Who Is to Blame for the Chapel Hill Murders? The Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes Industry? (PJMedia)

 

Craig Hicks: when "Anti-Theists" attack...

by
Robert Spencer

Bio

February 13, 2015 - 3:50 pm

Muslims are under siege in the U.S. — don’t you know that? Roving bands of Islamophobes routinely harass and threaten innocent Muslims, and a well-heeled Islamophobia Network spends millions to demonize and vilify Muslims in the American public discourse. Things have gotten so bad that pious Muslim women fear to wear their hijabs in public – and when they do, they’re spat upon and worse. The climate of fear and hatred that the Islamophobes have so assiduously whipped up culminated in the horrific murder last Tuesday of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, by a psychopath seething with hatred for Muslims.

That’s the way numerous leftists and Muslims see life in Barack Obama’s America, but in reality, that scenario is almost wholly false. A psychopath really did murder three Muslims in Chapel Hill last Tuesday, but the rest is pure leftist mythmaking, providing an illustrative example of how the Left and the mainstream media ignore inconvenient facts and bend others in order to further their chosen narrative.

Who is Craig Hicks?

The problems with this narrative are many. From the looks of his Facebook page, Hicks is hardly the right-wing, anti-Muslim Islamophobic redneck of their hysterical fantasies; instead, he is a hardcore leftist and fan of the Huffington Post and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Those two are among his huge and revealing list of “Likes,” which shows him much more preoccupied with Christianity than with Islam. He likes the atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Bill Maher, all of whom have criticized Islam, but his page includes none of their statements about Islam. He likes many anti-Christian groups but no groups that are critical of Islam, and he even likes a group called “Obama Backs Mosque Near Ground Zero: ‘This is America,’” praising Obama for supporting the Ground Zero Mosque.

Other “Likes” from Hicks’ Facebook page include Bill Nye The Science Guy; Sarah Silverman; Penn & Teller: Bullshit!; Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off; LGBT / Atheist Alliance; Scary Bible Quote of the Day; World Atheists: Lets Kick Islam and Christianity out of Africa; Merry christmyth; Pass The 28th Amendment – Complete Removal Of The Church From The State; The Rachel Maddow Fan Page; Pissing Off The Religious Right; Keep your Bible out of our Vaginas; Mitt Romney Sucks; Separation of Church and State; Still here? Silly Christians; Jesus McChrist; Denying Evolution Won’t Make Your God Any More Real; Dogs Against Romney; The Atheist’s Bible Commentary; Organization for Educating Misinformed Tea Party Patriots; GOPHypocrisy; Liberals Against Conservative Propaganda; Arrest the Pope and Tax Religion; Not wasting my Sundays at church; Network for Church Monitoring; Dominionism is destroying America; Christians vs. Atheists; Americans United for Separation of Church and State; Stop The Westboro Baptist Church!; and many, many more. Oh, and Gun Toting Liberal.

He likes no anti-Islam groups, and his Facebook page contains no criticism of Islam other than one comparison of “Radical Christians” and “Radical Muslims.” From the looks of all this at least, if Craig Hicks had been planning to commit a hate crime, it seems much more likely that he would have targeted “right-wingers,” Republicans, evangelical Christians, etc., than that he would have targeted Muslims because they were Muslims.

What’s more, Hicks’ wife has said:

I can say with absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion of the victims’ faith, but it was related to a longstanding parking dispute that my husband had with the neighbors.

These killings were over parking, not Islam

The Chapel Hill Police said the same thing: these killings were over parking, not Islam. Karen Hicks added that her husband “often champions on his Facebook page for the rights of individuals. … He believes everyone is equal – doesn’t matter what you look like or who you are or what you believe.” U.S. Attorney Ripley Rand stated Wednesday:

“The events of yesterday are not part of a targeting campaign against Muslims in North Carolina,” and that there was “no information this is part of an organized event against Muslims.”

It is demonic madness to murder people over a parking space, but it is not the seismic event that the cold-blooded murder of three Muslims solely because they were Muslims would be. And so many decided to go with the old adage from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”