It’s an absolute mystery.
Last week, a man who was shouting “Allahu Akbar” — an infamous Islamic proclamation — rammed his car into a crowd of pedestrians on Ile d’Oléron, a French island getaway off the country’s west coast.
Thankfully, no one was killed. During what French authorities described as a “35-minute rampage,” five people were hit during incidents two villages, with two seriously injured.
The driver then “intentionally set fire to his vehicle,” the mayor of one of the villages said.
Islamist attack in France on the island of Oléron. Shouting “Allah Akbar”, a terrorist in a car ran over pedestrians and cyclists, injuring them pic.twitter.com/twV8x3ccdx
— Léon de La Jaunais de Mivoie 🇨🇵 (@ThierryHot1) November 5, 2025
Hmm. What possibly could have happened? Don’t ask French officialdom, because you won’t get very far. Apparently, keeping from saying the obvious is what got them there in the first place, because they’ve spent the last week first denying there was any religious motivation and then attributing it to “self-radicalization.”
From the earliest archived reports from the U.K. Telegraph on Wednesday, here’s how the incidents in the villages of Dolus-d’Oléron and Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron were described:
According to local reports, the driver deliberately steered his car toward pedestrians and cyclists along a road joining two towns on the scenic island off the city of La Rochelle.
Who do you trust less?
At the time of his arrest, the suspect “shouted Allah Akbar,” Arnaud Laraize, public prosecutor in La Rochelle, said.
“However, the motive has not been confirmed and the investigation will have to determine this,” he continued…
Shortly afterwards, police found gas cylinders inside the suspect’s car, which had only partially caught fire, Le Parisien reported.
Total mystery, folks.
Now, to be fair, the individual taken into custody in the incident was apparently known to police for crimes that were not of a religious nature.
“He is someone who is known, particularly to the police, for behavior that is not entirely normal, and for alcohol-related problems,” Christophe Sueur, mayor of Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron, said of the incident.
However, that’s really stretching the concept of “to be fair” to the point of breaking. A man commits a crime very consistent with a terrorist attack screaming a phrase universally associated with terror attacks, with explosives in his car not inconsistent with an attempt at a mass-casualty terrorist attack, and everyone’s first instinct is, “Well, c’mon, messieurs, maybe the guy had a few too many glasses of wine with breakfast, non?”
And — wouldn’t you know it? — officials were forced to admit the obvious by Friday, when French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez confirmed it was a terror attack. But, he insisted it was a case of “self-radicalization,” according to Reuters.
“Based on a number of factors that exist with this individual, and the fact that he actually shouted ‘Allahu Akbar,’ there are religious references in his case that are quite clear and quite explicit,” he said, adding that there were “explicit religious references” to said “self-radicalization” at his home.
And yet, everyone still was in nothing-to-see-here mode. From the Reuters article:
Nuñez added, however, that it was not clear at this stage if Wednesday’s attack, which injured five people on Oleron island off France’s Atlantic coast had explicitly religious motives. [Emphasis ours]
Arnaud Laraize, prosecutor for the La Rochelle region, added there was no evidence of links between the suspect and Islamist militant groups, although France’s PNAT national anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office was monitoring the matter.
Laraize said the man, who is in police custody, had told investigators he had recently converted to Islam. [Emphasis ours]
So it’s clear that there were religious references, but not that the attack “had explicitly religious motives,” even though the man told investigators of his recent conversion to the religion he was explicitly referencing when he carried out the attack. That verbal and reportorial prestidigitation is almost impressive enough that you’re not even mad, just impressed. Almost impressive enough.
The fact is that we’ve seen this all too many times in the West: First there’s no motive, then we have a potential motive, but we’re not quite sure if it’s explicitly related to to the motive we all know it is, then the person is crazy, then by the time anyone gets around to a trial and answering the questions that could have been answered the day of the crime, it’s been months already, and why are you still asking these questions, Islamophobe?
And they wonder why we don’t trust them when this is yet another example of how the media and the government cooperate to peddle obvious lies in the name of wokeness.
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