Sheriff Jim Hammond
photo by Emmett Gienapp
During a Kiwanis Club meeting, County Sheriff Jim Hammond on Tuesday spoke on the mass shooting that left five service members dead last week, saying that the shooter’s Islamic faith is an essential element to remember in the way that the nation looks at and reacts to the situation.
Sheriff Hammond spoke directly from his years spent working in Amman, Jordan, an experience that he said allowed him to learn a great deal about Islam.
While abroad, he worked as a training director for the Jordanian International Police Training Center where he and his team trained over 45,000 officers.
But with regard to the shooting in Chattanooga, he said, “I get a little tired of us dancing around the issues in our world today.”
He said that of the 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, around 95 percent are not out to kill anyone, but the reality is that there is between five and eight percent of that population that does subscribe to radical Islam and would seek to do harm to anyone considered to be an infidel, or non-Muslim.
Sheriff Hammond stated that there are “millions and millions” of Muslims who would see the murder of infidels as a valid and guaranteed path to paradise outlined as in the Quran, saying that doing so would make one a “hero” of the Islamic faith, ensuring a “free pass” into heaven.
In addition, he stated that some Muslims accept a general rule that the collateral damage of innocent lives is permissible since proper Muslims will be admitted to paradise while the potential infidels are eliminated.
He noticed this in particular in Middle Eastern police forces which he said operated with a “Pray and spray” mentality, potentially killing several bystanders in a firefight to kill one target.
Referencing this experience, Sheriff Hammond expressed his own opinion that the federal government and other relevant agencies will label the recent tragedy simply as an act of domestic terrorism, largely leaving out what he considers to be the essential reality of this shooter’s religion.
He did make some comments regarding what local authorities currently know about the shooter including the fact that he was deep in debt, not practicing his faith, and was most likely contending with consistent home issues.
In the past several years he also made several trips to Jordan and it is currently unknown who he met with while there, though his uncle who lives there was detained by the Jordanian government a day after the shootings.
Finally, Sheriff Hammond indicated some changes he would like to see, including immigration reform since he thinks the current system “stinks.” He said he would like to see people come to America and become citizens the right way.
However, he said that the U.S. should become better at monitoring potential threats, paying closer attention to those individuals who “might come here to destroy us.”
He said, “We live in a day and age where you have to think about these things.”