COPENHAGEN — Arrested for stabbing a 19-year-old passenger on a commuter train in November 2013, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein blamed his brutal, random and nearly fatal attack on the effects of hashish, telling a court last December that he had been gripped by wild fear and thought his victim wanted to hurt him.
Last weekend, just two weeks after his release from prison for the knife attack, Mr. Hussein went on another violent rampage, killing two strangers and wounding five police officers. But this time he was gripped not by drugs but by a fanatical strand of Islam whose mission, according to a message he posted on Facebook shortly before the attacks, “is to destroy you. We will come to you with slaughter and death.”
Mr. Hussein’s journey from drug-addled street thug to self-proclaimed jihadist declaring loyalty to the Islamic State terrorist group has stirred soul-searching in liberal-minded Denmark over whether Islam in fact was really a prime motivator for his violence, or merely served as a justifying cover for violent criminality.
“This is a very difficult question to answer,” said Manu Sareen, the minister for integration and social affairs, who shortly before the attacks launched a program to combat radicalization through outreach to parents, schools and other efforts.
That same question squarely confronts other European countries and the United States. As President Obama holds a summit meeting on ways to combat the lure of jihad in Western nations, he has come under criticism for his cautious language distancing violent extremism from Islam.
The link between the two has become a wellspring of debate in Europe, as societies grapple with the same messy knot of motives and influences following recent attacks in Denmark and France and a thwarted plot in Belgium. All involved angry, alienated young Muslims.
–
As in many other European countries, however, Muslims in Denmark may coexist with their non-Muslim neighbors, but they often cling to the values and conspiracy-driven mind-set of their home countries.
Mr. Mann, the law student and youth counselor, for example, said he was convinced that the United States government had a hand in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “You have to be blind” to think otherwise, he said.
Helime al-Amed, a Palestinian from Syria and mother of five children in Mjolnerparken, the housing project where Mr. Hussein grew up, praised Denmark as a generous and friendly country, but she still believes that last weekend’s attacks were “orchestrated by people who are against us, who want to provoke anger at Muslims.”
Mr. Hussein, she added, had been deliberately killed by police officers in a shootout Sunday morning to prevent him from talking. “When he died the truth died with him,” she said.
Martin Selsoe contributed reporting.
