Religiously encouraged mental illness.

SALT LAKE CITY Feb 13, 2007 (AP)— A trench coat-clad teenager who opened fire on shoppers at a mall had one thing in mind: "to kill a large number of people," and he likely would have killed more than five had an off-duty officer not confronted him, the police chief said Tuesday.

"There is no question that his quick action saved the lives of numerous other people," Police Chief Chris Burbank said of the officer.

Burbank identified the gunman as Sulejmen Talovic, an 18-year-old who lives with his mother in Salt Lake City, and said he had a backpack full of ammunition, the shotgun he was using and a .38-caliber pistol.

The teen killed five people and wounded four at the Trolley Square mall, including two people shot in the parking lot as he arrived around 7 p.m. Monday, another at the entrance and then five people inside a card store, the police chief said.

"It appears to be very random," Burbank said. "There was no sense to why he was doing what he was doing."

"The suspect in this particular circumstance had one thing on his mind, and that was to kill a large number of people," Burbank said.

Sudden Jihad Syndrome?

I thought when I first read the term a few months back, "yeah, right smartass".

The right side of the aisle has it's share of opportunists who won't refrain from demonizing everyone. Zealots are found everywhere and I distrust them all. As an example; sometime I'll have to write about the AA Nazi's I've encountered, it would sound like science fiction. And I support AA, it's what got me sober and keeps me that way.

But after the latest incident in Salt Lake City I'll admit to wondering about SJS.

There was the graduate student in North Carolina who ran his SUV over 9 people. The idiot in San Francisco who shot up the Jewish Community Center. We all know about the nut case in Kuwait who fragged his fellow soldiers as they slept. The Beltway snipers who invoked "Allah". I've probably missed some, it hasn't been real high on my radar screen.

But they were all muslims, they all acted independently, they all targeted infidels (none of this has happened at a mosque yet).

And religious teaching does have an effect on it's followers. Look at the flagellants in Latin America and the Phillipines during Holy Week, they routinely beat themselves bloody with no coercion from their church leadership. They just go stark nuts trying to emulate Christ.

So destructive, spontaneous behavior from adherents of the most violent "religion" on the planet? Homocidal acts carried out independent of any direction from the local mosque?

Yep. Makes sense to me. Teach someone how they ought to go out and fight the unbeliever and sooner or later they'll do just that. No further instigation required.

Maybe Islam should be banned in the USA. I recall reading that Shinto temples in America were shut down after Pearl Harbor.

Sudden Jihad Syndrome? It's beginning to make sense.