N.C. shooting suspect a man of contradictions

[Warren Stupidity]

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — If his Facebook page is indicative, Craig Hicks doesn’t hate Muslims. The online posts of the avowed atheist instead depict a man who despises religion itself but nevertheless seems to support an individual’s right to his own beliefs.

‘‘I hate Islam just as much as Christianity, but they have the right to worship in this country just as much as any others do,’’ the man now accused of killing three Muslim college students stated in one 2012 post over the proposed construction of a mosque near the World Trade Center site in New York.


Days after the shooting deaths of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, a nuanced and sometimes contradictory portrait is emerging of the man charged in their slayings.

Police in Chapel Hill said they have yet to uncover any evidence that Hicks, 46, allegedly acted out of religious animus, though they are investigating the possibility. As a potential motive, they cited a dispute over parking spaces at the condo community where Hicks and two of the victims lived.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2015/02/16/north-carolina-shooting-suspect-man-contradictions/mydwcuFQLp06hHPhCnfxlM/story.html

In other news religiously motivated thugs beheaded 21 coptic christians and posted their crimes online in a video while proudly proclaiming that they acted out of their sincerely held religious beliefs.

[skepticscott]

1. Oh, but he's an intolerant bigot!!

So we've been told by the Wisest and Most Holy.

Despite the fact that, even though he dislikes religion intensely, he still thinks the practice of it is should be a protected right. Which is the very definition of tolerance.

[onager]

2. I linked to the IS-Syria story here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/123035822

Syria's always been a sort of outlier in the Muslim arguments, since the previous dictator Hafez al-Assad and his family were Alawites. That's a very small and secretive Muslim sect. They follow the Shi'ite beliefs about Ali being the True Successor (tm) of Mohammed, but take it a step further and claim Ali was divine. Alawites also have some other very unorthodox beliefs. But the majority of moderate Sunnis in Syria backed Assad because they didn't want his biggest competitor taking over - the Muslim Brotherhood. Who would have immediately set up a theocracy, as they try to do EVERYWHERE they get within an inch of power.

It was probably Hafez al-Assad who single-handedly killed any attempt at a pre-2011 Arab Spring. When an Islamist uprising broke out in the ancient Syrian city of Hama in February 1982, Assad's army surrounded the city and pounded it with artillery, armor and helicopter gunships. That was an object lesson to anybody in the Middle East who wanted to start a revolution.

[mountain grammy]

3. He's a murderer, that is the one thing known for sure

and he'll go to prison for the rest of his life.

[AtheistCrusader]

4. Well, some are betting on it anyway, and 'we may never know' as a fall back position

just in case the investigation doesn't turn up the specific cause they so desperately need.

[RussBLib]

5. all that nuance...

all that nuance is NOT going to be well-received by the bigots and faithiests.

A multi-faceted character? What's that?!

I found this interesting tidbit on the WNCN-TV website about Hicks:

"I give your religion as much respect as your religion gives me," Hicks wrote. "There's nothing complicated about it, and I have every right to insult a religion that goes out of its way to insult, to judge and to condemn me as an inadequate human being -- which your religion does with self-righteous gusto."

He continued, "When it comes to insults, your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I. But given that it doesn't, and given the enormous harm that your religion has done in this world, I'd say that I have not only a right, but a duty, to insult it, as does every rational, thinking person on this planet.

"Because the moment that your religion claims any kind of jurisdiction over my experience, you insult me on a level that you can't even begin to comprehend. Even if your beliefs had substance, the arrogance of that would be insult enough. But the fact that they have no substance, and are merely a transparent raft of delusions and lies, magnifies the insult enormously."

found here.

[edhopper]

6. I have rethought my position

and no longer think someone should be killed because of either their religion or the way they park.

And I will strenuously decry anyone who advocates that.