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Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national who had overstayed his visa, has now been saddled with 118 criminal charges, including 28 counts of attempted murder, for throwing Molotov cocktails last Sunday at a group of people who were peacefully marching to advocate for the release of the Israeli hostages Hamas seized on Oct. 7, 2023. He is also facing federal hate crime charges, as he was clearly intending to target Jews. Yet while we have come a long way from last Sunday, when Boulder police chief Steve Redfearn insisted that Soliman’s motive was not yet known, his real motive has not yet been confronted, and likely never will be.

A key element of Soliman’s motive was known right away, for as he attacked the marchers, he screamed “Free Palestine.” After he was taken into custody, he told police, as if it weren’t clear enough already, that he hated “Zionist people” and “wished they were all dead.” Boulder Detective John Sailer noted in an affidavit that Soliman said “he wanted them to all die and that was [his] plan. He said he would go back and do it again and had no regret doing what he did.”

And there is indeed no doubt that Soliman hated Jews and wanted to kill as many of them as he could last week in Boulder. However, his actual motive went deeper than that. In a video he made not long before his attack, Soliman said:

Allah is greater than anything. Allah is greater than the Zionists, Allah is greater than America and its weapons, Allah is greater than the F-35 planes, Allah is greater than everything else. So why do we fear those who are inferior to Allah rather than fear Allah himself?

If I told my wife and son every day to do something, but they didn’t do it, I would be angry. Maybe I would divorce my wife, maybe I would kick my son out of the house. Then what about Allah, who says to us every day, dozens of times, “Allahu akbar” [Allah is greater]. Do not forget: Allahu akbar. Do not forget that Allah is greater than everything. Not the Zionists, America, Britain, France or Germany. Only Allah has the right to be feared. I say to my mother, my wife, my children, my brothers, my people: I attest before Allah and before you that Allah, his messenger, and jihad for Allah’s sake are more beloved to me than you or the whole world are.

Soliman’s Facebook page, meanwhile, had a header image featuring this exhortation: “Open your heart to the Qur’an and you will be blessed in this life and the next.” Soliman declared his love for the Muslim Brotherhood, and repeatedly praised Muslim Brotherhood jihadis. And so while he certainly hated Jews and screamed “Free Palestine” as he targeted them, his focus was not solely upon Jews and Israel. Mohamed Sabry Soliman wanted to wage “jihad for Allah’s sake,” which in Islamic theology is a phrase that refers specifically to jihad warfare.

The Muslim Brotherhood, of which Soliman was so enamored, has the stated goal in America, according to a captured internal document, of “a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means.” What does the phrase mean? The document goes on to explain: “The Ikhwan [Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack.”

Mohammed Sabry Soliman did not try to escape from his destiny of waging jihad. It is possible that he emigrated to the U.S. in the first place with exactly that goal. Whether he did or not, it is certain that no one who ever examined his visa application ever questioned him regarding his views of Jews, or his thoughts about jihad. To have done such a thing would have been “Islamophobic.” And so he came into the country with no problem, and stayed beyond the expiration of his visa with no problem, until finally he had a chance to wage jihad.

How many more would-be jihadis are in America right now, waiting for the right moment?