Correction on San Bernardino Shooter/Lal Masjid Link

Yesterday I wrote a post, The Bloody Key to the San Bernardino Massacre: Radicalisation at the Lal Masjid Mosque in Pakistan, based upon unconfirmed news reports that President Obama had notified Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif that a photograph showing Tashfeen Malik, the female shooter at San Bernardino, with fire-eating Pakistani cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz had been found.

The reports have been denied by Sharif’s office, and by Maulana Abdul Aziz personally in a press statement reported by the Pakistan Tribune.

“I swear, I do not know Tashfeen Malik and have never been photographed with her,” he said in a statement issued on Saturday. “I have never even been photographed with my wife and daughters. How can you imagine me being photographed with a na-mahram (woman who is not related to me),” he asked.

…

Umme Hassan, Aziz’s wife and the principal of the Jamia Hafsa seminary, also supported her husband, saying he rarely gives interview to female journalists, and whenever he did give one, Hasan or one of their daughters would sit in the room with Aziz.

“I can say with complete assurance that Malik… never took a photograph with him,” she said.

I find their statements convincing because Maulana Abdul Aziz is apparently allergic to having his picture taken.  Indeed, on the Internet one finds occasional pictures of him in public settings with men, but not women, and no personal “grip and grin” “wall of fame” individual shots with fans and followers, male or female.

And I was too quick to speculate on the possibility that Malik attended the madrassa at Lal Masjid.  As I subsequently found out, she got a degree in pharmacy at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Punjab.

So post in haste, repent in haste.  

There is no demonstrated link between Tashfeen Malik and Lal Masjid mosque or Maulana Abdul Aziz.

I’ve inserted this statement on my previous post.