Syed Rizwan Farook was looking for a woman. A few years ago, not long out of college, he went online to find a match. He was slim, dark-eyed, 6 feet tall and living with a parent in Riverside, his dating profiles explained.
Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. (FBI)
He was Chicago-born, with Pakistani roots. He didn't drink or smoke. He avoided TV and movies, preferring instead to tinker with old cars, work out and memorize the Quran. He had a $49,000-a-year government job as a health inspector and wanted a young wife who shared his Sunni Muslim faith.
"Someone who takes her religion very seriously and is always trying to improve her religion and encouraging others to do the same using hikmah (wisdom) and not harshness," he wrote on BestMuslim.com, one of several dating and matrimonial sites he used.
In Southern California's relatively liberal Muslim community, his preference for extreme traditionalism narrowed his choices. The woman he found online and married, Tashfeen Malik, had spent her life in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and concealed her face with a veil.
A Pakistani national, she might have seemed an answer to his longings, matching, if not exceeding, him in religious devotion. Among the many mysteries: Did she corrupt her husband, or vice versa? Did their dynamic as a couple give rise to an act of mass terror neither would have contemplated alone? Read More