Thoughts on Mohammed Faiz

The bombings in Casablanca on 14 April have long since faded from headlines, but Mohammed Faiz, the young cyber club manager responsible for preventing a far greater tragedy, remains severely injured and underreported. For those who do not know the story: two would-be suicide bombers entered Faiz's cyber club in the slums of Sidi Moumen (near Casablanca), bombs hidden under their clothes, and proceeded to check various jihadi websites for final instructions regarding which cafe or thoroughfare in which to murder dozens of people. Faiz felt that something was not right. At this point, he could have stepped back and done nothing. Instead, he shouted for everyone else to get out of the cafe, locked the doors, and phoned the police. In that moment, Faiz put his customers, his family's livelihood, and his own life in jeopardy. The two jihadis realized that they were trapped; one of them detonated his bombs, killing himself, destroying the cyber cafe, and injuring the other jihadi and Faiz. The police arrived to find smouldering wreckage, a dismembered body, and two injured young Moroccans.

Who saved the day here? As the above linked post observes, it was neither detectives nor spies nor police commandoes - just an ordinary citizen who noticed that something was suspicious and decided to act on his suspicions. (This is, of course, exactly the sort of thing that the Council of American-Islamic Relations would like to criminalize via its cooked-up lawsuits against the American counterparts to Faiz - see my earlier post.) This incident is further proof that without popular involvement, anti-terrorist efforts are far less likely to succeed.

I was amazed that no Western newspaper took up the story of Faiz. It seems that he would make a perfect human-interest story, an excellent example of a Muslim opposed to terrorism (the news is generally full of those who support or condone it), a shining example of civic spirit and individual selflessness. Was it ignorance? The Moroccan papers covered him; the King visited him in his hospital ward (though he was not given money to repair his wrecked cyber cafe, to the best of my knowledge. A few weeks ago he went on record saying that he felt that the Moroccan authorities had abandoned him when he most needed help. One wonders whether he would be inclined to repeat his heroism.)

Instead, we get reports like this: "Terrorist Networks Lure Young Moroccans to War in Far-Off Iraq Conflict, Recruiting Tool for Al-Qaeda Affiliates." (As early as July 2006 US intelligence operatives were traveling to Tetouane to investigate, though this article did not get written until February 2007.) Granted, there is a large pool of angry young men, who are, for a variety of reasons (the materialist/economic vs. ideological debate over primary causes remains unresolved), willing to kill for religious or political goals. But it is the people like Faiz who deserve more press coverage, whose example ought to be remembered.