American Couple Believing 'Evil Is A Make-Believe Concept' Bike Through ISIS Territor

[RamataKahn]

A young American couple who took a year-long bike trip around the world, believing that evil was a make-believe concept, took a fatal route through ISIS territory in Tajikistan, where alleged ISIS terrorists stabbed them to death.

Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, 29, quit their jobs last year in order to make their trip. Austin was a vegan who worked for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Geoghegan, a vegetarian who worked in the Georgetown University admissions office.

Austin had a personal blog on which he wrote in June 2017, “I’ve grown tired of spending the best hours of my day in front of a glowing rectangle, of coloring the best years of my life in swaths of grey and beige. I’ve missed too many sunsets while my back was turned. Too many thunderstorms went unwatched, too many gentle breezes unnoticed.”

Their trip, which lasted 369 days, took them from the southernmost tip of Africa in Capetown, South Africa, to Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Egypt, Morocco, Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Montengro, Kosovo, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and finally Tajikistan, where they were murdered along with two other cyclists, one from Switzerland and the other from the Netherlands.

While in Morocco, Austin wrote:

You watch the news and you read the papers and you're led to believe that the world is a big, scary place. People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil. People are axe murderers and monsters and worse.

I don't buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we've invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own—it's easier to dismiss an opinion as abhorrent than strive to understand it. Badness exists, sure, but even that's quite rare. By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind. No greater revelation has come from our journey than this.

Austin also had some contemptuous words for President Trump:

On the television across the room, Al Jazeera plays softly. Donald Trump has just announced his plans to move an embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and the Muslim world is visibly upset. Leaving Rabat a week earlier, we'd pedaled right by a massive peaceful demonstration against the relocation. The television broadcasts footage of protests just like that one stewing up all across the Maghreb, the Middle East, and beyond. As a clip plays of a sullen Trump waddling across the screen, I do my best to disappear into the soft plush of the couch cushion behind me. But American as we may be, no one here seems to mind.

Then, on July 29, 2018, as they were riding their bikes with two other cyclists in Tajikistan, five men exited the car and stabbed all the bicyclists to death.

The New York Times reported:

A grainy cellphone clip recorded by a driver shows what happened next: The men’s Daewoo sedan passes the cyclists and then makes a sharp U-turn. It doubles back, and aims directly for the bikers, ramming into them and lurching over their fallen forms. In all, four people were killed: Mr. Austin, Ms. Geoghegan and cyclists from Switzerland and the Netherlands. Two days later, the Islamic State released a video showing five men it identified as the attackers, sitting before the ISIS flag. They face the camera and make a vow: to kill “disbelievers.”

CBS News added, “ISIS followed an initial claim of responsibility in print with a video showing the five purported attackers pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”

[Xinroth]

Saw this earlier today. Natural selection doing its work.

[deepfat]

Play stupid games...

As if people were making it up that ISIS are animals.

[StarFox]

While I feel bad that they were murdered, I (or anyone who isn’t an idealistic hippie douche) could have told them something like this was a very possible outcome. RIP

[WannaGetYoked27]

I mean they died so that's not good, but OMG how willfully dense do you have to be to do that type of chit? Such is life lol

[AreolaBorealis]

You have to beat isis at their own game. You have to engage in gorilla warfare can you imagine like a 1000 of us jacked miscers raiding their camps oiled and shirtless in the middle of the night with loud techno music blasting? these terrorists will have no idea wtf is going on. you wanted 72 virigins you terrorists well now you are getting 1000

[djfuzzy]

Man, that is some seriously stupid stuff. Best of luck to people like this, there is an actual world outside of suburbia, with abundant evil.

[Titansfan08]

Fuking LOL

[Nelly87]

You have to beat isis at their own game. You have to engage in gorilla warfare can you imagine like a 1000 of us jacked miscers raiding their camps oiled and shirtless in the middle of the night with loud techno music blasting? these terrorists will have no idea wtf is going on. you wanted 72 virigins you terrorists well now you are getting 1000

In! so long as we wear Bert masks!

Srs though - unfortunate that this happened but they were extremely naive in thinking it all was made-up. It would be nice if evil didn't exist and we all could just get along; however, with such vastly different views and opinions - makes it near impossible at times.

[Retoaded]

liberal la la land only works when you stay in liberal la la land.

[FFailed]

Its sad they ended up dying but man what planet did they think they were living on?

[Hartski]

At least they hadn't reproduced yet....

[bassline8]

Like a gazelle that was kept in a zoo and then ventured into the wild

You have to beat isis at their own game. You have to engage in gorilla warfare can you imagine like a 1000 of us jacked miscers raiding their camps oiled and shirtless in the middle of the night with loud techno music blasting? these terrorists will have no idea wtf is going on. you wanted 72 virigins you terrorists well now you are getting 1000

Lmao

[SpeedCheeser]

You have to beat isis at their own game. You have to engage in gorilla warfare can you imagine like a 1000 of us jacked miscers raiding their camps oiled and shirtless in the middle of the night with loud techno music blasting? these terrorists will have no idea wtf is going on. you wanted 72 virigins you terrorists well now you are getting 1000

So is there like a sign up list, or...

[JUSA]

I kind of wish they'd have had to pay taxes at some point in their life, which might have saved them from this ludicrous path they followed, but at the end of the day, you play stupid games, you end up killed by ISIS.

[Procta]

welp

[ImpressiveGainz]

Apparently my boss' wife knew these people. The level of stupidity is off the charts, but I'm not surprised because I also know people like that. Self-loathing Austinite liberals who want to show you're just a bigotted racist because you think ISIS and Muslim extremists should all be killed...nice way to prove me wrong.

[GoldStorm]

Can totally tell these people went to college.

[JUSA]

Apparently my boss' wife knew these people. The level of stupidity is off the charts, but I'm not surprised because I also know people like that. Self-loathing Austinite liberals who want to show you're just a bigotted racist because you think ISIS and Muslim extremists should all be killed...nice way to prove me wrong.

Were they Austinites?

Ouch, I grew up there. It's always been liberal but in the past decade all the californians have utterly ruined the cool, relaxed hippy vibe with nonsensical lunacy. Although, who knows, the left in general has gone in that direction, Austin might have well been ruined even without the influx of morons.

[BFast55]

At least load your backpack with RDX and a dead man's switch, so if ISIS does kill you they will at least get suicide bombed. But I'm a glass half-full guy.

[JoshSP1985]

Can totally tell these people went to college.

So true, it takes one hell of an indoctrination system to produce people like that.

I just wish we could capture their thoughts as they're being stabbed to death as something we could play back as a warning to others.

[EdwardTheGreat]

Austin was a vegan who worked for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Geoghegan, a vegetarian who worked in the Georgetown University admissions office.

Well there's a shock...decisions like this aren't typically made over steak and scotch...

[Forty0zFreedom]

Idealism can be very dangerous. Sad for them and their families.

ISIS are f*cking barbarian killers. ISIS isn't just out there protesting mean American policy. You f*cking idiot Leftists who believe Islamic Extremists are just lost souls are seriously some of the most retarded people in history.

[ImpressiveGainz]

Were they Austinites?

Ouch, I grew up there. It's always been liberal but in the past decade all the californians have utterly ruined the cool, relaxed hippy vibe with nonsensical lunacy. Although, who knows, the left in general has gone in that direction, Austin might have well been ruined even without the influx of morons.

I don't know where they're from. Just found out they had kids, though. A serious wtf...just leave your kids and ride ****ing bikes across a warzone?

[JoshSP1985]

I don't know where they're from. Just found out they had kids, though. A serious wtf...just leave your kids and ride ****ing bikes across a warzone?

This, and based on their trip they left their kids for months.

[dhawkeye1980]

You have to beat isis at their own game. You have to engage in gorilla warfare can you imagine like a 1000 of us jacked miscers raiding their camps oiled and shirtless in the middle of the night with loud techno music blasting? these terrorists will have no idea wtf is going on. you wanted 72 virigins you terrorists well now you are getting 1000

[rocketfish]

lmfao... seriously? who the hell thinks of doing something like that

[Chump1987]

I don't know where they're from. Just found out they had kids, though. A serious wtf...just leave your kids and ride ****ing bikes across a warzone?

If they have kids then fk em, i find it hard to feel sorry for them. selfish kunts.

Now their children will grow up without parents because two morons wanted to show the world how "virtuousness" they are.

[JoshSP1985]

lmfao... seriously? who the hell thinks of doing something like that

This isn't the first time this has happened.

Few years ago there was a girl that was going to prove how good people are by hitchhiking across some ME country I forget the specifics but she was of course raped and murdered.

[ImpressiveGainz]

http://www.simplycycling.org/about/

Someone I work with sent me that link.