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Zehaf-Bibeau was a Muslim, his father is a Libyan businessman, he attacked the War Memorial and the Parliament in Ottawa shortly after Canada joined the U.S. in fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. He's an Islamist terrorist, a political extremist acting for political reasons, right?
Not so fast.
As noted in the case of Aaron Alexis (see previous blog entry), there is a long distance between radical opinions and radical action. Opinions are cheap, action is costly. Tens of thousands of Muslims in Western countries have radical opinions--seeing the war on terrorism as a war on Islam and seeing suicide bombing as justified in defense of Islam. But only hundreds of Muslims in Western countries have attempted violence against government or civilian targets. So the first thing to realize about Zehaf-Bibeau is that his radical opinions, to the extent he had radical opinions, cannot provide a sufficient explanation of his attack.
To understand the turn to violence we usually point to group dynamics: group pressures that reward violence against the enemy and punish those who shirk battle. But Zehaf-Bibeau acted alone, without group or organizational support. What moved him to action?
Sophia Moskalenko and I have offered two possible answers to this question, two possible profiles of lone-actor terrorists. Here I focus on the disconnected/disordered profile that seems, on the basis of initial information, to be a good description of Zehaf-Bibeau.
The disconnected-disordered profile is basically a description of an individual with a grievance, especially a personal grievance, who has little to lose and a lot to escape from in perpetrating an act of violence. We have described four characteristics of this profile. An individual with a grievance is a loner, often with mental disorder, and weapons experience outside the military.
What is known so far about Zehaf-Bibeau includes all of these characteristics. He is described by his mother as a misfit, she had not seen him for five years before she met him for lunch shortly before his attack. Acquaintances at the Ottawa Homeless Shelter described him as keeping to himself, praying in the hallway, and hoping to get away from his addiction to crack cocaine. He has a long criminal record including drug and weapons offenses. He has had at least one psychiatric evaluation and has been reported to say that devils are after him.
This brief and tentative description already makes Zehaf-Bibeau a loner with indications of mental disorder and weapons experience.
It is important to notice that pointing to Islam as the instigation for his attack is a weak explanation: Zehaf-Bibeau was a practicing Muslim for seven years, how can Islam explain how he suddenly attacked only this week?
A more personal grievance is more immediate. Zehaf-Bibeau was applying for a passport to visit either Syria (according to his mother) or Libya (according to an acquaintance at the Ottawa Homeless Shelter). He was being held up as Canadian authorities weigh concerns about whether he might go to Syria to fight with Islamic State. This personal grievance, this personal frustration, appears to be the immediate precursor of his attack.
A loner, with mental health problems, a personal grievance, and weapons experience, attacks the political heart of Canada. It will be interesting to learn more about the extent to which the personal or the political motivated this lone actor violence perpetrator. So far it appears that Zehaf-Bibeau fits neatly into the disconnected/disordered profile that emerged from studies of U.S. assassins and school shooters.
McCauley, C., & Moskalenko, S. (2014). Toward a profile of lone wolf terrorists: What moves an individual from radical opinion to radical action. Terrorism and Political Violence, 26(1), 69-85.
