On Violence Without Religion

In my Charlie Hebdo response entry, I posed the rhetorical question about the relative rate of violent retribution by people of a religious stripe and people for whom the axe on the grindstone is devoid of religion. Although that piece was mainly pointed at the standard arguments about Muslims who commit violence -- as the context was one involving Islamic terrorism -- the point itself is easily universalized to all religions that have a history of atrocities... Which is pretty much all of them that have been around for any considerable length of time.  Sure, the Raelians and the Baha'i have no such history to speak of, but they also haven't been around that long compared to the likes of the Abrahamic faiths.

In any case, almost like clockwork, the attack at UNC in which 3 Muslims were killed by an atheist. The official statement indicates that this act of violence was over a matter of a parking dispute.  Of course, while it is true that murders in this country have happened over even more trivial things, I find it far more likely that the parking dispute was little more than the last straw.  I and the whole of the atheist community can condemn this all we want -- and of course, we do -- but I also feel like it provides little value to do so.  No more than it is meaningful for Muslims to come out and condemn the Charlie Hebdo attacks.  It's a perfectly nice thing to hear, and I'm sure we all care about this sort of thing in the sense of assurance that not every Muslim is Anjem Choudary nor every Christian is Fred Phelps, but anyone can say words.  It doesn't really change what happened.  Rather, what I would like to address is the cultural backdrop behind these sorts of events, as I feel this sort of discussion is more meaningful in exploring what could prevent future occurrences of such an outcome.

Je suis Charlie, que tout le monde devrait

Greetings, readers!  It's been a while since I've posted on the blog, and there's really little more to it than being insanely busy working long hours through the would-be holidays and all.  It's more than a little bit annoying that CES happens pretty much the first working week of January (after the New Year's holidays and all).  Well, it was like this last year as well, and this year, the crunch was not quite as bad, but there was a lot more shown from my department this time.  Anyway, during all this, there was the attack on Charlie Hebdo after a supposedly insulting-to-Muslims cartoon appeared, and there's already plenty out there about the attack itself.  What I wanted to get on was the so-called "liberal" reaction.

We generally expect the atheist community to have a problem with the attacks, but the flavor of multiculturalism that imbues the so-called liberal viewpoint comes out with every condemnation of violence hedged and qualified.  "Freedom of speech is incredibly important but..."  "Violence is inexcusable but..."  If there's a "but" in that sentence, it means that you're willing to make exceptions for that principle, and that already puts you on a spiral of wrongness.  All the "but"s regarding the Charlie Hebdo attack basically lead down this view that insulting religion is inherently wrong, and therefore, Charlie Hebdo brought it on themselves.  One article on Time suggested that anything that could be construed as an insult to Muslims automatically means you're not a bastion of free speech.  The Daily Beast said that being deliberately provocative isn't really part of free speech.  Really?  Then what is?  The worst part is that this is also a sentiment coming from the right wing religious nutbars (in a thinly veiled effort to intimate that they, too, should be shielded from all criticism).  If you're a self-described social liberal, and you find yourself agreeing with Bill Donohue, there's a chink in your armor somewhere.

Bin Laden dead? So that means...

Supposedly, Osama bin Laden has been killed.  Well, okay, you'll have to forgive me if I only say "supposedly", since this is the third time since 9/11 that he's supposedly been killed.  Even Benazir Bhutto, prior to her assassination claimed he was already dead.  Gee, it's not as if terrorist leaders ever have body doubles like that Saddam fellow had.  While there is DNA evidence, we do have to remember that DNA evidence when compared against a family member can only really give proof that the people are blood relatives.  The type of profiling done in forensic applications is only dealing with major chunks of genes...  it is not a 100% complete nucleotide-to-nucleotide comparison.  Granted, I'm also a little bothered by the shoddy reporting where there is a great deal of inconsistency -- one moment, he's in a roughshod compound, the next moment it was actually a luxury mansion...  And the report about DNA evidence says something about 99.9% confidence that it's actually him?  I only have a cursory understanding of the technique, and even I know that DNA profiling doesn't offer that.  It's a classic case of telling you the story when they don't even have all the facts dead on the mark.

Well, that aside, it's still a little more likely he's really dead this time, though I'm a little bothered by the whole burial at sea within 24 hours thing.  Yeah, I know the cries of "must respect the local culture," to which I have to say bullshit.  Aside from my usual gripe that it's not to be respected if it's not worthy of respect, holding and killing a major terrorist figurehead who is a top priority enemy of several nations kind of qualifies as an extenuating circumstance which should warrant thorough examination and verification.  The setting in which the kill was executed was a little too unassuming to believe, but there's the counterpoint that he probably kept only the most trusted individuals in his company and avoided drawing attention to himself.

My big problem is really this -- So you've killed the figurehead...  what good does that do?  It's not like the Taliban, al Qaeda, Mujahideen, et al will all collapse now and he was the sole supporting pillar of Islamic terrorism.  There's still a pretty stable network set up covering the entirety of the Middle East by which supplies and weapons and training can be provided to support terrorists for centuries to come...  and let's not forget who set up this network in the first place -- the good ol' U.S. of A.

If anything, there's room for backlash and for new organizations to emerge, and the United States is still a nation of fear, a nation of paranoia, and a nation that clears its problems away with guns.  Sure, you're going to have people who feel the war on terror is somehow over now...  you're also going to have the people who feel that the war has some momentum now...  but overall, I don't think anybody really believes we're somehow safe now.  It's really just a moment of gloating over a perceived moment of victory.