CNN's Cooper and Guest: 'Dangerous' to Think Sydney Attack is A 'One-Off'

Matthew Balan | December 16, 2014
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[More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.]

Former Islamist Maajid Nawas warned Westerners on the 15 December 2014 edition of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 about the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Sydney, Australia. Nawas underlined that it was a "mistake" to label perpetrator Man Haron Monis a "lone wolf," as it "doesn't necessary describe the phenomenon correctly....what we're really dealing with here is fundamental inspiration. People are inspired by the ideas; the leaders; the symbols; and the narratives – the iconography behind this ideology."

Host Anderson Cooper noted how Monis's lawyer "says that this is a one-off; random individual; not acting in concert with any one," and asked the former radical, "Do you think its dangerous to...say – okay, well, this is a one-off thing?" Nawas, who is also a contributor for The Daily Beast website, confirmed that this was the case:

MAAJID NAWAS, DAILY BEAST CONTRIBUTOR: Absolutely. It's very dangerous. I mean, look, we have the school shootings in America as phenomenon. And again, they aren't one-off. But there is a difference here, and the difference is that in the case of Islamist-inspired self-starters, there's a whole bunch of iconography and symbolism and ideology underneath it that inspires multiple one-offs. And at what stage do these multiple one-offs stop becoming one-offs, and we start recognizing that we're dealing with a phenomenon of the atomization of self-starter, Islamist terrorists across – across the world.

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