Islamic Connection: Some Suspects in Dallas Shooting Sympathized with the Nation of Islam

On July 7, 2016, five police officers were killed by sniper fire in Dallas, Texas. Six other officers and two civilians were wounded. A shooter fired at a protest against police killings in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. This is all generally known.

It seems improbable that Black Lives Matter members would fire on a Black Lives Matter demonstration. And that is in fact, not what happened.

Among the five suspects now in Dallas Police custody are self described "Islamic Americans" who attended a Nation of Islam mosque in the South Dallas area. It should be noted that the Nation of Islam itself is splintered into several groups. Louis Farrakhan, who took over the organization in 1981, subscribes to Dianetics and appears to have left Islam altogether. It's ideology is barely recognizable as Islamic.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings identified the shooter as Micah X. Johnson. "Micah X." appears to have been named after Black Nationalist leader Malcolm X. a member of the Nation of Islam. "While in prison, Malcolm X became a member of the Nation of Islam, and after his parole in 1952, quickly rose to become one of the organization's most influential leaders." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X

Johnson liked the Nation of Islam, African American Defense League, Black Riders Liberation Party, the New Black Panther Party, and other black nationalist groups on Facebook, and identified himself as a "Black Nationalist." He wears a dashiki in his profile picture, and holds his fist in the air like a Black Panther. "Don't let this white man tell you that violence is wrong," tweeted Farrakhan about an hour before the Dallas shooting. Johnson was one of his thousands of Twitter followers.

The night he died, Johnson told Police he was upset about recent police shootings and 'wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.' He is the only suspect Dallas police have publicly identified so far, and also the only dead suspect. He is also now identified as the only shooter (but not the only suspect).

"We cornered one suspect and we tried to negotiate for several hours - negotiations broke down, we had an exchange of gunfire with the suspect," Dallas Police Chief David Brown said. "We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was," he said.

Using a robot to kill a sniper is a procedure never performed before by American police, but common in fighting Islamic insurgencies. In a tweet, defense expert Peter Singer noted that the MARCbot machine, which is designed to tackle bombs such as IEDs, has been used as a weapon in Iraq.

At his Mesquite home, police found guns, bomb making materials, and a personal journal of combat tactics. He is described as a loner who spent six years in the Army Reserve, including a deployment to Afghanistan. Johnson had no prior criminal history. But he had clearly been planning a mass shooting for a long time.

No recognized American Islamic leader publicly promotes violence, though some claim the Nation of Islam is an exception to that rule. However, members of this particular Mosque might reasonably have believed that they themselves were under attack.

A tense, armed protest in front of a South Dallas mosque required Dallas police intervention one Saturday afternoon in April. It happened in front of the Nation of Islam mosque on April 3, 2016, according to CBS Dallas.

Anti-Moslem demonstrators, dressed in fatigues and masks and most of them armed, were easily outnumbered approximately 10 to 1 by the mosque supporters, some of whom were also armed, reported CBS Dallas. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/anti-muslim-protest-in-dallas-features-fatigues-masks-lots-of-guns/

Dozens of police officers stood in between the two groups and also on rooftops to ensure nothing more than words were exchanged.

In a statement released before the April protest, the Dallas Police Department said, "The department is committed to protecting the Constitutional rights of all citizens and will make every effort to keep this protest peaceful."

The was no violence and no arrests. But the seeds of anger and dissent were sown.

Militant Islam Reaches America is a book written by historian Daniel Pipes, published in 2002. It focuses on Islamic fundamentalism and Islamism, reflecting Pipes' view that, as he said in 1995, "Unnoticed by most Westerners, war has been unilaterally declared on Europe and the United States." The latest shooting in Dallas appears to have been a part of that war.

The protest was organized by the Next Generation Action Network after the killings of two black men, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, by police in Louisiana and Minnesota, respectively. It was one of several protests held across the U.S. on the night of July 7. Several hundred protesters were involved in the Dallas protest, and before the shooting occurred, no other incidents were reported and the event was peaceful.

Belo Garden Park, the location where the protest began and near where the shooting occurred, was a popular gathering place for Black Lives Matter demonstrations, such as one held after the death of Sandra Bland at a Waller County, Texas, jail in 2015.

The people firing on the Dallas police used another group's protest event, to settle what they saw as an offense against their race and their religion.