The latest van attack in Toronto on April 23, 2018 was no doubt evocative of similar attacks in Nice, France (July, 14, 2016) and Berlin, Germany (December 19, 2016). But it was also evocative of the Charlottesville, Virginia car attack in 2017. While the motives of the Toronto van attack driver remain elusive at this moment, the word “terrorism” no doubt, flew around the world. It’s a direct instruction from ISIS to use whatever means necessary to inflict damage on human life in the aims of furthering the caliphate. I wonder if ISIS realized that non-Islamic “terror” would borrow from their playbook.
As far as I know, and as much as officials have said at this point, the attack in Toronto was not a terrorist attack nor was there a connection to any nefarious group or organization. I see no reason to doubt them. Possible motives cited were “incel rebellion” and the term “mental illness” has been thrown around a lot. In fact, on watching the CBC Facebook livecast on the evening of April 23, 2018, the comments section was ablaze with the term “mentally ill” (“mental health”, “mental illness”, etc.). A phone conversation I had on the subject drew the word “crazy”.
I’m bipolar. I’ve often heard the words “mentally ill” or “crazy” used in tandem with descriptions of acts of senseless cruelty and it’s never bothered me as I understand the loose use of the words in a way that’s not meant to be offensive. But let’s face it, ascribing anything to “mental illness” is a very broad and ambiguous thing to do. Terror attacks that have proven connections with terrorist groups have often been misattributed to “mental illness”. Some perpetrators have had histories of mental health issues. But I see no reason why mental health shouldn’t be on everyone’s agenda to be honest. According to CAMH, approximately 7 million people in Canada suffer from some form of mental health issue a year. “By age 40, about 50% of the population will have or have had a mental illness”. That’s a lot of variance among many different diagnoses and among many different people.
It seems like an oversimplification of the issue to just claim “mental illness” has caused some heinous crime. And as if these issues aren’t already stigmatized, the blanketing probably just adds fuel to the fire. I understand that the Toronto van attack was not a terrorist act. But I deliberately wanted to shift the conversation to the issue of “mental illness” and “terrorism”. It’s as if “mental illness” can be swapped in for “terrorism”. I’d ask though, did known terrorists look up or research mental health issues to become inspired to carry out their missions? Does mental health include dogma, doctrine and policy that directly call for violence? If they did find some information or organization that advocates for violence on the premise of mental health, they surely weren’t looking at anything that was sane or reputable to begin with.
There’s another parallel that can be extracted from this with specificity to Islamist terror. The question goes, how can you say that all 1.8 billion muslims in the world are terrorists? Similarly, I may ask, how can you say that all people with mental health issues are capable of violent crime? Some of you may get where I’m going with this already, but it’s a claim that keeps coming up ever so subtly in my conversations.
On the issue of the “religion of peace”, Islam, it’s no sane person’s claim that all 1.8 billion muslims are violent murderers. That’s absurd! What critics argue is that Islamic doctrine (like Christian doctrine) easily lends itself to justification for violent acts. It’s no secret that the Quran and the Hadith contain highly questionable verses by contemporary standards. Furthermore, you can subtract the violence of terrorist groups and still end up with conservative Islamic views. In the U.K., for instance, more than half of the muslim population felt that homosexuality should be illegal. The problem critics point out is that Islam, the religion, like other religions, is problematic. I believe the Left and the Right both get hijacked by the same statements such as, “all muslims are terrorists”. The Right goes along with the notion, a la Donald Trump’s muslim ban, and the Left, perhaps reactively, eliminate the possibility of Islam having anything to do with terrorism.
How can ISIS, a group then consisting of tens of thousands of fighters, with affiliate terrorist organizations across the globe, a sophisticated media/marketing machine, advanced battleground strategies and stores of wealth be made up of “mentally ill” people? Statistically, one must admit that there would be issues surrounding mental health, but the ultimate cause is obvious. And I’m not sure the proximate cause, taken in reference to the entire organization and its reach, is mental illness.
Maybe the Toronto van attack driver does have mental health issues. They would need to be addressed of course. But I don’t think that we should be throwing around the term “mental illness” as a catch all for terrorism and definitely not as a replacement.