Fanatics in movements must not be seen as representatives

Last Tuesday, a 46-year-old man named Craig Stephen Hicks murdered three Muslim college students: Yusor Mohammad, age 21, Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23 and Razan Mohammad, 19. The details of what actually occurred leading up to the attack are still foggy, and we are just as far from understanding Hicks’ motives today as we were in the hours following the shooting. 

However, it is natural to speculate about the motives of such a senseless act of violence, especially given the backgrounds of the perpetrator and the victims and the fact that terrorism from fringe Islamic groups (and responding Islamophobic attacks) constantly fill the news. While there is no way for us to know for sure why Hicks committed these murders, theories abound. Some say it all boiled down to a mentally unstable gun rights fanatic and a dispute over a parking spot. Others have called it a clear-cut case of racism and Islamophobia and argued that the media is deliberately ignoring this aspect of the case.

One of the most pervasive theories about the murders is that Hicks was motivated by antitheism. This idea comes largely from his Facebook presence. Prior to the shootings, Hicks posted regularly about New Atheist figures like Richard Dawkins, who contend that all religions are fundamentally irrational and have done immeasurable harm to society over the course of history.

While New Atheists claim to be equal-opportunity critics of religion, they have faced intense backlash over their disproportionate focus on Islam. Whenever ISIL beheads a hostage or terrorists attack a civilian target, New Atheists like Richard Dawkins take to Twitter to demand answers from Muslims as a whole, as though the entire religion were a homogeneous group of people with a single set of opinions. Dawkins is notorious for taking his criticisms of Islam to absurdly inappropriate levels, and has referred to Muslims as “barbarians” and tweeted irrelevant and unnecessary insults such as “All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though.”

In a rare role reversal, Muslims on Twitter have called for Dawkins to address the shootings, perhaps hoping that he would own up to New Atheism’s tendency toward Islamophobia. In response, atheists argued that calling on Dawkins to comment was absurd, as not all atheists hold the same beliefs and Dawkins has never explicitly called for violence against Muslims or members of any other religion. Dawkins also treated requests for his commentary as nonsensical and tweeted “How could any decent person NOT condemn the vile murder of three young US Muslims in Chapel Hill?”

Clearly, the irony of the situation was lost on him. Of course it makes little sense to blame Dawkins for the actions of a murderer like Hicks, in the very same way that it is illogical for people like Dawkins to argue that Islam as a whole is responsible for the actions of terrorists.

Today’s polarized media climate does not lend itself to critical analysis of crimes such as these. Ultimately, no matter what Hicks’ motives were, we must keep in mind that blaming the actions of a crazed fanatic on an entire diverse group of people, at best, oversimplifies the underlying issues and, at worst, may contribute to additional senseless violence.