Relativism and Perception of Violent Events

When is it a hate crime? Three Muslims at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill campus were killed execution style by a middle aged white man, 46 year old Craig Hicks Tuesday evening. The three dead, Deah Saddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, were all under the age of 23 with the ladder not yet 20 years old.  The gunman was their neighbor who came to the deceased’s house multiple times with a gun on his belt complaining about minor issues.  One of the victims called her father before the altercation took place telling him about how scared she was, and because she truly believed that Hicks hated these three individuals for their faith. This is a tragedy fueled by rage over a minor instance. Muslims around the world are saying it is a hate crime, and they are 100% correct in my point of view. But Chapel Hill police are saying that the shooting was about a parking space and the gunman’s wife says it was just a dispute between neighbors. So why in the eyes of some, especially those in charge of the case, is this not considered a hate crime? Would a man actually kill three young adults over a parking space?

The thought of that being rational for a triple homicide is mind boggling. So then the question must be asked, what is a hate crime? The FBI defines a hate crime as “a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias.” Yet the police in question here say there is not much concrete evidence of bias and there is no federal investigation underway. Yet according to Craig Hicks’ Facebook page, he is vocal about his race and his atheism. According to CNN Hicks posted the following: “When it comes to insults, your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I.” While on legal grounds this cannot fully be used as evidence of a hate crime, all signs are pointing to it. The Father of the two female victims was positive that the women’s hijabs had something to do with it. When the male victim lived their alone, there were never any problems with Hicks, but when the women moved in this all changed. This points to the fact that possibly their religious garb had something to do with Hicks’ rage. The question is proposed in a CNN article about this case, “does a motive really matter?” And they found the best answer coming from Barry Saunders who says, “If the deaths resulted from a hate crime, it is an international tragedy.”

We are currently living in a very strenuous time in terms of geopolitical peace. The war in eastern Ukraine still rages on, ISIS continues to invoke the extremist Sunni views on every village the pass, and they pledge to take down Western civilization. All of these struggles have been sparked by identity, or lack thereof in the eyes of some. People cannot seem to understand that varying cultures will exist regardless of armed conflict, and to think that this can be wiped out through violence only makes the problem worse. Domestically, we have seen multiple African-American males gunned down by police officers during conflicts, but the word “hate crime” was never used by the police because they thought they were doing what was best as well as carrying out their duties as an officer of the law. Regardless of what you call it, racial profiling exists everywhere. I can admit I do it too. This past January I was in Paris just five days after the terror attack at Charlie Hebdo, and to say the least I was nervous that another Muslim extremist sleeper cell was going to attack. So what did I do? I was nervous that those fitting the past identity of racists would attack once more. I have no clue why I felt that way besides the fact that I believed the pending violence was going to come from someone fitting the identity of those who had committed terror attacks previously. The point of this connecting back to what happened in Chapel Hill is that bias exists everywhere. Some in extreme displays of violence like in North Carolina, some by being frightened of a person because of what they are wearing. The only right thing to do is to recognize in this day, where globalization is at its peak, that we must respect people for the beliefs, maintain our own, and be compassionate about the views and beliefs of others. While this violence was an individual act of perceived hatred, we must call it what it is, a hate crime, so that we can try to end bigotry that still sadly plagues our world today.