The workplace for jihadist Maj. Nidal Hasan was Ft. Hood, and his 13 victims were soldiers in the infidel army that was occupying parts of dar al Islam.  Jihadist Mohammod Adulazeez also attacked military facilities earlier this year, killing four Marines at a recruiting center and a Navy sailor.  So why did Syed Farook kill co-workers at the San Bernardino County Health Department’s Inland Regional Center?

One of Farook’s colleagues at the Department was another health inspector, Nicholas Thalasinos.  He was a Messianic Jew (a Jew who has converted to Christianity but maintains he is still Jewish) who always wore his talit, the prayer shawl with fringed tassels, and a Star of David tie clip.  He was an outspoken conservative and passionate supporter of Israel.  He blogged occasionally at onebigdog.net, and his most recent article was “Palestinians: The Invented People.”

According to a friend, Thalasinos got into a heated discussion with Farook about Islam two weeks before the attack.  The Messianic Jew was trying to persuade Farook that Islam is not a religion of peace.  Farook disagreed.  Americans don’t understand Islam, he complained.

Farook, who had begun growing his beard out, had clearly planned an attack earlier.  But could Thalasinos have had something to do with why the shaheed targeted his co-workers on Wednesday?  Thalasinos was certainly a provocation: a Jew, an Evangelical, a supporter of Israel, and a critic of Islam.  As for the other co-workers, who may have had no opinions on the Middle East, was it enough that they were Americans and infidels?

“Rest assured, we’ll get to the bottom of this,” President Obama has promised.

The only real mystery for the president to solve is why, after the Inland Regional Center massacre, the jihadists didn’t head for the nearest military recruiting office or Jewish daycare center.

Meanwhile, Farook, like the Charlie Hebdo killers, will have extended the reach of the Pact of Umar, the code for dhimmis, which forbids criticism of Islam.  Americans skeptical about the Religion of Peace will keep their mouths shut around Muslim colleagues.   (Farook, said Thalasinos’s widow, “got along with everybody.  That’s what’s so shocking.”)  Fewer Jews will wear symbols of their religion, also outlawed under the Pact. 

In a recent case of real workplace violence, when Omar Thornton killed 8 people at the beer distributorship where he was about to be disciplined for stealing, relatives claimed he was a victim of racism.

Will the media run with the story that Farook was provoked by the Islamophobic rants of his right-wing colleague?  Or will they continue to just talk about guns?

What’s particularly chilling about this story is that Syed and his wife and accomplice, Tashfeen Malik, had a six-month-old daughter, whom they deposited with Farook’s mother before the attack.  Co-workers had given the expectant mother a baby shower earlier in the year.  For Malik, the desire to become a shaheed, a martyr for Islam, was stronger than one of the most powerful drives in humans, the maternal instinct.

Nick Thalasinos blogged under the name “Noahide,” a reference to the Seven Laws of Noah that God is supposed to have given to all of humanity.  Law number three is Do Not Murder.