Hours after the horrible attacks in Nice, which saw 84 people killed by a raging truck on a defenseless crowd, multiple stories emerged about the attacker's motivation, with a recurrent insistence to find unclear ties to Islamic terrorism. Given the attacker's background, it is not surprising that global and local media quickly began speculating about his radical motives and attempting to trace how he had been recruited by ISIS.
In the early profiling data, mainly through the testimony of his ex-wife, it emerged that Mohamed Lahouaiyej Bouhlel was clearly not a practicing Muslim: He drank, he did not pray or go to the mosque, and he had obvious signs of psychological and emotional instability. Until proven otherwise, such an attack would be, at least initially, framed as an act of madness by an unstable person.
Links to organized terrorism were hard to find, and although a few days later a source speaking for ISIS claimed he was "one of the soldiers of Islamic State," there did not seem to be any evidence of this in the investigation carried out by the French authorities.
It is now emerging in the latest reports that Mohamed may have been "radicalized two weeks before the attack" as his uncle claims his nephew was approached by an Algerian ISIS recruiter in Nice and was "an easy prey" for the terrorist organization. There is still no evidence that this is true and while the investigation is still ongoing, the idea seems to be gaining steam in the media.
This narrative seems to be both highly unrealistic and extremely dangerous. It does not seem plausible that a non-practicing Muslim with no criminal history would decide to give up his life for a radical organization and kill 84 people after being recruited just a few days before the attack. This might be an explanation, but is not really a motive.
This explanation is also very disturbing as it sets a precedent that seems to usher to a future concept, where all people with Muslim origins and background, regardless of whether they hold extremist ideologies or not, are prone to being recruited to conduct terrorist attacks overnight. This idea basically makes any person from the Muslim world a potential suspect of terrorism, and that is a dangerous rhetoric that should not be entertained, unless there is clear evidence to support it.
Regardless if the links to ISIS are upheld or not, the media needs to be very careful about the perceptions and implications of a given story as it has become widely acceptable to present profoundly implausible narratives when it comes to the reach of ISIS, the radicalization of moderate Muslims, and anything that links terrorism to Islam. For the media today, it seems that if a terrorist attack happens and the person has a Muslim background, a link to terrorist organizations and ISIS must be found, regardless of whether it makes sense or not, and regardless of whether it exists or not.