Update: Amazingly, Yusor Abu-Salha recorded some audio for the StoryCorps project last spring, a conversation with her third grade teacher, and NPR broadcast it. It's pretty heartbreaking.
Is it inappropriate for me to say, as a person who does not believe in the existence of a God, that I unreservedly condemn the murders in Chapel Hill of Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, apparently by a person who calls himself an atheist? To say that such an act is incompatible with the principles of nonbelief as I understand them (probably more correctly classified as secular humanism), according to which our lives, from birth to death, are the closest thing we have to something sacred, and which call for
I want to say as simply as I can that this was a horrible, horrible act, for which there could never be any justification (Vixen has something similar to say, and so has everybody from old Dawkins, of whom as you know I am not a fan, on down, for that matter, as any decent person inevitably would).
To me the important distinction isn't between this and that faith, including no faith at all, but between the intolerant and the open, those who insist on the unique validity of their way, and those who are relaxed and able to appreciate "those who differ from us". I'm really spooked in the Chapel Hill case by something that hasn't quite been noticed, I think, about the Facebook message the shooter posted sometime in early to mid-January (I can't find an exact date),
The intolerant are each others' enemies, in mutually hostile groups, Big-Endians and Small-Endians, but they can make alliances. I find it hilarious how conservative Catholics, conservative Evangelicals, and conservative Jews have been making common cause in the last two or three decades—you should realize, Ultramontanists, that the snake-handlers love your abortion issue that they've gotten so much political mileage out of, but they still regard you as the Whore of Babylon, and, Jews, they're working with you on restoring a biblical Eretz Israel, muslimrein, and rebuilding the Temple, but it's just in the prospect of laughing and applauding when you're all tossed into the Lake of Fire; they act friendly, but they hate you as much as they ever have. Conservative atheists, libertarians and followers of Ayn Rand, could join the alliance as well, and we see them doing it on specific political issues like states' rights and gun control.
This killer (apparently a kind of Lumpenlibertarian unaware of the classification: "I don't care about parties, just each individual and the rights of such in the Constitution! Some call me a gun toting Liberal, others call me an open-minded Conservative") seems to have hated his neighbors ever since Deah Barakat, who had been living alone in his apartment, was joined by his hijab-wearing wife, as Steve is noting this morning, last fall—he'd pulled a rifle on on them for having dinner guests using the the visitor parking in their complex and playing an excessively noisy game of Risk. That's not a parking dispute, it's crazy.
But it wasn't actually murderous until Reverend Franklin Graham began stirring up the community about the possibility of public Muslim prayer in Durham (to the excited cheers of conservatives at less redneck venues like the National Review, and I didn't hear Charles C.W. challenging them in favor of religious freedom at the time), at the same time as our murderer-to-be next door in Chapel Hill happened to be working himself up over prayer in general.
Did Reverend Graham and his Islamophobe allies incite the vicious killing of these three sweet young people? Of course not. Did he contribute to an atmosphere in which it became more likely? I think he did. There are some people around, religious like Graham and irreligious like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who insist that Islam is radically different from all other religions and intrinsically connected to terrorism, and then there are others, religious like Gandhi and King and irreligious like your very humble correspondent here, who believe that every religion contains within itself the possibility of great evil (see Crusades, Inquisition, slavery*) and the possibility of great good. We call ourselves relativists; the other side uses "relativist" as a term of opprobrium (moral relativism is a "TUMOR": Tolerant, Untraditional, Marginalized, Outdoors, and Reprobate). The killing of people by religious affiliation isn't a Muslim, Christian, Jewish, freethinker phenomenon: it is intolerance.
*Bonus: If, as seems overwhelmingly likely, the Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street, Ross Gregory Douthat, son of Charles Ross Douthat, is the scion of a long line of Charles Douthats including Charles Fletcher (1839-98) and his son Charles Edgar (1865-1926), then he is descended from the original probably Ireland-born Robert S. Douthat (1778-1861) of Virginia who was listed in the 1860 census as the owner of 47 slaves, while his wife Eleanor owned a further 11 in her own name. I wonder if he knows that.
 |
| Yusor Abu-Salha at her wedding, dancing with her father, via news.com.au. |
Is it inappropriate for me to say, as a person who does not believe in the existence of a God, that I unreservedly condemn the murders in Chapel Hill of Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, apparently by a person who calls himself an atheist? To say that such an act is incompatible with the principles of nonbelief as I understand them (probably more correctly classified as secular humanism), according to which our lives, from birth to death, are the closest thing we have to something sacred, and which call for
A concern for this life (as opposed to an afterlife) and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.Because there's a certain amount of preemptive can-you-people-explain-yourselves finger-wagging going on, from the Pajama brigade to the Even-the-Liberal-New-Republic. Charles C.W. (Cool Whip) Cooke asks us not to blame atheist progressives, but only after distorting the very ambiguous evidence to "prove" that the killer was an atheist progressive.
I want to say as simply as I can that this was a horrible, horrible act, for which there could never be any justification (Vixen has something similar to say, and so has everybody from old Dawkins, of whom as you know I am not a fan, on down, for that matter, as any decent person inevitably would).
To me the important distinction isn't between this and that faith, including no faith at all, but between the intolerant and the open, those who insist on the unique validity of their way, and those who are relaxed and able to appreciate "those who differ from us". I'm really spooked in the Chapel Hill case by something that hasn't quite been noticed, I think, about the Facebook message the shooter posted sometime in early to mid-January (I can't find an exact date),
“Praying is pointless, useless, narcissistic, arrogant, and lazy; just like the imaginary god you pray to.”It's the fact that he posted this dumb-headed attack on prayer at just about exactly the same time the college community in North Carolina's Research Triangle was embroiled in the "controversy" over the use of the Duke University chapel bell tower as a minaret for broadcasting the Friday call to prayer for Muslim students.
The intolerant are each others' enemies, in mutually hostile groups, Big-Endians and Small-Endians, but they can make alliances. I find it hilarious how conservative Catholics, conservative Evangelicals, and conservative Jews have been making common cause in the last two or three decades—you should realize, Ultramontanists, that the snake-handlers love your abortion issue that they've gotten so much political mileage out of, but they still regard you as the Whore of Babylon, and, Jews, they're working with you on restoring a biblical Eretz Israel, muslimrein, and rebuilding the Temple, but it's just in the prospect of laughing and applauding when you're all tossed into the Lake of Fire; they act friendly, but they hate you as much as they ever have. Conservative atheists, libertarians and followers of Ayn Rand, could join the alliance as well, and we see them doing it on specific political issues like states' rights and gun control.
This killer (apparently a kind of Lumpenlibertarian unaware of the classification: "I don't care about parties, just each individual and the rights of such in the Constitution! Some call me a gun toting Liberal, others call me an open-minded Conservative") seems to have hated his neighbors ever since Deah Barakat, who had been living alone in his apartment, was joined by his hijab-wearing wife, as Steve is noting this morning, last fall—he'd pulled a rifle on on them for having dinner guests using the the visitor parking in their complex and playing an excessively noisy game of Risk. That's not a parking dispute, it's crazy.
But it wasn't actually murderous until Reverend Franklin Graham began stirring up the community about the possibility of public Muslim prayer in Durham (to the excited cheers of conservatives at less redneck venues like the National Review, and I didn't hear Charles C.W. challenging them in favor of religious freedom at the time), at the same time as our murderer-to-be next door in Chapel Hill happened to be working himself up over prayer in general.
Did Reverend Graham and his Islamophobe allies incite the vicious killing of these three sweet young people? Of course not. Did he contribute to an atmosphere in which it became more likely? I think he did. There are some people around, religious like Graham and irreligious like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who insist that Islam is radically different from all other religions and intrinsically connected to terrorism, and then there are others, religious like Gandhi and King and irreligious like your very humble correspondent here, who believe that every religion contains within itself the possibility of great evil (see Crusades, Inquisition, slavery*) and the possibility of great good. We call ourselves relativists; the other side uses "relativist" as a term of opprobrium (moral relativism is a "TUMOR": Tolerant, Untraditional, Marginalized, Outdoors, and Reprobate). The killing of people by religious affiliation isn't a Muslim, Christian, Jewish, freethinker phenomenon: it is intolerance.
 |
| Deah and Yusor with an unnamed friend, via news.com.au. |
No comments:
Post a Comment