Yesterday, a white North Carolina man, Craig Hicks, murdered three young Muslims near the University of North Carolina campus, where the victims were students. At first, since the women wore traditional attire and all were active in the local Muslim community, many feared this was a hate crime.
Deah Barakat had also posted comments on social media supporting Palestinian rights, but opposing religious hatred of all kinds, including against Jews. He had traveled to Palestine to offer dental services to children with special needs. You may donate to the website he established to provide dental services to Syrian refugees.
It may still turn out that Islamophobia played a role. But the killer’s wife, who was in the process of divorcing him (his first wife divorced him as well), claims the murders were motivated by a dispute over parking spaces at the local condominium. She further claimed the killings had no religious or racial element. While this may be the proximate cause, no one in their right mind murders three people for a parking space.
Her attorney also added:
…The shootings highlight the need for greater access to mental health care services. However, he did not address whether Craig Hicks has mental health issues.
If Hicks did have mental health issues it would confirm why it’s such a great idea for the NRA to prohibit states from severing the mentally ill from weapons. In fact, Hicks proudly displayed his gun on his Facebook account. Other stories say he menaced the victims before the killing with a rifle as well.
I reviewed his profile and didn’t see the usual racist hate messages one would expect from an Anders Breivik type. Clearly, Hicks hated religion and believers. This is one of his more colorful rants:
“When it comes to insults, your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I. But given that it doesn’t, and given the enormous harm that your religion has done in this world, I’d say that I have not only a right, but a duty, to insult it, as does every rational, thinking person on this planet.”
Even this harangue doesn’t seem to devolve into the rhetoric from someone who turned into a serial killer.
But neighbors did say that Hicks was a bully and that they lived in fear of him. They even held a community meeting to discuss how to deal with his angry behavior. A number of people were afraid of what he might do to them and others.
My guess is that there was a stew of factors that escalated this man and drove him to mass murder. But whatever they were, I maintain that the national news media have performed abysmally in covering this story. As has the President of the United States. He gave a major press conference today to promote his authorization bill regarding ISIS. But not a word about this brutal murder. In comparison, he publicly denounced the kidnapping of three West Bank Jewish youths within hours of the crime. Apparently, some lives are politically more expedient than others.
The truth is that Obama’s refusal to use terms like “Muslim terrorism” has driven the Islamophobes in the GOP to distraction. So the President decided that he couldn’t weigh in on the story until more was known about it. It was a terrible waste of the bully pulpit.
Look at the pictures of these three handsome, smiling, youthful faces. Think of their potential to bring good to the world. Think of the wonderful model they were for their faith as well. Murdered by a mentally imbalanced, religion-hater prodded to a boiling point by a parking space. And given a gun thanks to the gun lobby.
I hope as well that these Muslim murders in North Carolina will shine a light on another act of Islamophobia in that state. Duke University planned to permit the Muslim call to prayer to be played in the campus quad along with church bells. Last month, when evangelist Franklin Graham got wind of this, he took to Facebook and threatened the University with a massive alumni campaign calling for a fundraising boycott. The school quickly capitulated. So Christian fundamentalism and Islamophobia won yet another battle in North Carolina. I hope now the University will rethink it’s own cave-in to bigotry.
This tragedy brought back an old memory of another murder over a parking space. This too was a gruesome killing in Dobbs Ferry, NY. The killer’s father owned a deli and the victim parked his car in the deli lot and crossed the street to buy a pizza. The deli owner was angry that people who didn’t patronize his store abused his parking lot. When confronted, the victim pulled out a baseball bat and began swinging. The deli owner’s son got a gun and the result was a brutal, stupid senseless murder. I don’t bring this up because I’m arguing the North Carolina tragedy only involved a parking dispute. I bring it up because I lived three blocks from the site of the murder at the time and drove past the scene of the crime every day on my way to work. Naturally, when such a thing happens it shakes you and you remember it.
@Richard – You move from saying you believe this was probably NOT a hate crime to comparing it to the kidnapping of Naftali Fraenkel, Yaakov Naftali and Gilad Shaer which was obviously a political act. It just doesn’t add up!
Not to mention, kidnapping and hostage situations tend to capture int’l media. An example can be the latest case at Lindt Chocolat Cafe in Sydney. It was all over the news even before there were any casualties. In the latest case in Israel, the fact no demands were made and no bodies were found, just made it worse.
And no, it wasn’t an islamophobic reporting since the gunman was identified many hours later.
@ Ariel: I never said it was “probably not a hate crime.” I only said there were other conflicting claims. I do NOT put great stock in the killer’s wife’s claims. I do put stock in the victim’s family’s claims that it was a hate crime. But there isn’t enough evidence yet to support it.
I did not compare the crimes to each other except in the sense that Pres. Obama denounced the Israeli crime and remained silent about the North Carolina crime, which I think is a schandeh & points to the power of the Lobby. Unfortunately, there is no Muslim-American Lobby here.
Deah Barakat, a graduate student, was Syrian-American. His wife Yusor Mohammed Abu-Salha (whom he married on Dec 27th 2014) and her sister, Razan Mohammed Abu-Salha, were of Palestinian descent, daughters of psychiatrist Mohamed Abu-Salha. Yusor studied biology and went to Turkey last summer to work with Syrian refugees, and Razan studied architecture.
This picture is from Yusor’s Facebook, it just breaks my heart, she posted it on Monday: a beautiful picure from her wedding with the words “Dancing with Daddy” and a red heart.
In the afternoon, Razan responded “I cry”
Next day they were both killed.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153033291963449&set=a.438093403448.210079.580418448&type=1&theater
PS. According to Palestinian media al-Quds Deah Barakat was “Syrian of Palestinian origin”.
“another act of Islamophobia in that state. Duke University planned to permit the Muslim call to prayer to be played in the campus quad along with church bells.”
I don’t know if you have ever lived in an Islamic state but I have. It is very annoying at 5AM to have defective loudspeakers blasting in your ears when you want to sleep. There is nothing in Sharia which obligates this and today there are programs on smartphones for all the 5 Islamic prayers so to blast the prayer call 5 times a day is a public annoyance. I am sure that you would not want a mosque near your house 7 days a week, 5 times a day screeching out noise which the great majority of people do no want to hear.
This is hardly Islamophobia but just a public nuisance.
There are many places in the US and England were the orthodox Jews have want to put up an Eruv and it has almost universally rejected. I believe in Toronto there is one but off hand I do not know of another.
So I ask you, is this not Judeophobia? It may be categorized as un-aesthetic for the neighborhood but it could be also Judeophobia,no?
@ moise: Thanks for offering your own example of Jewish Islamophobia.
In fact, there are eruvim all over the U.S. in every major city with Jews including NYC, Los Angeles and even Seattle, where I live. I’ve never lived in other cities with large Jewish populations like Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, but I’m certain they exist there too. Why do you proclaim your ignorance of American Jewish life for all the world to see??
Publish more know nothing crap like this again here & you’ll be history…
You overlooked the essential point that I was making. An Eruv is not heard and barely seen if you are not looking for it. It does not bother anybody whereas a screeching call 5 times a day for prayer is annoying.
Smartphones are readily available.
@ moise: One of your ‘essential points’ was that Jews are treated worse than Muslims because they can’t have eruvim. This claim is patently false.
If you raise your Islamophobic complaint about the call to prayer again I’ll moderate you.
” One of your ‘essential points’ was that Jews are treated worse than Muslims because they can’t have eruvim. This claim is patently false.”
My point was simply the noise factor. As far as I am concerned they can build mosques wherever they want.
i.e. eruvin. I have not lived in the US for 45 years and from what I remember Toronto was known for its eruv as one of the experts in the subject lived there. At that time there were no eruvin in NY and the simple reason for the difficulty of making one is the fact that if any car parks under the eruv{and a car is considered a רשות היחיד it invalidates the eruv. What has ensued since then I do not know.
@ moise: You apparently either don’t read my comments to you or don’t care what I say. Now, you are moderated.
If you “don’t know” about a subject, don’t pontificate about it. It makes you look like a fool when someone who knows better points out your errors.
I lived near a mosque when I lived in Leiden: The call to prayer was done on Friday only, and not early in the morning. And the volume was lower than the average church bell. Why do you have to be so hysterical, as if compromise is an unheard of thing when Muslins are concerned.
I just read that there is no ban on the call to prayer in the Netherlands, as it is seen as a right similar to the tolling of church bells. Only 12 mosques use this right, usually only on Friday and after consultation with the neighborhood.
Of course this was not a hate-crime, it was just over parking! If this is true, then every lynching was about Blacks being in the wrong place, saying or doing the wrong thing, they had nothing to do with hating Blacks!
There are politicians leading the emotional charge against Islam and Muslims. Right-wing Churches and Synagogues whipping up anti-Muslim fear, even the FBI and the Police is being trained to look upon Islam and Muslims as the greatest threat to the US and to the West. Any wonder that the gullible public believes it all and reaches for their guns whenever Muslims are in the picture?
what does it have to do with Israel? you stated this is a blog about israel.
@ rere: I usually don’t ban people for being idiots, but for you I might make an exception.
The local police department initially tried to treat this triple murder as a mundane case of ‘parking space rage’. The guy just “snapped” and happened to have his gun handy!
That’s a Steelers fan for you.
On Thursday night, the FBI said that it had “opened a parallel preliminary inquiry to determine whether or not any federal laws were violated related to Stephen Hicks’s fatal shooting of Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha… Meanwhile, on Friday, President Obama issued his first statement on the killings. “No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship. Michelle and I offer our condolences to the victims’ loved ones,” he said. “As we saw with the overwhelming presence at the funeral of these young Americans, we are all one American family. Whenever anyone is taken from us before their time, we remember how they lived their lives — and the words of one of the victims should inspire the way we live ours.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/fbi-is-looking-into-the-north-carolina-shooting.html