Islamistisk terror og Chapel Hill

Tre muslimske studenter er myrdet av en ateist i Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Vi vet fremdeles ikke hva som var motivet bak ugjerningen, men i går strømmet sosiale medier over av meldinger som sammenlignet dette med islamistisk terror, og ironisk spurte om hvorfor ikke ateister ble avkrevd avstandstagen. Charles C.W Cooke hos National Review forklarer hvorfor parallellen er dårlig:

"Islam draws attention in our era not because its adherents tend to be brown-skinned or because it is easier to fear those who live abroad than those who live down the street, but because it is used so frequently as the justification for attacks around the world that its critics have begun to notice a pattern. In most cases, it is reasonable to acknowledge simultaneously that representatives of every philosophy will occasionally do something evil — maybe in the name of their philosophy; maybe not — and to contend that it is silly to blame that philosophy for the individual’s behavior. As far as we know, there is no more evidence that today’s killer is representative of atheism per se than that the man who opened fire at the Family Research Council was representative of the Southern Poverty Law Center or that Scott Roeder was representative of the pro-life cause. Further, there are no evident superstructures within atheism or the SPLC or the right-to-life movement that routinely condone mass murder, and nor are there many friends of those groups who would be willing to justify or to indulge the maniacs they have attracted. (...)