The Truth about the (Muslim?) Murderer of Three British Children

The Stream

On July 29, the son of African migrants went on a stabbing spree targeting small children in Southport, England. He murdered three little girls (aged six, seven, and nine, pictured above) and seriously injured two adults and eight other children; five were left in critical condition.

The really big news, however, is that several Brits concluded that the stabber was a Muslim, then rose up in protest and attacked a mosque. This prompted Prime Minister Kier Starmer to vow to do everything in his power to protect not native British children, but Muslims.

In a press conference, Starmer denounced those protesting the murder of three children as “far-right” “thugs,” adding, “Let me be very clear. I will take every step that is necessary to keep you [Muslims] safe…. The far-right is showing who they are. We have to show who we are in response to that.”

But why did so many Brits assume that the murderer, whose name has been given as Muganwa Rudakubana, born to Rwandan migrants, was Muslim in the first place?

First, as it happens, many Muslims have launched similar attacks, randomly stabbing native Europeans. While there are countless examples from Western nations — including a public beheading in London, also at the hands of African migrants — one need not leave the British Isles to find a nearly identical attack.

On Nov. 23, 2023, a Muslim man of Algerian origin, with a known criminal record, also knifed a group of preschool children attending Saint Mary’s, a Catholic school in Dublin. Three children — two girls and a boy, all five or six years old — and a care assistant who tried to defend them were stabbed in the assault. Knifed near the heart, another five-year-old girl was hospitalized in critical condition.

Incidentally, Ireland’s then-prime minister, Leo Varadkar (a half-Indian homosexual), responded just as his British counterpart did a few days ago. He accused those protesting the stabbing of Catholic schoolchildren of being racists “filled with hate,” and vowed to use the “full resources of the law” to punish the protesters and tighten legislation concerning “hate speech” and “incitement.

Second, Rudakubana could be a convert to Islam.

There have been many examples of non-Muslims, including of European origins, who convert to Islam, only to engage in terrorism. For obvious reasons, they seldom formally change their legal, non-Muslim names.  Rwanda, moreover, though historically Christian majority, has seen a sharp rise in conversions to Islam.  Finally, as a young black migrant in the UK, where cultural and ethnic polarization has become pronounced, Rudakubana would most likely have gravitated to and adopted the ways and worldview of other black and brown migrants; and a great many of these are Muslim in the UK.

Third, when it comes to the names of sub-Saharan African Muslims, these are often indigenous and not what you might expect them to be — Muhammad, Ahmed, and the like.

Consider the African nation of Uganda, which shares a border with Rwanda and is similarly Christian-majority (with a small, though restless, Muslim minority). Many if not most of the Muslims in Uganda — even the murderous, violent ones — have indigenous names with no association to Islam.

Thus, the name of a teenage Muslim girl whose father “burned” her a few days ago for converting to Christianity is Naasike Maliyat. A few weeks before that, a Muslim man poisoned and killed his mother for embracing Christ. His name is Arajabu Mukiibi. In February, a Muslim couple who converted to Christianity was also murdered. Their names were Twaha Namwoyo and Nadiimu Katooko.

Indeed, the two African men who slaughtered and used a cleaver to behead Lee Rigby, a British soldier, in the streets of London in 2013 were named Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. Both were converts to Islam.

Clearly, the Shakespearan dictum, “What’s in a name?” holds much weight here. A person’s name, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, need not be, and often isn’t, recognizably Muslim, even though that person is.

But perhaps the greatest indicator that Muganwa Rudakubana may have been a Muslim is that the British authorities who are saying he is not Muslim have lost all credibility. Their word is absolutely worthless. At this stage in the game, who would be surprised to learn that, as part of their “Muslim damage control,” the authorities are creating fake names, identities, and backgrounds for Muslim criminals, lest people keep connecting the dots and rising up against their agenda?

For example, on the day after Rudakubana’s murderous stabbing spree, another man was arrested for preparing to launch another knife attack on a vigil for his victims. Although the man definitely appears to be of Arab or Middle Eastern descent, authorities quickly gave his name as “Jordan Davies.” (Even if that is his real name, perhaps his father is British, but his mother is of Muslim origin — and only recently he decided to get in touch with his “roots”?)

It cannot be stressed enough: The UK’s leaders, as is the case with all of the West’s leaders, are avowed Leftists, which, among other things, means that, for them, the ends always justify the means. Whether their professed end is to maintain peace and order in the UK, or whether, and more likely, it is to overcome any hurdle in the way of their mass migration agenda, using any means necessary — including out-and-out lies and fabrications — is, obviously, part of their modus operandi. To think otherwise is to be a fool.

In the end, of course, it does not matter if Rudakubana is Muslim or not. The same argument sticks. Europe was founded on Christian values. Those who come to Europe and do not assimilate, whether they are Muslim or just “third worlders” — increasingly an academic distinction — bring with them unacceptable “behaviors,” chiefly tribalism that manifests as hate for and attacks on “the other.”

To be sure, in Europe those acting on such tribal impulses are almost always Muslim. Islam essentially deifies tribalism— the notion that the world consists of “us” vs. “them” — but, on occasion, it could simply be generic tribalism. Islam in Europe is merely a concentrated and microsmic reflection of this truth, though it applies to all who do not share in the West’s worldview, which is still rooted in Christian values — and which the Left hates and is doing everything possible to undermine.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.