I have a facebook friend who right now is keeping track of which prolife organizations, Republicans, and Catholic bishops have gone on record as condemning the “Planned Parenthood shooter,” who is believed to have been motivated by an anti-abortion ideology due to an anonymous source’s claim that he said “no more baby parts” in police questioning. Hence I was thinking about this issue even before yesterday’s events.
In the meantime, we now know that the killers in San Bernardino were a married couple. The husband, the son of Pakistani immigrants (per, among other sources, Slate), had met his wife online via a Middle Eastern marriage site, traveled to Saudi Arabia, and returned with her two years ago, according to the LA Times. He was described as devout Muslim by his father, and, even without knowing what opinions and plans he brought with him from Saudi Arabia, or whether his wife “radicalized” him, I think it’s fair to assume that the fact that he was looking abroad for a wife suggests, at a minimum, a fundamentalism, if not an extremism, to his beliefs.
(Incidentally, at this point, the most comprehensive description of the events seems to be from the Daily Mail; there are also more details in this Fox News account.)
Of course, articles such as Slate are careful to say that we don’t know their motivation and even hesitate to suggest that this was a premeditated action, with such cautious language as: “Farook and Malik were dressed in “tactical” combat gear—black clothes and masks—suggesting that the attack was at least somewhat premeditated.” Somewhat premeditated? How on earth can you imagine that a narrative of someone upsetting him at that holiday party and he spontaneously ran outside, grabbed his waiting wife and gear of various kinds, and came back in to shoot, makes any sense at all? We’re also being told that we should still withhold judgement, but certainly an ISIS-like motivation is most probable, and the fact that the attack was so carefully planned in coordination with his wife and others (that is, neighbor’s reports of frequent visits, at all hours, by middle-eastern men, and a house with pipe bombs), make it highly unlikely that this was a case of “workplace violence” or the result of mental illness.
But we’re back to the same question, or pair of questions.
Do groups with whom the shooter has some connection, have an obligation to condemn the attack and “prove” to the community at large their innocence? And do they bear any blame for the attack?
The easy answer to both is “no.” Of course it’s foolish to demand that every individual who has ever taken a pro-life stand, or made an Islamic profession of faith, condemn these acts via twitter, facebook, or other online forums. And the mere fact that an individual shares your causes, and chooses violence, should in no way prevent you from being able to advocate peacefully.
But the extent that an organization has a public face, it never hurts to say things like, from a right-to-life perspective: “If you think you can defend babies by shooting abortion clinic workers, or by any use of violence, please understand that this is wrong, and that it’ll harm the cause you’re trying to serve,” or, from a Muslim perspective, “If you think you’re serving God by killing infidels, you are wrong, and you will go to Hell.” In fact, let’s call this the “press conference test”: if your group has enough prominence that you can call a press conference and have the media show up, then maybe you should do so — not to wail about unjust accusations of culpability but simply to state clearly that anyone who thinks they’re furthering the cause by turning to violence is wrong.
In addition: well, quite some time ago (pre-Patheos, back in January), I wrote a piece I called “Islam needs a ‘Jewish Enlightenment’“, that is, a way of understanding their scriptures in a non-literal way, similar to the transformation of Judaism in Germany with the Reform movement, and similar modern understandings of Christian scriptures (that is, the understanding, for instance, that Noah’s Ark is not a retelling of an actual, historical event). As a postscript to that piece, I mentioned a Chicago Tribune article on the Muslim community in the Chicago area, genuinely wrestling with how to keep their children away from radicalism. Ayaan Hirsi Ali (per her book Heretic) believes that Muslims need to make fundamental changes to the whole of their belief system because it leads inexorably to extremism. Without commenting on her claims specifically, it is true in general that as people who live in a world with other people, we have a moral obligation, as we live our lives, to consider whether our passion for our causes transforms us into people we don’t want to be, and perhaps transforms others as well. And I say that generically without reference to a specific cause, and without addressing when one has crossed a line, and certainly without comment as to whether someone loses the right to speak out.
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