Reader Fred Ray sends word of an editorial in the UNC Daily Tarheel that is so overflowing with calls for patience and tolerance following Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar’s attempt to “to avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world” by driving his SUV into a crowd that someone should call a plumber to stop the gushing.
The Daily Tarheel is upset that “some have to trot out the phrase ‘religious terrorism’ before Taheri-azar’s motives can be firmly established.” Taheri-azar has said that his motive “was really to punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world,” but according to the Daily Tarheel that doesn’t necessarily make it reasonable to speak of terrorism. “There is also,” the editorial asserts,
the distinct possibility he’s just a disturbed individual and knew mentioning Muslims would net him national headlines…. It’s too soon to label Taheri-azar a terrorist until more information becomes available to disprove any possible mental frailties.
No, it isn’t. I don’t think all terrorists are crazy, but I also don’t think being a terrorist and being nuts are mutually incompatible.
Uh… isn’t “a disturbed individual [who] knew mentioning Muslims would net him national headlines….” the very definition of a terrorist?
Just a couple of points of clarification:
Was Timothy McVeigh a terrorist?
What exactly is the value in assigning the label “terrorist”?
Are we going to step up security at UNC because we’ve discovered a Jeep Cherokee driving Islamofacist cell there?
As I write this, I wonder how this all fits into the issue of “hate crimes” and those (of us) who advocate distinguishing between hate crimes and non-hate crimes.
Does defining Taheri-azar’s attempt as “terrorist” compell a stiffer sentence, like a hate crime?
Was Timothy McVeigh a terrorist?
Yes.
What exactly is the value in assigning the label “terrorist”?
Assuming the label is accurate, it has whatever value accuracy usually has.
Are we going to step up security at UNC because we’ve discovered a Jeep Cherokee driving Islamofacist cell there?
No, but I suspect that people who practice racial profiling will be tempted to add “driving while Muslim” to “driving while black.” (Since I oppose racial profiling both on the road and in the admissions/employment office, I won’t.)
… I wonder how this all fits into the issue of “hate crimes” and those (of us) who advocate distinguishing between hate crimes and non-hate crimes.
Good question. Based on information currently available, I suspect people who believe hate crimes should be distinguished from unhate crimes will regard the UNC attempted murder (the charge, as I understand it) as a hate crime. I don’t believe in distinguishing them, so I’ll just stick with attempted murder.
Hull I will help you label Timothy McVeigh. He was a terrorist with a very tiny following. Taheri-azar is a terrorist who is a member of a vast terrorist organization that is global in nature.
We label a person a terrorist so we can accurately describe what the motivations were for his actions. If we called him a careless driver that wouldn’t accurately describe what happened. Terrorists should be punished for the acts they commit. In this case it is attempted murder of multiple persons. That should put him in prison for a long, long time.
Out of curiosity, why do you bring up Timothy McVeigh? What relevance does he have to this incident? You wouldn’t be trying to argue that he was a “Christian” terrorist so that we have no right to complain about Muslim terrorists, now would you?
Here’s a better one: was Ted Kaczynski (sp) a terrorist? He was a one-man operation, and pretty clearly mentally unbalanced. I would think the faculty of various academic departments considered the Unabomber a terrorist. Then there were the two guys shooting people at random around the greater DC area… I would say they were terrorists, too.
In both these cases, in addition to bringing about the death of some people and almost killing others, the perps wanted to create fear in a larger population (which they did)… isn’t that a good enough definition of a terrorist?
It’s a jihad, and yes, he is a terrorist. It’s a shame no one in the crowd was armed and could fire at him (Oh, that’s right, you can’t carry a weapon on a college campus!)
Did anyone catch that the Taliban’s spokesman is actually a student now at Yale? I wonder when he’s going to start killing people.
I am sick and tired of being “tolerant” of everything. Who says I have to be tolerant? Why do I have to be patient? What is happening to our country?
When moral equivalence is your highest value, you have to tolerate even evil.
Sharon, I do not believe that we have to tolerate evil. We should dispatch it with extreme prejudice and let people know that we do not tolerate it.
By doing nothing, we are sending a message that it is indeed tolerated.
Stephen