On the evening of February 10, three young people were killed in a
Chapel Hill, North Carolina apartment. All three victims practiced the
Muslim faith.
The New York Times
reports: “The victims were shot inside an apartment, according to one
of the calls, and family members said the police told them they had been
shot in the head.” Investigators claim that the incident was related to
a parking space dispute between neighbors. Yet, details of the incident raised questions about whether it should be
considered a religiously-motivated hate crime.
The Guardian
also reported Craig Stephen Hicks as the alleged shooter, who claims to
be an atheist and has been connected to social media posts with views of
religious intolerance.
Through both accounts, we see other
human faces in this story. Deah Barakat was a second-year student at the
University of North Carolina (UNC) dentistry school. His wife, Yusor
Abu-Salha, was just beginning her first-year at the same program. They
were fundraising for a program to provide dental service to Syrian
refugees. The third victim was Yusor’s sister, Razan Abu-Salha, a
student at North Carolina State University.
The case is still
under investigation, so I will not comment on theories of what happened.
Instead, I will focus on the conversations around Islamophobia in the
United States that have resulted from the news of the Chapel Hill
shootings.
Anna Bigelow, a professor of Islamic Studies at the UNC, knew Deah Barakat
from one of her classes and remembered him as a bright student. She
shares that all three people lived out the core Muslim principle of
ihsan: “doing that which is both beautiful in itself and beautifying to
the world.” In my mind, the term parallels the Christian value of
compassionately serving others.
Bigelow then lists five points about American views of Islam. The first of Bigelow’s points cites a study by LifeWay Research:
about one quarter of Americans surveyed view ISIS as a true
representation of Islam. Bigelow finds this as part of a disconcerting
trend that places negative views on Muslim Americans.
In the aftermath of the Chapel Hill shootings, there have been several violent attacks on Muslim communities
around the country. While these actions are not be directly related to
the Chapel Hill incident, they do suggest that negative views of
Muslims are prevalent in America.
Sadaf Sajwani adds another voice to this concern. He cites a Pew Forum study that less than 40% of Americans
surveyed know someone who is Muslim. This same study also claims that,
“knowing someone from a religious group is linked with having relatively
more positive views of that group.” Without personal experience,
the view of Muslims by the American public are largely shaped through the political discourse and media coverage at times of crises. For example, Sajwani notes that this year the American media had more press coverage around the Charlie
Hebdo killings in Paris while the attacks of Boko Haram in Nigeria were
virtually ignored.
Sajwani says
that this kind of media bias leads to a “systemic dismissal of Muslim voices,”
and that the misrepresentations must stop. He concludes that Muslim
Americans are just as much citizens as other Americans. I agree with
what Sajwani claims is at stake: insuring that the principle of
religious freedom is being recognized for all American citizens.
At
the basic human level, this incident is a tragedy of three innocent
lives lost, and one life changed for the worse because of a decision to
act out in violence. Both realities are terrible to hear about and
require a change in our public discourse toward more life-giving ways.
Our mindset after this incident needs to follow that of Anna Bigelow.
“These three beautiful individuals were exactly the kind of citizens
America needs. Their achievements were celebrations of their lives,
loves, faith, commitment, dedication, and integrity. And no amount of
death can take that away.”
Instead of fear-mongering and
polarizing, the American public needs to hold a fair dialogue on
religious freedom. We should not make judgments about other people, and
especially religious groups, until we have listened to what core
principles they hold. Keep in mind that just as there are different views within Christian denominations, so also Muslim communities hold different views around Islam. Some beliefs of another might even be similar to
what we hold. At the same time, understanding another person's belief does not mean that you have to accept them as your own. Yet, as we listen to what others
believe we can better understand what we believe, and have a better sense of how each of our beliefs contribute to the morals within our country.
