White man, white cop Do you think someone who constantly starts threads about black people committing crimes would be considered racist?
I don't feel that way, the media does. You stated that this is front page news purely on the criteria that they were Muslim and if they were not this would not make the front page. I'm explicitly refuting that one assertion.
There are also about 3 times as many Jews as Muslims in the US, so the disparity in the statistics isn't as big as it looks in your factoid. But, why is it big news? With all the recent atrocities committed by ISIS, AQ, Boko Haram, and other Muslim fundamentalist terrorist organizations, a lot of Americans are becoming alarmed by the 'threat of Islam'. And, from what I've seen, having grown weary of distinctions between mainstream Islam and extremist Islam, people seem to increasingly conclude that Islam itself is a death cult and that the use of violence is not a perversion of Islam but its essence. That sort of thinking casts suspicion on all Muslims and creates an environment in which hate crimes against Muslims like this one can multiply. I'm worried that hate crimes against Muslims will continue to increase because of the national discourse, so egregious examples like this one are important to me. We had big spikes in anti-Muslim violence after 9/11 and after the completion of the Ground Zero memorial in 2010. It wouldn't surprise me if 2015 is another bad year because of 'revenge' for the Charlie Hebdo attack and the ISIS atrocities.
I get that narrative, but it doesn't seem to apply here. It seems sort of irresponsible to assume that the guy's motivation was "hate" simply because the 3 victims were Muslim and he was an atheist. Would we make the same assumption if the guy's 3 victims were wearing crucifixes?
It's quite reasonable to assume that the victims' religions did have a part. Maybe there was a parking dispute. The parking dispute might have been the instigator of the quarrel. It's not a stretch to assume that their religion was the factor that put him over the edge to actually pull out a firearm and shoot all three of them fatally since right before the murders he did post some anti-Islamic sentiments on Facebook.
Not sure population size matters. It would if you where segmenting the culprits, but not the victims. Here is another way to say the numbers: Of those who commit religious hate crimes, 62% are Jew-haters and 11% are Muslim-haters. You segment the culprit and not the victim. The fact that there are far more Jews than Muslims hurts your case since they are the ones who despise each other. IF the Jewish population is so high compared to the Muslim population and extremism is equal than the number of Muslim-haters should also be higher. Extremism must not be equal by a landslide......
You kinda have to display some evidence besides your own perception that majority of the hate crimes on the Jewish population in the United States is perpetuated by Muslims in order for your assertion to be in the realm of reality.
Sure, that could be a factor, but the guy was a militant atheist who spoke out against EVERY religion, does that mean it would have been a hate crime if he had killed 3 members of any religion or is it just to push the narrative that Americans are lashing out against Muslims? That's an honest question, I don't think this story makes national news, nor would it be seen as a hate crime if the people he killed were anything other than Jews or Muslims.....and I think that's for a reason.
I would say that hijab is like a matador waiving a red cloth for those who have irrational hate towards religious groups. It's not obvious to spot a "christian fundamentalist" based on pure sight, but it's obvious to spot a Muslim just by attire.
Not to disprove Juan's logic. For the claim that it hurts his case, I would. Who do you think commits the most religious hate crimes against Jews? Taoists? (the FBI does not keep the religious affiliation of the culprits)
Well, link me an article of 3 college kids being gunned down that didn't make the front page the day of their murders.
White supremacists would be another guess. Muslims in the United States are some of the most educated and secular segments of the American population due to the strict visa restrictions to enter the country relative to other regions such as Europe. Muslims have a lower than average crime rate relative to the general population in America. It would be difficult for me to believe that majority of the hate crimes on the Jewish population in the United States were perpetuated by Muslims.
Just not buying that story from the police. It doesn't feel right. You don't shoot three people execution style in the head over a parking space. This just rocks me to the core because I saw this after reading the report on lynchings from the Equal Justice Initiative.
I don't know...if so, even worse, of course. I just went by the article posted in the other thread (which also stated the murderer was of Syrian origin).
How do you know the FBI makes a distinction between racial and religious when an individual performs a hate crime on a Jewish person? You are basing all of this on conjecture. What isn't conjecture is that the Jewish population is three times larger than the Muslim population in the U.S, thus there are more "potential victims" of hate crime in the Jewish community in the U.S. than the Muslim community.
Perhaps, but do you think that simply because it was a white man where there is always a presumption of racism? For example, if a black man or a Hispanic man were to kill 3 Muslims after an alleged parking dispute, would you still think it had to have been a hate crime?
