Two defendants, Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, were arraigned Monday on charges that include using a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization.
That organization is ISIS, shorthand for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the Middle East group that became well known in 2013 after it captured significant territory in Iraq and Syria.
According to prosecutors, Balat told authorities he had pledged allegiance to ISIS. Kanyumi similarly said he is affiliated with ISIS.
The attacks — using bombs filled with nails and screws — happened Saturday morning during dueling protests outside Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Providing his analysis of the attack, Jonathan Gilliam brought decades of expertise to the “Washington Watch” program Tuesday. A former FBI agent and Navy SEAL, Gilliam has also provided security expertise to the Department of Homeland Security.
“I think this is something that people need to realize: the future may not be organized terror cells from Iran,” Gilliam told the program.
Rather, the terrorism expert said, both Balat and Kanyumi match the pattern of what Gilliam called “homegrown zealots” who are “fundamentalized” by their religion.
Gilliam, pausing the interview for a moment, said he was using the term “fundamentalized” on purpose rather than the term “radicalized," which is much more familiar in the West.
The reason for doing so seemed to be a stinging indictment on Islam. Islamic-inspired terrorist attacks are, in reality, a fundamental part of that religion, which historically has used violence to achieve its goal of expanding the Islamic caliphate.
Before he addressed Islam directly, Gilliam went back to the 1960s and a Yale experiment by a psychology professor, Dr. Stanley Milgram. In the experiment, student volunteers believed they were pressing a button to send electrical shock waves to a second volunteer, who was actually an actor. Believing they were shocking the person, most volunteers kept pressing the button when told to do so even though they believed they were harming someone.
Tying that experiment to Islamic terrorism, and to the New York City bomb attack, Gilliam said there isn’t much difference because two young men, looking for something in life, became religious Islamic zealots.
According to media reports, Kayumi's family immigrated from Afghanistan. Balat's parents immigrated from Turkey. Both young men grew up in affluent neighborhoods in Philadelphia suburbs.
Back in the Yale experiment, what pushed the volunteers to keep pushing the button, and keep hurting someone else, was a gray lab coat. The volunteers complied more often when an authority figure ordered them to do so, Dr. Milgram's experiment found.
In the case of Islam, Gilliam said the lab coat-wearing authority figure is an imam.
In a separate “Washington Watch” interview, Washington Stand editor Casey Harper pointed out the roots of terrorism have changed dramatically in the 21st century. A person can consume radical ideology, and learn how to make a bomb, he said, thanks to the internet.
“I think something people need to understand about, when we talk about terror attacks here in the U.S.,” Harper warned, “is someone doesn't necessarily have to have a formal relationship with ISIS, or even the Iranian Revolutionary Guard or someone across the ocean, and go to a training camp and then come back to the U.S.”
