A familiar story from previous Islamic terrorist attacks. 

Silvana Fardos, the mother of suspect Hadi Matar, 24, added to the Daily Mail on Sunday that she is disowning her son over his alleged crime and hopes Rushdie gets well.

The mom said she was born Muslim but is not religious. She said she hadn’t even heard of Rushdie until after the famed “Satanic Verses” author was attacked in western New York and the FBI began contacting her family.

“I didn’t push my kids into religion or force anything on my son,” Fardos told the Mail. “I don’t know anyone in Iran, all my family are here. I’m living a simple life as a single mom, trying to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table for my kids.”

But Fardos, who also has twin 14-year-olds, said her eldest child grew more religious as he got older. 

She noted that her son’s demeanor particularly changed in 2018 after he returned from a trip to Lebanon, her home country, where he was visiting his father. 

“One time he argued with me, asking why I encouraged him to get an education instead of focusing on religion. He was angry that I did not introduce him to Islam from a young age,” she said.

The authorities are still searching for the motive, but the story is a familiar one. It’s also a warning about the so-called “secular Muslim” immigrants who in the second generation start searching for their roots and their identity. 

And turn to Islam.

A number of years ago, I wrote, “Integration is Not the Answer.“

There is a famous photo of Anjem Choudary, the head of multiple banned organizations calling for imposing Sharia law on the UK whose follower was responsible for the Lee Rigby beheading, getting drunk as a young law student. Friends recall “Andy” smoking pot and taking LSD, sleeping around and partying all the time. Andy was really well integrated, but he still turned back into Anjem.

 Some of the worst Jihadists are culturally integrated and religiously disintegrated. They speak the native language fluently. They are intimately familiar with popular culture. They move easily among the native population. It’s their belief system that is fundamentally disintegrated and whose demands cannot be integrated without a civil war.

Cultural integration won’t transform Muslims into non-Muslims. All it does is make them conflicted and insecure. And that is why it is those second-generation culturally integrated Muslims who go to bars, call themselves Andy or Mo, sell drugs, go to university, who take a detour into Syria and come back with bomb plans and big plans for transforming Europe into an Islamic state.

Cultural integration builds up a conflict with Islam. Some Muslims respond to it by abandoning Islam, others by embracing it. If we fail to recognize this, then integration becomes a ticking time bomb.

And the bombs keep going off.

Fewer Americans are buying what our culture is selling anymore. Why would we think that Muslims would? Faced with a choice between Starbucks, TikTok, green everything, LGBTQAIOUP=, #MeToo, #Thatsnotfunny and Marvel comics as the defining cultural narrative, Hadi Matar went back to his roots in Lebanon. And went on a mission for Allah.

We’re going to need something better to counter it with than social justice hashtag and the latest Disney+ programming.