Time USA-October 3-2016

9

NATION

What a terrorist

acting alone

says about

the loyalty of

U.S. Muslims

By Karl Vick

Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, was shot in the arm and leg after opening fire on police

who approached him in the doorway of a bar in Linden, N.J., on Sept. 19

A weekend thAt begAn with three

bombs in New York and New Jersey,

plus a knife attack at a Minnesota mall,

ended with a far more encouraging sight

on Monday morning: the burly figure of

Ahmad Khan Rahami, huddling against

the elements in the entrance vestibule of

Merdie’s Tavern in Linden, N.J.

The rain came down in sheets, and

Rahami was the most wanted man in

America, his name chirped to every

smartphone and television screen in

greater New York by an NYPD alert:

“wAnted”—for the explosion in

Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on

Sept. 17, a second device that failed to

detonate three blocks away and another

that did, earlier the same day, along the

route of a Marine Corps charity run on

the Jersey Shore.

Miraculously, given the planning and

ball bearings that went into the bombs,

none produced death or even an injury

that kept anyone in the hospital longer

than overnight. On Sept. 18, a backpack

stuffed with pipe bombs was found at

an Elizabeth, N.J., commuter-railway

station, apparently abandoned by a

suspect who had nowhere to run and,

with nearly every TV screen in America

showing his picture, nowhere to hide.

This counts as good news. When

the young jihadists who carried out

the terrorist attacks on Paris fled that

city, they melted into an underground

of sympathetic neighbors in a Muslim

ghetto at the very heart of Europe—the

Molenbeek neighborhood in Brussels.

There, the most wanted man in Europe

hid out for four months before he was

‘IT’S BEEN 15 YEARS WE’VE TALKED ABOUT THE SMART HOME. IT HAS NOT HAPPENED.’—PAGE 16

‘I did what I think every American would have done.

My neighbor would have done the same thing.

Any Jewish, Christian, Sikh, Muslim.’

HARINDER BAINS,the Sikh immigrant who summoned police after discovering the most

wanted man in America asleep in the vestibule of the tavern he owns in Linden, N.J.

BOSTON HERALD/POLARIS
PHOTOGRAPH BY NICOLAUS CZARNECKI