salaam, 33, a truck driver from Durham, North Carolina, on Tuesday pulled into the Pilot Travel Center on Strawberry Plains Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee, got out of his truck, pulled out a knife, and went on a stabbing spree. He stabbed three women to death and injured a fourth. When confronted by police, Abdus-Salaam refused to drop his weapon and was shot dead. According to Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) spokeswoman Leslie Earhart, authorities are still trying to determine his motive. But will they miss an obvious clue that is right in front of their faces?

The three women Abdus-Salaam killed were all employees of the Pilot Travel Center. The fourth victim, who is in the hospital fighting to recover from the wounds Abdus-Salaam gave her, was a customer. If Abdus-Salaam knew any of them personally, the fact has not been reported. It may emerge that he did, but as of this writing, this looks like a random act of violence.

Predictably, investigators are pursuing the possibility that Abdus-Salaam was mentally ill. In this, they are following the lead of numerous authorities in the U.S. and Europe, who have ascribed incidents in which Muslims behaved violently to mental illness, often ignoring their jihad statements in order to do so. According to news reports, investigators found a notebook in his truck containing writings that suggested he was mentally ill, but none of these writings were released.

Abdus-Salaam may indeed have been mentally ill. However, if he was, his mother, Walidah Abdus-Salaam, was unaware of the fact – that is, if she is being honest. “He’s not a violent person,” she insisted. “The picture they painted is ugly.” She didn’t even believe her Idris was the one who went on the stabbing spree: “That is not my son. I don’t believe it, and I refuse to believe it until they can prove otherwise to me.” She said that there was no indication that Idris was suffering from any form of mental illness, “unless it developed recently and I’m not aware of it.”

However, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported that Walidah Abdus-Salaam said that her son was “a practicing Muslim,” although “his loved ones had no reason to believe he had become radicalized by any sort of religious fanaticism.”

That may be, but the very fact that he was a practicing Muslim ought to be followed up by investigators. The Islamic State issued this call in September 2014….

There is much more. Read the rest here.