Syed Rizwan Farook

Syed Rizwan Farook (June 14, 1987 – December 2, 2015) and Tashfeen Malik (July 13, 1986 – December 2, 2015) were a Pakistani-American mass murder duo who were the two perpetrators of a terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, United States on December 2, 2015.

In the attack, they killed 14 people and injured 22 others.

Both died in a shootout with law enforcement later that day.

Farook was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was a U.S. citizen.

His parents had emigrated from Pakistan.

According to sources, Farook had a "troubled childhood" and grew up in an abusive home in which his father was often violent towards his mother.

While in Multan, Malik attended the local center of the Al-Huda International Seminary, a women-only religious academy network with seminaries across Pakistan and branches in the U.S. and Canada that was founded in 1994.

The school is aligned with the Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam.

Farook grew up in Riverside, California, and attended La Sierra High School, graduating in 2004, one year early.

Malik returned to Pakistan to study pharmacology at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan, beginning the program in 2007 and graduating in 2012.

Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Major General Mansour Al-Turki denied reports that Malik grew up in his country, saying that she visited Saudi Arabia only for a few weeks in 2008 and again in 2013.

The city of Multan has been linked to jihadist activity.

He attended California State University, San Bernardino, and received a bachelor's degree in environmental health in either 2009 or 2010.

From July to December 2010, he was a seasonal employee for the county.

He was hired as an environmental health specialist trainee on January 28, 2012, and became a permanent employee on February 8, 2014.

Coworkers described Farook as quiet and polite, and said that he held no obvious grudges.

According to family members and coworkers, Farook was a devout Sunni Muslim, and traveled to Saudi Arabia several times, including to complete the hajj in 2013.

Farook attended prayers at the Islamic Center of Riverside twice a day, in the mornings and the evenings, according to an interview in The New York Times with Mustafa H. Kuko, the center's director.

According to the Times, Farook stood out as especially devout and "kept a bit of a distance" from other congregants.

During that time, according to friends, he never discussed politics.

According to school records, Malik enrolled in an eighteen-month Quranic studies course with Al-Huda on April 17, 2013, and left on May 3, 2014, telling administrators that she was leaving to get married.

Malik expressed an interest in completing the course by correspondence, but never did so.

According to experts, Al-Huda "draws much of its support from women from educated, relatively affluent backgrounds."

Faiza Mushtaq, a Pakistani scholar that studied the organization, said that "these Al-Huda classes are teaching these urban, educated, upper-middle-class women a very conservative interpretation of Islam that makes them very judgmental about others around them."

According to the Los Angeles Times, Al-Huda seminaries promote anti-Western views and hard-line practices in a fashion that "could encourage some adherents to lash out against non-believers."

The New York Times reported that the institute "teaches a strict literalist interpretation of the Quran, although it does not advocate violent jihad."

An Al-Huda administrator from the head office in Islamabad said that terrorism "is against the teachings of Islam" and that the school's curriculum did not endorse violence.

He was a student for one semester in 2014 at California State University, Fullerton in their graduate program for environmental engineering, but never completed the program.

Farook had a profile on the dating website iMilap.com, in which he listed backyard target practice as a hobby.

A lawyer for Farook's family also said that he would go to firing ranges by himself.

Farook worked as a food inspector for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health for five years before the shooting.

Farook abruptly stopped going to the mosque in 2014 following his marriage.

The Italian newspaper La Stampa reported that Farook's father said that his son "shared the ideology of Al Baghdadi to create an Islamic state" and that he was fixated with Israel.

A spokesperson for the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) later claimed the father did not recall making these statements about his son.

Malik was born in Pakistan, but lived most of her life in Saudi Arabia and the U.S. Her original hometown was Karor Lal Esan, 450 km southwest of Islamabad, Pakistan.

Her landowning family was described as politically influential in the town.

According to one of Farook's coworkers, Malik and her husband married about a month after he traveled to Saudi Arabia in early 2014; the two had met over the Internet.

Malik joined Farook in California shortly after their wedding.

A U.S. marriage certificate reported their marriage in Riverside on August 16, 2014.

At the time of her death, Malik and Farook had a six-month-old daughter.