Springfield Man Cuts Off Own Hand For Allah

This is a bizarre story that I heard on the Sports Junkies morning show while I was driving into work this morning. It seems that a mentally disturbed man walked into a Springfield Arabic and Mediterranean grocery store and used a meat slicer from the butcher’s counter to cut off his own hand. He did this to prove his faith to a bunch of kids outside the store. And he did it in front of his own son. Egads.

From the Washington Post here:

Customer at Market in Springfield Cuts Off His Hand

Igbal Asghar reached across the counter at Super Halal Meat market and passed two butchered chickens to the man with the familiar face. Then he ducked into the walk-in freezer to fetch the customer’s second order, goat meat.

When the butcher stepped out seconds later, the customer’s severed left hand lay on the floor by the meat saw, Asghar said. The customer ran down the Springfield store’s center aisle and into the front parking lot, leaving a trail of blood and yelling repeatedly that he was “not a terrorist.” Outside, another witness said, the man announced that he had used the meat saw to cut off his hand “for Allah.”

“I don’t know what happened to that guy,” Asghar, 45, said as he leaned yesterday against a stack of Pakistan Link newspapers at the small strip mall store in the Franconia area, which caters to customers from India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. “We are shaking still when we are talking about it.”

In the parking lot were young men admiring a friend’s new motorcycle, Sinsunwal said, when the man walked coolly toward them. The man was holding aloft his bleeding left arm — sliced several inches above the wrist — and using his right hand to hold up a photo identification badge that hung around his neck.

“He said, ‘I did this for Allah’ — God,” Sinsunwal said.

I have eaten lunch at this shop. They have great gyros, greek salads and lots of different types of hummus. They have candy and nuts and dates from all over the Middle East and the Mediterranean, and immigrants from all over Northern Virginia go there to get a little taste of home.

The WaPo article goes on to say how the man with the severed hand chased the teenagers into another store. I can only speculate that he may have sternly disapproved of how the teens were becoming too westernized with their fancy motorcycles. The crazy man wanted to prove to them that Allah was great. Eek.