We have another unnerving case of a recent convert to Islam allegedly turning quickly to involvement in terrorism. Enrique Marquez, 24, legally purchased the AR-15 rifles that his neighbor San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik used to kill 14 people and injure 21 others. Police say that former security guard Marquez had recently converted to Islam and was part of the planning for the attack but got cold feet after the arrests in a nearby town of terrorism suspects in an unrelated case. He will initially face gun charges since he transferred the weapons to the couple after serving as the purchaser.
Marquez is also related to Farook by marriage. He married the sister-in-law of Farook’s older brother. Marquez and and his new wife, Mariya Chernykh, listed their address on the marriage license at the same Corona home where Syed Raheel and Tatiana Farook live. He also converted and had gone to a few services at the local mosque. Just seven months ago, Marquez was attending punk rock concerts. He was working at local Wal-Mart, which has since fired him.
Law enforcement officials say that Farook and Marquez had discussed carrying out attacks in the Los Angeles area in 2012. executing an attack somewhere in the Los Angeles area in 2012, but decided not to do so after four people were arrested in nearby Riverside County in an unrelated terror case.
Marquez checked into a mental health facility after the attacks in San Bernardino. It will be interesting to see if the policy will seek confidential notes from that mental health visit. In the Menendez brothers murder case, police used the notes of the therapist against them at trial. L. Jerome Oziel was later accused of violating confidentiality and stripped of his license in 1997.
The rapid conversion and alleged radicalization of people like Marquez makes the task of law enforcement all the most difficult. It also shows the folly of Trump’s plan to simply bar all Muslims from entry into the United States. A terrorist is willing to kill innocent people. He clearly will not be troubled in saying that he is a Quaker if needed to enter the country. Moreover, these groups have ready made recruits within the country, particularly among the mentally unstable in the population.
Source: FOX News
Isaac
I have an issue with this part of your post “it may not be hard to understand this Hispanic allying himself with radical Muslims.”
The “radical” did not belong there, the author, no, not me, Gustavo Arellano http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/10/we-mexicans-welcome-muslims-as-the-new-public-enemy-number-one, did not qualified it thus, unless you are saying that all Muslims are radical?
The Islamic war on the west is Islam’s response to:
1. US marriage to Israel, a nation of zero national interest to the US, and ignoring G. Washington’s warning that “all foreign entanglements are temporary.”
2. US military occupation of Mecca, the holiest of all Islamic holy land.
3. US infinite support of the world’s most evil and hated ME dictators (euphemistically AKA “Monarchs” as if they rule over King Arthur’s Round Table), which dictators rule over Muslims with iron blood-drenched hands.
Above is why Islam declared war on the West, in particular America and its Western allies. That’s why Islam killed fourteen San Bernardino civilians.
Po
That was a very well written expression of your Hispanic condition, if indeed you wrote it and you are Hispanic. Your article describes to a T the need of some/a lot/too many to place anyone available beneath them. This counters the realization of insignificance each individual must bear. This is not unique to America, but is a human condition.
Given the shared experience of Muslims and Hispanics, being used to elevate some/a lot/too many, it may not be hard to understand this Hispanic allying himself with radical Muslims. Here’s hoping that the lesser of the two evils will be the norm, that Hispanics will want to be regarded as a part of the more righteous Americans and not the newcomers. Almost all immigrants to America have joined in the pecking order. Today’s peckee will be tomorrow’s pecker.
He will initially face gun charges since he transferred the weapons to the couple after serving as the purchaser.
Yes he will, because he violated California Law in transferring or selling directly to a second party without either having a gun dealer’s license himself or putting the transfer through a licensed gun dealer. Had he done this, it would not have been illegal. Instead he acted as a straw buyer. Illegal.
The reality is that this type of transfer without a dealer happens ALL the time between criminals who have no intention whatsoever in complying with the law and between family members who don’t feel the need to comply with the law or people who are bartering or selling in the underground economy.
The guns these radical Jihadist bought were legal when they bought them. They then illegally modified a few of them. They also built illegal bombs out of common hardware components. How are you going to stop that.? Hmmm?? The guns that our Star Trek groupie above bought were legal. How are you going to stop people from putting their guns to ILLEGAL purposes after they buy them? How are you going to stop people from doing anything illegal with anything….cars? knives? hammers? yo yos?
ALL the gun laws in the world are not going to stop people who are determined to kill and will not stop criminals who by default will not obey laws anyway. Gun laws are meant to disarm and disenfranchise the law abiding citizen and make us defenseless against the criminals, against the terrorists and especially against our own out of control government.
Molon Labe
John, No, I haven’t been to the places you mention. I live in Maryland which has a very large Hispanic population – mostly from El Salvador, not Mexico. And yes, there is a MS-13 presence here, and yes, there is crime and welfare dependency. But for the most part, the Hispanics are striving for a middle-class life for themselves and their children. They come here as laborers, and in fairly short order become homeowners and small businessmen (and women). The rate of crime and welfare dependency among Hispanics certainly is no where near that of blacks. As one Hispanic handyman told me, somewhat jokingly but also seriously, “Us Mexicans are going to follow the white people wherever you go.” He explained that he had first lived in L.A., but he “had to live in a cage,” i.e., behind barred windows and doors. So he moved to Maryland, for “peace and quiet.” But after his neighborhood in Montgomery County became filled with poor Hispanics, crime went up and property values fell, so he “followed the white people to Frederick County,” a semi-rural area where new homes and communities are springing up. He said if that area ever goes bad, he’ll “follow the white people” again to whatever new communities that they create, because he wants peace and good neighborhoods and good schools for his kids.
As far as CA becoming filled with the poverty, crime and social problems of Mexico, that is a situation created by the Federal government. If Trump ever builds a fence, he may as well place it below Santa Barbara and let Mexico have Los Angeles County and San Diego. Certainly the impact of large scale impoverished immigration has impacted Md. Taxes are high and property values stagnating. Which is why I’ll be moving to Virginia soon. Md encourages illegals, and Va pushes them out. So all in all, I don’t believe Hispanics are hateful, dangerous people like Muslims, but I recognize that poverty, lack of education and third world culture limits them. Some turn to crime and welfare but most do not. If it were up to me, the U.S. would immediately close the door to ALL immigration, and in the future, be very selective about the skills and cultures that we admit. But if given a choice, I would take a Mexican neighbor or co-worker over a Muslim every time. At least he isn’t going to behead me.
TinEar
I’m gonna take a wild guess that those Mexican and Latin “lovers” love drugs, machine guns, machetes and “El Chapo.”
Regarding your post, greater goofiness has never been displayed.
Can you say MS13 and Kathryn Steinle? How about Ciudad Juarez, Matamoros, Nogales, Tijuana, Reynoso, Nuevo Laredo, et al.?
The only time these “Latin/Mexicans” are “warm, generous, open” and docile is when they are in the welfare, social services, free public school or Obamacare line. Whatever you do, don’t get between them and their “free stuff.” You’ll see a different side then. They don’t assimilate, they Reconquista.
What the hell universe do you live in? Have you ever been to Southern California, Los Angeles, East L.A., Pacoima, Van Nuys, Santa Ana, Ventura, Oxnard, San Diego, Goleta – forget it – the whole freaking state – the whole state has been subsumed by Reconquista – have you been there?
“I agree with closing down the radicalized mosques.”
__________
If this were Spanish Influenza, Bubonic Plague, Ebola or AIDS, would you agree on a general quarantine?
Sympathy, compassion and benevolence have been taken to an absurd, ridiculous level considering the
existential threat the West is confronting (that existential threat turned into reality for 14 people in San
Bernardino last week).
Some people just need to have the contrarian silliness metaphorically slapped right out of them.
Freedom and constitutionality are moot if we’re all shot, blown up, decapitated or burned alive by Muslims on
orders from Sharia Law under the Quran.
Mexicans joining forces with Muslims? HaHa, not going to happen. Latins are lovers, not haters. The Mexican culture is warm, open, generous and accepting. They don’t behead people, burn them alive or pitch them off buildings because of a difference of opinion or lifestyle. I can’t think of any two more disparate cultures than Hispanics and Muslims.
TinEar – then who is it that is responsible for those headless corpses that have been found in Mexico?
Tin, you obviously must not have been paying to what is happening south of the border…surprise!
I am willing to bet that the number of murdered Mexicans in the war of drugs, which by the way, you foot the bill for, dwarfs many times over the number of islamic terrorism victims in the last 10 years.
And between the beheading, hanging off bridges, throwing children off bridges, rapes, dismembering, burning, acid vats…etc.etc…I say ISiS is an amateur compared to what takes place there.
Obviously, only trump would make all Mexicans to be narco traffickers…mexicans, as you say, are upright, hardworking people…and only a dummy would lump all people into the same perspective of his hatred.
if you think Mexicans and …who? Muslims?…Arabs…? (who are we talking about) are so different, then you obviously know neither.
Hildegard: The NSA needs time to review your post. They’re busy.
The Muslim/Hispanic pecking order, or past transgressions, has become much more complex recently with the revelation that Columbus sighted mosques in Cuba.
So I’m not sure, at this point, how many natives in the New World may have been converted to Islam by the Islamic explorers who beat Columbus, and possibly Ericsson, to the New World.
The Islamic explorers, and possibly Native converts, were evidently overwhelmed by the Europeans conquering the New World.
Given that the Spanish were dominant in the early part of New World conquests, the Islamic world may have a legimate beef with the Spaniards.
Turkey’s Erdogan seems to have special insight into this issue, and we need to hear more from this prominent Islamic historian to learn more.
It appears from press reports that Enrique Marquez may have been somewhat of a weak personality who was used by the Farooks. The L.A Times and others report that he grew up as a neighbor and friend of Farook and that they worked on old cars together. In 2011 or 2012 he became a Muslim, but apparently not a particularly committed one, as the Islamic Center of Corona told the L.A. Times that he showed up to pray “irregularly about 4-5 years ago” but they haven’t seen him since. They are still researching how and who converted him, as they have no record of it. Around the same time, he purchased two rifles and gave them to Farook. They were planning an attack, but he backed out after he heard about some terror suspects being arrested. Perhaps he was not all that committed to the plan to begin with. He was then set up in an immigration scam, to marry one of Farook’s in-laws, a Muslim from Russia (Chechnya?). News reports indicate that Marquez thought this young woman really wanted to be his wife, but he later found out that she was living with another man, using the man’s name, and has a child with him. Meanwhile, Marquez was living with his mother and lamenting over his loneliness and unrequited love on social media. His “wife” is now being investigated for immigration fraud, and the L.A. Times says Marquez is fully cooperating with the FBI. I think this guy has finally figured out that he was a sap. His former co-workers at WalMart described him as weird and socially ackward. A classmate from community college said he is very shy, but will open up with an almost child-like trust if he is befriended. Hopefully he can provide the FBI with useful information.
So as not to single out a particular religion for abuse, we should really close down all religious institutions, and refuse entry into the country for all religionists.
Opinion suppressed? I posted a brilliant comment with a video TWICE and it’s just not here and that was 5 hours ago. What’s up, moderator?
Hey, Muslims: congrats! You’re America’s new Mexicans, and it’s all gracias to our common enemy, Donald Trump.
Let me explain. Anyone with a brain is rightfully upset by Trump’s recent remarks that he wants to ban Muslims from migrating to the United States, never mind that he has extensive business dealings in Muslim countries or that he’s also hypocritically professed to love Muslims. Republican presidential candidates are jumping over each other to decry Trump’s remarks even as they say there’s some truth to Trump’s heresies.
Meanwhile, a big part of America hoots and hollers in approval and awaits the next horrid pronouncement. (Here come the internment camps).
Thanks to all this, Muslims are now public enemy número uno. Welcome to being a Mexican in the United States.
Forgive us for feeling a bit of déjà vu. After all, he pulled this same type of mierda earlier this year. Remember? That whole thing about Mexicans being rapists and criminals and drug smugglers? Followed by him proclaiming to love Mexico – and the revelation that his jacket line is made there?
Republican candidates condemned Trump’s anti-Mexican babbling at the time, but then adapted his ideas as their own even as Trump leveled up with even more outlandish proposals, like deporting 11 million undocumented people (read: “wetbacks”) or building a massive border wall. And a big part of America agrees that it is a good idea.
It’s a natural nadir of race relations in this country that America has finally placed y’all as high as we are in the totem pole of who to hate. After all, we represent the two biggest nightmares of an American psyche that still acts like it just landed in Plymouth Rock: race-mixing for us, a non-Christian background for ustedes.
Don’t feel lonely as the hate escalates in the coming year. We Mexicans are here for the ummah. After all, the guidebook Americans will follow to properly loathe Muslims was written long ago to use on us.
The stereotypes thrown against Muslims – bloodthirsty, invaders, misogynistic, clannish, swarthy, wanting white women, secretive and bent on destroying America – have been developed and deployed against Mexicans for the past 175 years in this country, in print, politics and media.
And the government overreach you’ve had to deal with since the days since 9/11 and will have to undergo even more now is like looking at a high school yearbook for us. Getting pulled aside by TSA? The migra has done that to us at border crossings from San Ysidro, California to McAllen, Texas since the days of Pancho Villa. Scared looks by Americans for your beard or hijab? Talk to any Mexican male with a shaved head about all the valentines police throw their way daily.
Clampdown on immigration? Americans have tried to stop us from coming since the days of the Ottoman Empire – and now, of course, the fear is your kind jumping the border with our help. Casting Muslim refugees fleeing from terror back home as sleeper agents? Ask Mexicans fleeing from this decade’s narco-violence how dispiriting that is (or our Central American cousins fleeing Reagan-supported death squads during the 1980s).
Fear of federal agents swooping up one of your relatives and never bothering to tell you why? That’s so ingrained in the minds of Mexicans that I remember a childhood game called “La Migra”, where someone would yell “¡La migra!” and everyone would scatter. That was the game, nothing else, and that was in the 1980s.
Best of all is how the actions of a few idiots in our respective tribes get thrown back at us as indicative of our collective failure as a minority. Already, Americans are asking y’all to police yourselves and stop protecting the “bad” Muslims, just like Mexican Americans get asked again and again to fight gangs in our neighborhoods or why don’t we improve the chaotic situation in Mexico. Funny how Americans never ask themselves the same thing every time some crazy gringo gets an assault rifle and massacres innocents.
It’s going to get tiresome to defend yourselves, Muslims. So how to deal with being America’s new Mexicans? Embrace it. Revel in the fact that millions of Americans are freaked out at everything that you do. Continue to organize and decry demonization at every step, and just roll your eyes at the umpteenth Fox News expert who couldn’t tell a falafel from kibbeh the way he can’t tell a sweet tamale from a savory one.
Most importantly, it’s time we form a Mexican-Muslim alliance. The numbers are there, and the similarities between us are astounding – besides how we both scare Americans.
We both come in a dazzling array of shades. Like Muslims have converts, Mexicans do as well: just look at all the coeds who like to sport sombreros for frat parties, or chefs who take our culinary traditions and get rich off of them. Spanish has thousands of loan words in Arabic gracias to the Moors, from almohada (pillow) to ojalá (hopefully, similar to your insha’Allah) to Donald Trump is Satan (Donald Trump is Satan).
There’s already more than a few Mexican Muslims, just like Muslims are starting to love Mexican food (I’ve had conversations with one of your finest spokespeople, Council on American-Islamic Relations-Los Angeles chapter head Hussam Ayloush, about great tacos in Orange County). Virgin of Guadalupe? She’s part-Mexican and part-Muslim.
Let the Republicans rant – after all, they’re going to be the ultimate losers in all this. Like Mexicans, most of the Muslims I know seem natural for that party: fiscally and socially conservative, with a particular affinity for family values. Yet Republicans push us to the Democratic side because they’re so obnoxious and clueless and really think we don’t belong to this country.
So, let racism unite us. We Mexicans have been waiting for someone else to bear America’s cross of bigotry, and we’re more than happy to teach you the ropes–and help with the load. Alliances between Muslim and Chicano students groups have blossomed in recent years, so there’s precedent for us to hang out. You brothers and sisters bust out the shawerma (which our al pastor is based on), we cabrones will bring out the goat stew, and let’s plot the conquest of America – with love, votes, and a bunch of beautiful brown babies.
I’ve heard enough. Trump has nothing to gain, except to save his countrymen lives. That seems to not interest those who wish to attack that line of reasoning. I’m not a cat with a thousand lives – I’m going with Trump.
@Tom Nash:
Absolutely, always it’s because of ol’ Uncle Sam.
KC Fleming…..As I understand it, The U.S. is responsible for all Syrian deaths because we didn’t intervene earlier on behalf of the anti-Assad “moderates”.
In the 1990s into 2003, we were to blame for not ” finishing the job” in Gulf War I, when Bush 41 did not want “mission creep” and stopped military action after ejecting Saddam from Kuwait.
Thus Bush 41 was widely criticized for not removing Saddam, allowing more slaughters under Saddam and widespread suffering of the Iraqi people under harsh sanctions.
Bush 43 “finished the job” of removing Saddam, and the rosy scenario of “Iraqis coming together” obviously did not pan out. So the subsequent suicide bombings at marketplaces, etc. and all Iraqi deaths from that point on were all Bush 43s fault.
He did, after all, ” free” the Iraqis to engage in wholesale slaughter of fellow Iraqi citizens instead of coming together to build a stable post-Saddam country.
You may have seen the estimates of 4 million Iraqi deaths that the U.S. is responsible for; those estimates “ranged” as high as 40 million deaths on yesterday’s comments.
Had we intervened earlier in Syria, we would have saved 500,000 lives and millions displaced as refugees. Had we intervened early in Syria and the rosy scenario did not pan out, then America would be on the hook for all subsequent deaths.
The final tally of sole American responsibility for deaths on Islamic countries, starting with the Barbary Coast deaths, is yet to be tallied. There may be as “casualty bidding war” out there that will ultimately top 100,000,000, all America’s fault for intervening……..or not intervening.
” “radicalized” for killing American civilians for the following US actions?”
Horsehockey.
Jerry… Do you seriously think the “Bullet Button Loophole” would have had an effect on the outcome in this case?
Authorities are reporting that the guns were illegally altered by the perpetrators.
The California law in effect since 1989 allows for the sale of AR-15 and other semi-automatic weapons as long as the magazines cannot be changed by a “hands alone” method. It also limits the magazine capacity to 10-rounds.
The “bullet button” requires the user to depress a recessed button with a small tipped device or possibly the tip of a bullet to eject the magazine for reload. Much of that is a moot point when CRIMINALS illegally alter the gun to accept magazines holding 30 – 75 bullets as was the case in San Bernadino.
Where did these people get the magazines? They didn’t buy them in California… it’s illegal to sell them there.
I’m not trying to be antagonistic here, and I’m not a gun owner… but in all my life I’ve never seen or heard of a single example of any gun loading, aiming, and firing itself. Not once, yet the response by a large number of people in this country is to immediately blame the gun.
That’s no different than blaming Jose Cuervo for a drunk driver.
Concerning mosques, remember Sunnis and Shiite aren’t concerned with Trump or France closures.
But they will bomb each other’s mosques occasionally, any time, any where.
Were US personnel “radicalized” when they fire bombed civilian non-combatant targets in Dresden, Germany? How about 300k dead mostly civilian Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? If I only had a nickel for each time Americans justified nuclear civilian death to save American lives. I heard a War College Professor state that US law protects the POTUS no matter how many civilians he kills in a military action. Why does Islamic law not deserve the same protection? I suspect, though I’m not sure, that US law prohibits releasing the number of civilians killed in military action. It took Edward Snowden to prove the US admits killing 66k innocent civilian Iraqi non-combatants (actual number likely 10x that). Do you think surviving family members forgive us because we bring democracy and capitalism to the ME, in the form of central banks, endless debt, tax payer paid abortions, McDonalds, women’s rights, homosexual nuptials, frequent and adored sex-changes, etc, etc.?
Why and how is a Muslim any more “radicalized” for killing American civilians for the following US actions?
1. US marriage to Israel, a nation of zero national interest to the US, clearly violating G. Washington’s Farewell Address advice that “all foreign entanglements are temporary.”
2. US military occupation of Mecca/Saudi Arabia, the holiest of all Islamic holy land.
3. US unbridled support for the most evil, blood thirsty dictators ruling roughshod over Muslims (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, etc, etc, etc).
Joseph Jones – both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets. Dresden was not. Using the Nurenburg Conventions, Curtis LeMay, could easily have been convicted of war crimes. He fire bombed Tokyo and many cities killing more than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.