For some background, this wave started with the beheading committed by Alton Nolen on September 24th. You can read the Wikipedia page on the incident for yourself, although at this point I think everyone in the country is familiar with what happened.
In response to that, 8 Oklahoma legislators who call themselves the "Counterterrorism Caucus" issued a statement that sought to create a “public discussion about potential terrorists in our midst and the role that Sharia law plays in their actions.” (I cannot find the original text of that statement. It was first reported in the Oklahoman.)
Immediately, on the Tulsa World Facebook page, I pointed out the irony that this supposed Counterterrorism Caucus would assume terrorist = Muslim when the very building these legislators work in is 2 miles from the site of the worst incident of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, an act of terrorism perpetrated by Christians.
Yet the posts on the TW FB page are simultaneously encouraging and disheartening. Some of the ones that encourage me:
"Religion is like money: You can use it to do good or use it to do bad.I like that comment, and I'll talk about it more in a moment.
Some of my closest friends are Muslim and actually feel like part of my family. Once you meet and get to know people who are different from you, it's hard to demonize them. In fact, you'll find the differences are superficial."
"A building is built one brick at a time. The sooner we embrace our Muslim brothers, the sooner all the hat [sic] will stop. Yes, it will take a long time ... but we must work diligently to build a better world for our children."
"Assuming a minority of a much larger group is representative of the whole is wrong. It's like assuming the KKK represents the rest of Christianity."But, of course, there were quite a lot of negative comments, too:
"How about gtfo of our country you sicko heathens." (got 8 likes that I could see)
"All Muslims please leave now." (7 likes)
"lol, if you want to bridge the gap of hate, if you want to show that 'we are peaceful and loving.' then YOU as muslims need to stand up against the radicals of your own religion. They are the one propagating the hate." [all SIC] (11 likes)
"Let them prove it some place els [SIC]." (1 like)
"peaceful til you strap a bomb on your goat fucking ass." (3 likes)
"No thank it's their way to get into our community and use that against us when the time comes to attack us" (3 likes)
"Islam isnt peaceful. the Koran tells them in no uncertain terms they must convert everyone in the world or kill them. it's black and white. there is no getting around this fact." (6 likes)And finally...
"Let's talk about Taqiyya."Well, funny you should mention that. That's what my first blog post on this topic was about.
I left out the commenters' names in case they are later embarrassed about those remarks and want to change them. I can hope. Anyway, let's go back to that first one I quoted - religion is a tool.
It is, but not quite the way you're thinking. Religion can be a beautiful thing, when it helps someone learn to love his fellow human beings, learn to function as a healthy adult in a human community, learn to treat every day and every event as a blessing rather than taking things for granted.
Unfortunately, it also can be used in negative ways - by religious leaders to control a population and by people who are filled with hate to justify hateful actions. It seems to me that the two desires are related. If a religious leader is only in that role because he or she wants to control people (which could be part and parcel to simply wanting to be wealthy, but that wealth requires that people turn over their wealth to the leader, and that requires control), then that religious leader has a vested interest in preaching hate. Yes, we see this in Muslim regimes, where the religion of Islam is used to justify violence against women, child rape, beheadings, etc. We also see it in Christian regimes and in atheistic regimes.
Let's go back to that idea of control. If you've ever set foot in a bar, chances are you're familiar with a Bloody Mary - a drink made from tomato juice, vodka, and various seasonings. But did you know that the original Bloody Mary was the daughter of Henry VIII? Here's some fun for you:
- Henry VIII beheaded two of his wives. He was not a Muslim.
- Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon (not Aragorn. This isn't Lord of the Rings. You are not an elf.), was Henry VIII's first wife, although he was not her first husband - that was Henry VIII's own brother.
- Henry VIII started the church of England at least in part because the Catholic Church wouldn't allow him to get divorced from Mary's mother (and the Pope himself refused to annul their marriage).
- Mary was Catholic. At this point in English history, the battle between Catholics and Protestants was more than a little bit rocky. Mary tried to return the Church of England into the fold of Catholicism, and began persecuting those who refused to join. Real persecution. Not "you can't call it 'Christmas'" 'persecution.'
- The persecution of protestants was called The Marian Persecutions. Mary executed over 300 protestants during the 3 years these took place.
- These executions notably included burning at the stake and beheadings.
- Her successor, Elizabeth I, is widely remembered as being a good queen. She also brutally executed many people, including Mary Queen of Scots (not the same person as Mary I), her own cousin. That was also a beheading.
Or, perhaps it's because of the religions of the people involved. Mary was horrible because she murdered protestants. Elizabeth was good, but she murdered Catholics. In the U.S., we executed Clayton Lockett in a horribly painful way, but that's OK because we're Christians implementing "justice." Saudi Arabia is doing just fine because they're only executing other Muslims. When it's a Christian that is executed, though... HOLY SHIT. That's an act of persecution. It's an act of war.
But all of these executions - those of Mary I and those of other monarchs of that past era, and those of Saudi Arabia and even of the U.S. - all are based on the premise that by executing people, you can scare the rest of your population into doing what's right. It's why executions in the middle ages and in many not-quite-first-world countries today are done so publicly - because we want people to see the execution and learn to behave from it. As if seeing someone murdered could somehow prevent you from making the same mistake.
That means it's really about control, and about who controls your body and your life. Do you control it, or does the government? That's what Foucault taught us, at least. He also taught us that in the modern world, it's not really necessary - because, by putting inmates into a prison where they can be monitored all day, they implement their own control. We believe in that prison system today unconsciously, and can't understand when another country wouldn't use the same system to implement its own justice.
By the way - when Clayton Lockett was executed, many people on the Tulsa World facebook page called for more painful, more public executions, still basing their belief in that outdated idea that witnessing an execution could make people behave. It's not a Muslim idea. It's an idea many in the U.S. share, while pretending we're better than "those people."
So is Alton Nolen a terrorist? Do we need to investigate that connection?
It's certainly a question we could consider if there was any indication that his actions were taken to try to scare people into adopting a particular view or making a particular change in their society. When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Federal Building, he did it both to retaliate for various federal raids, but also "to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile..." Al-Qaeda has stated numerous times their efforts are an attempt to send a message about American aggression against Muslims around the world. In both cases, these attackers chose methods of attack that were intended not only to kill many people, but also to use those deaths and the fear they would inspire as part of that message. These attacks took extensive planning to carry out, because planning is necessary to create the maximum amount of terror.
By definition, Nolen could only be a terrorist if he also was engaging in such an attempt to send a message. By all accounts, there was no message present - instead, he was a deranged man obsessed with beheadings and a distorted view of Islam who struck out at the company that had just that day fired him. It was not a planned attack, it was simply retaliatory.
And this is blatantly obvious to anyone who understands the meaning of the word "terrorist." Which leaves us with one conclusion: that all of the people who think he might be a terrorist are conflating that definition with what they observe that word entails, its unintended corollary meanings. Since most terrorists we are told about today are violent Muslims, all violent Muslims are necessarily terrorists. For people who think that all Muslims are violent, therefore, all Muslims are terrorists.
But anyone who studies history for even 5 minutes can determine that's not a necessary correlation. We've had Christian terrorists, and Atheist terrorists, and Buddhist terrorists, and Hindu terrorists, and Jewish terrorists, and terrorists of other religions you've probably never even heard of. It just so happens that the Muslim terrorists got to us most recently, and inspired the biggest reaction. None of those religions necessarily caused the terrorism, but certainly someone somewhere has used that religion to defend those terrorist actions.
Because sometimes, human beings are dicks.
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