Three Muslim students were shot and killed, really executed, with shots to the head in Chapel Hill North Carolina. The killer, Craig Stephen Hicks, was soon in custody, which means details of his personal history and beliefs has been front-page news. With the religious connotations of the killings, the fact that he was an avowed atheist gained the most attention. Those who were prone to put the label of hate crime on these murders, immediately adopt this reasoning. Reporters and TV talking heads put these things together implying that atheist hate Muslims. They automatically and erroneously bundled this information with ISIS hate for Muslims. The seeming parallel is superficially there but actually, it is not. As often happens, in complex situations some things appear to be subtle until someone pointed out the difference then it is not only a glaring difference but also important implications. Chris Hayes pointed out the difference in his show, All In, (MSNBC).
ISIS followers use their religious belief as the reason for what they do, when they claim their objectives is to divide the world into two camps, Muslims, and Christians, and as a superior force, conquer the world. Atheists do not do this; they have no such aspirations. They do not run around cutting off heads of people who have faith or building armies of people who believe as they believe. This may introduce a conflict for some who believe that the killings were hate crime; the murderer was motivated to kill partly because they were Muslims—however, it was a killing based on religion; therefore, it was a hate crime.
Among the factors involved were the ready availability of guns and the propensity of the shooter to own them. In addition and dangerously coupled with the propensity for guns, as with the now famous stand-your-ground killer, George Zimmerman, we learned Hicks has a propensity for domestic violence. Also both Hicks and Zimmerman created positions of “pseudo” authority for themselves; one as a parking lot authority and the other as a neighborhood watch. Security guards carry guns and have authority, as they wanted. In both cases, their victims were identifiable as belonging to a minority. In addition, the minorities in question are those counter groups in our society actively attempt to induce hate for them. Zimmerman’s victim was black in the State of Florida where a stand-your-ground law was in force while the Chapel Hill killer and his Muslims victims were living where the state legislature that had recently outlawed Sharia Law. Of course, the Israeli government constantly bombards the entire nation with “hate Muslim” propaganda. This hate is so ingrained in our thinking that it has even influenced Speaker Boehner to invite Israel Prime Minister to give a speech to a joint session of Congress—of course, a “want to have authority” actor, Craig Stephen Hicks does not actually have the authority of the Speakers, he apparently believed he has power.
There is no question in my mind; both the Zimmerman and the Hicks crimes were hate crimes. They and the crimes of ISIS have different motivation. Although at an entirely different level, the same lust for power that drives Hicks is what drives ISIS. They claim hate for the western world, but the numbers of westerners killed by ISIS is small in comparison; however, that does not mean hate plays no part in that conflict because it does. ISIS focuses their hate on Jews; the irony is that Israel stimulates this hate based on their quest for allies in their struggle for dominance of Palestinian territory; they have intentionally magnified, expanded, and equated this hate for ISIS to all Muslims to gain U.S. support for Middle Eastern domination.
It is wrong, and even ludicrous, for the United States media to try to justify labeling the three Chapel Hill killings as atheist based hate crimes as a parallel to ISIS. To equate, thus gather support, for Christian generated hate for atheists, as a group with our hate as a nation for ISIS related to their heinous crimes, is at best asinine.
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