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Why no thread about this anti-muslim terrorist attack in the US...?
Surely this should be front page news!
Those, evil, evil Dawkinists! 
Surely this should be front page news!
Chapel Hill murders: Is Stephen Hicks a terrorist?
Is slaughter made more or less awful if we more strictly categorise the perpetrator?
Is Stephen Hicks, the man charged with the murder of young Muslim Americans Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, a terrorist?
There’s a temptation to say “does it matter”?
He is accused of murder. Is that not enough?
Is the slaughter made more or less awful if we more strictly categorise the perpetrator? Not in itself, but our response may be affected by how we view the act.
But few would argue that, since the declaration of the “War On Terror”, the word “terrorism” itself has, for many people, become conflated with the specific phenomenon of Islamist jihadist terror.
There’s a bleak humour to be found here. Dublin comic Andrew Maxwell joked darkly that 9/11 had taken the heat off Irish people, who, if we moved to Britain, often found ourselves having to state our position on the actions of the IRA.
No doubt many Muslims feel similar unwarranted pressure now. To be forced to define yourself against the violent actions of your compatriots or co-religionists is distinctly unfair, unwelcome and uncomfortable. The temptation to turn the tables is obvious.
Moreover, judging by his Facebook wall, Hicks was a devotee of the Dawkins/Hitchens/Harris school of atheism, a man who had displayed antipathy to the overt (though not extreme) religiosity of the kind displayed by the neighbours he shot.
So a man with strong views, then, and views antithetical to those of his victims. On his Facebook wall, he posted about his right to insult and ridicule religion (though which religion does not appear to have been specified).
But even then, I’m not sure this pushes his action into the category of terrorism. Terrorism, as carried out by groups across the world, religious, secular or somewhere in between, tends to come with a cause, a manifesto, a list of demands. Anders Breivik, with whom Hicks will be compared, may have acted alone, but he had a manifesto; he laid out his reasons for killing, and hoped that others would follow his example. There is no evidence thus far that the North Carolina killer was hoping to inspire others, or to issue edicts, or even claim legitimacy for his actions.
That does not mean Hicks was without motive. It does not do to say every lone killer is a mad man – not least because of the associating stigma passed on to people with mental illnesses.
Dr Mohammad Abu-Salha, father of the murdered young women Yusor and Razan, offered some insight to regional newspaper the Charlotte Observer: “This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”
According to Dr Abu-Salha his daughter had told her family that she had ““a hateful neighbour”, saying “Honest to God, he hates us for what we are and how we look.”
There is no reason to disbelieve the man: his daughter’s killer was a bigot, and his action a hate crime (Deah Shaddy Barakat's sister Suzanne has also called for the murders to be investigated as hate crimes). It’s quite possible his atheist rhetoric was a cloak he threw over his more base feelings. That would not be the fault of Richard Dawkins.
But nonetheless it’s curious, and depressing, that the ideologically and politically loaded word “terrorism” must be invoked for any act of violence involving Muslims, even when they are the ones who suffer from it. It’s time we were all clearer with our language.
Is slaughter made more or less awful if we more strictly categorise the perpetrator?
Is Stephen Hicks, the man charged with the murder of young Muslim Americans Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, a terrorist?
There’s a temptation to say “does it matter”?
He is accused of murder. Is that not enough?
Is the slaughter made more or less awful if we more strictly categorise the perpetrator? Not in itself, but our response may be affected by how we view the act.
But few would argue that, since the declaration of the “War On Terror”, the word “terrorism” itself has, for many people, become conflated with the specific phenomenon of Islamist jihadist terror.
There’s a bleak humour to be found here. Dublin comic Andrew Maxwell joked darkly that 9/11 had taken the heat off Irish people, who, if we moved to Britain, often found ourselves having to state our position on the actions of the IRA.
No doubt many Muslims feel similar unwarranted pressure now. To be forced to define yourself against the violent actions of your compatriots or co-religionists is distinctly unfair, unwelcome and uncomfortable. The temptation to turn the tables is obvious.
Moreover, judging by his Facebook wall, Hicks was a devotee of the Dawkins/Hitchens/Harris school of atheism, a man who had displayed antipathy to the overt (though not extreme) religiosity of the kind displayed by the neighbours he shot.
So a man with strong views, then, and views antithetical to those of his victims. On his Facebook wall, he posted about his right to insult and ridicule religion (though which religion does not appear to have been specified).
But even then, I’m not sure this pushes his action into the category of terrorism. Terrorism, as carried out by groups across the world, religious, secular or somewhere in between, tends to come with a cause, a manifesto, a list of demands. Anders Breivik, with whom Hicks will be compared, may have acted alone, but he had a manifesto; he laid out his reasons for killing, and hoped that others would follow his example. There is no evidence thus far that the North Carolina killer was hoping to inspire others, or to issue edicts, or even claim legitimacy for his actions.
That does not mean Hicks was without motive. It does not do to say every lone killer is a mad man – not least because of the associating stigma passed on to people with mental illnesses.
Dr Mohammad Abu-Salha, father of the murdered young women Yusor and Razan, offered some insight to regional newspaper the Charlotte Observer: “This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt. And they were uncomfortable with him, but they did not know he would go this far.”
According to Dr Abu-Salha his daughter had told her family that she had ““a hateful neighbour”, saying “Honest to God, he hates us for what we are and how we look.”
There is no reason to disbelieve the man: his daughter’s killer was a bigot, and his action a hate crime (Deah Shaddy Barakat's sister Suzanne has also called for the murders to be investigated as hate crimes). It’s quite possible his atheist rhetoric was a cloak he threw over his more base feelings. That would not be the fault of Richard Dawkins.
But nonetheless it’s curious, and depressing, that the ideologically and politically loaded word “terrorism” must be invoked for any act of violence involving Muslims, even when they are the ones who suffer from it. It’s time we were all clearer with our language.
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