I saw someone on Twitter say something like “Everyone got their wish: they’re white and they’re Muslim!” Which strikes me as both funny and terrible.
I’ve also seen talk of Chechnya having Muslim extremists, but I think it’s important to clarify that Chechnya has extremists who are Muslim. What Chechen extremists want would look very similar if they were Christian (though, obviously, the religious differences feed into it). Unless they’ve left some manifesto or told someone what they were up to, we should hold off on trying to understand this in terms of the global war on terror. Considering how long they’ve lived in the United States, it might even be a mistake to try to link this to Chechen politics.
As much as I like to look for ideological connections, it’s important to realize that, with the amount of mass killings we’ve had in this country in this week, it’s just very attractive timing to anyone who’s sole goal is to top Columbine or OKC or Virginia Tech. And that could be all that motivated this.