Police are investigating the beheading of a woman at an Oklahoma company by a Muslim man who had been trying to convert co-workers to Islam after recently converting himself, according to a local TV news report.
Police in Moore, Oklahoma, said Thursday the suspect, Alton Nolen, who had been fired from his job at a food processing plant, attacked a woman with a knife and beheaded her, KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City reported. He then attacked another employee and was stopped when he was shot and wounded by the company owner.
According to a local newspaper, the McCurtain Gazette, “a close family member” said Nolen had been telling co-workers about an “Islamic teaching that said women should be stoned for an offense,” and an argument ensued, after which Nolen was reportedly fired.
Moore Police Sgt. Jeremy Lewis said the 30-year-old suspect “stabbed Colleen Hufford, 54, severing her head.”
Mark Vaughan, a former CEO of the business, was being praised for shooting the suspect after the man allegedly attacked the second worker, Traci Johnson, 43, with the same knife.
According to an AP report, Lewis said Vaughn was “a hero in this situation.”
“It could have gotten a lot worse.”
The attack “has been described as an incident of workplace violence,” NewsOK.com reported.
What do YOU think? Sound off on Oklahoma beheading labeled ‘workplace violence’
Investigators said the FBI was looking into Nolen’s background after his former co-workers said he tried to convert them to Islam after recently converting himself.
A statement from Vaughan Foods said: “On behalf of everyone at Vaughan Foods, we are shocked and deeply saddened by the events of today. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of the team member we lost and all those affected. Our focus is on the safety and well-being of our employees. We will provide counseling and support for our team members and support each other through this difficult time. We are working with authorities on this active investigation and ask that you direct your questions to local law enforcement.”
The 9-1-1 tapes recorded gunshots as callers reported the stabbing.
The dispatcher told responding officers, “Units responding to Vaughan Foods, be advised we do now have gunshots.”
On his Facebook page, which features photos of Taliban jihadists, Nolen calls himself “Jah’Keem Yisrael.” He posted photos of himself wearing Muslim religious garb and reading the Quran.
Just a week before the beheading, on Sept. 18, he posted the following message on Facebook:
“SHALOM ALHAKEIUM O YE MUSLIMS! ALLAH SWT SAYS IN THE GLORIOUS QURAN ‘FOR THOSE WHO REJECT AND HATE WHAT I HAVE REVEALED, THOSE WHO SAY ILL OBEY PART OF WHAT THE QURAN SAYS-ALLAH (SWT) SAYS THEIR GOOD DEEDS WILL BE NO EFFECT AT DEATH OR ON THE JUDGMENT DAY BECAUSE U CANT FUFIL [sic] HIS GOOD PLEASURE!! SURA 47 AYAH 20-29”
On his “about Jah’keem” page, he writes the following message, which has been edited for punctuation: “FB, I’m [going to] tell you off [the] top, I’m not your friend. My friends are at the mosque [sic] all around the world. About me: I’m a Muslim from the Tribe of Judah who was pretty much raised in Killeen, Texas. My ancestors, who are the true Jews here in America today, are originally from Israel. They were bombed outta Israel by the Roman Catholic army, so they fled Egypt and the Afrikans sold us to the white man as slaves, along with any other black person here in Amerika today, aka the true Jews from Israel. …”
Next to a photo of Pope Benedict XVI, he wrote, “SHARIA LAW IS COMING!!!!”
Beheadings by Muslims have been in the news in recent weeks. ISIS jihadists in Iraq and Syria have beheaded four victims, including two American journalists.
 At the Spectator in the U.K., Douglas Murray commented that one part of the reason Muslim jihadists choose beheading,” if not the major part – is the fact that the Quran has verses telling believers, in certain circumstances, that this is the appropriate way to kill those who are not Muslim.”
“Is this not an important point? What about the fact that the founder of Islam himself engaged in such acts? There will be those who say I am making this up, so I suppose I ought to refer people to the sources.”
He cited the Quran: “I shall cast into the unbelievers’ hearts terror; so smite above the necks, and smite every finger of them.”
Earlier this month, WND columnist Pamela Geller wrote about a grandmother who “had her head chopped off while gardening in her backyard in a suburb of London.”
“Needless to say, the perpetrator did turn out to be Muslim: Nicholas Salvadore, ‘Fat Nick,’ a convert to Islam,” she wrote, but “from the very first, the media obfuscated the fact that he is a Muslim.”
WND also reported this summer on the horrific beheadings of dozens of soldiers at a Syrian base by ISIS.
Video, which has not been independently verified, shows ISIS guerrillas putting the severed heads on poles.
WARNING: This video of atrocities committed by Islamic jihadists is extremely graphic:
[jwplayer k7QD3Eeu]
But it also has happened in America. Two years ago, authorities in New Jersey alleged a Muslim man beheaded two Coptic Christians, burying their bodies and heads and hands in separate graves near Philadelphia.
According to New York’s WABC-TV, the Muslim was identified as Yusuf Ibrahim, 28. He was taken into custody after the bodies were found.
The report said investigators alleged Ibrahim killed the victims then severed their heads and hands, and buried the remains in the back yard of a home in Buena Vista, N.J.
The report said the victims were from the Coptic Christian community in the area. One of the victims had come from Egypt not many years ago.
WABC reporter Jeff Pegues wrote: “To members of the close knit Coptic Orthodox church the pain is real.”
Geller said it looked like “a ritual killing.”
Five years ago, author Joel Richardson wrote in a WND commentary about the beheading in Nigeria of three Christian pastors by an Islamic group for refusing to convert to Islam.
The Daily Sun in Lagos quoted an eyewitness:
The pastors … were asked to change their faith to Islam. … I think there was an argument by one of the pastors, which gave the others some level of confidence to also resist accepting Islam. … They came out later to the courtyard within the compound and cut their heads one after the other and thereafter, shouted Allah Akbar in wild celebration accompanied with several gun shots.
Also in 2009, WND reported a case in New York in which police said the decapitated wife of a Muslim TV network founder in New York was stabbed several times with hunting knives. She may have been alive as her killer beheaded her.
Despite the circumstances, authorities said they were pursuing a second-degree murder count.
WND reported Muzzammil Hassan, 44, was accused of beheading his wife, Aasiya Hassan, 37.
He had been given an award from the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations, the self-described Muslim civil rights group that boasts of its influence on U.S. government policy.
The Hassans founded Bridges TV in November 2004. They described it as a satellite news and opinion channel aimed at portraying Muslims in a positive light following the Sept. 11 attacks.
