The Times Square Bomber

The Herald reports:

A Pakistani immigrant who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square was sentenced Tuesday to life in prison by a judge who said she hopes he spends time behind bars thinking “carefully about whether the Quran wants you to kill lots of people.”

A defiant Faisal Shahzad smirked as he was given a mandatory life term that, under federal sentencing rules, will keep him behind bars until he dies.

“If I’m given 1,000 lives I will sacrifice them all for the life of Allah,” he said at the start of a statement that lasted several minutes.

Worth reflecting that if he was in NZ, he would have only got a maximum 14 year sentence for attempted murder and be eligible for parole in five years.

Shahzad, a 31-year-old former budget analyst from Connecticut who was born in Pakistan, responded that the “Quran gives us the right to defend. And that’s all I’m doing.”

This is the scary thing. This was not some young impressionable teenager, or an unemployed school dropout with no future. He had a good education and good job, and then decided that his interpretation of his religion means he must kill people.

He added: “We do not accept your democracy or your freedom because we already have Sharia law and freedom.”

I guess the desire for Sharia law and its version of freedom is why there are so few female Islamist terrorists.