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Terrorist Stereotypes
Someone just shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.
We know what the terrorist looks like.
It’s a man
He’s white
He’s Christian
We know he’s Christian because that’s who thinks it’s a good idea to people for doing or getting abortions.
Religion, in other words, is the cause. It’s not because he’s from the South, which has been economically opressed by the North. It’s not because he dislikes Colorado politics.
It’s because the thinks the creator of the universe wants him to kill certain people, and that’s a dangerous thing.
It’s terrorism, and it’s based in religion as clearly as anything can be.
The Islamic difference
The comparison with ISIS and Islamic terrorism will inevitably be made here, so let’s go ahead and address it.
Both this Planned Parenthood shooting and the Paris attacks are murder based in religion—pure and simple
The difference is in impact
Because we know the religious beliefs and values of each perpetrator, we are able to predict their future actions (Harris)
This makes the white Christian terrorist far less dangerous overall than ISIS because the white Christian man wants to kill people involved in abortion, at actual abortion clinics
ISIS, on the other hand, wants to establish a caliphate based on the original teachings of Muhammed. So the goal is world domination, mass murder, and sexual subjugation of the female population of the planet. We’ll call that a distinction.
So while both are ugly, barbaric, and religion-based, we should not respond to them both in the same way. One is an international problem that threatens millions in the world’s largest cities. The other threatens very few people in specific locations.
As that changes, so should our perception of the risk.
In the meantime I’ll be wishing, and arguing, for a world in which people don’t believe things that are not real so we can have a science-based conversation about well-being and happiness.
Notes
I wrote this before knowing anything about the attack or the attacker. We’ll see if I was wrong about the demographics.
I wonder how we’re letting refugees from the far right into liberal cities. Do we not do screenings? Do we just allow people with religiously dangerous ideas to move freely within the country? Someone should track these people.