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An abbreviation for "Sudden Jihad Syndrome." SJS is the tendency among supposedly Westernized Muslims living in the United States to unexpectedly lash out violently in an act of self-initiated (and usually small scale) Islamic terrorism. Examples include Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar who drove his SUV into a crowd at the University of North Carolina in 2006, Naveed Alzal Haq who shot people at a Jewish Federation Center in Seattle also in 2006, Hesham Mohammed Hadayet who murdered people at the El Al terminal in the Los Angeles Airport in 2002 — among many others. In all of these instances, the perpetrators had no known direct connection to any established group, and because of this the authorities inevitably refrain from describing their actions as “terrorism” — hence the sarcastic term “Sudden Jihad Syndrome.”
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