{"id":3349,"date":"2015-12-03T12:42:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T18:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=3349"},"modified":"2015-12-03T12:42:00","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T18:42:00","slug":"a-few-stabs-in-the-dark-at-saying-something-of-any-relevance-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/12\/a-few-stabs-in-the-dark-at-saying-something-of-any-relevance-today.html","title":{"rendered":"A few stabs in the dark at saying something of any relevance today"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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 \u201cPlanned Parenthood shooter,\u201d who is believed to have been motivated by an anti-abortion ideology due to an anonymous source\u2019s claim that he said \u201cno more baby parts\u201d in police questioning. \u00a0Hence I was thinking about this issue even before yesterday\u2019s events.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, we now know that the killers in San Bernardino were a married couple. \u00a0The husband, the son of Pakistani immigrants (per, among other sources, Slate<\/a>), had met his wife online via a Middle Eastern marriage\u00a0site<\/a>, traveled to Saudi Arabia, and returned with her two years ago, according to the LA Times<\/a>. \u00a0He was described<\/a> 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 \u201cradicalized\u201d him, I think it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

(Incidentally, at this point, the most comprehensive description of the events seems to be from the Daily Mail<\/a>; there are also more details in this Fox News account<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Of course, articles such as Slate are careful to say that we don\u2019t know their motivation and even hesitate to suggest that this was a premeditated action, with such cautious language as: \u00a0\u201cFarook and Malik were dressed in \u201ctactical\u201d combat gear\u2014black clothes and masks\u2014suggesting that the attack was at least somewhat premeditated.\u201d \u00a0Somewhat<\/em> premeditated? \u00a0How 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? \u00a0We\u2019re 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\u2019s 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 \u201cworkplace violence\u201d or the result of mental illness.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019re back to the same question, or pair of questions.<\/p>\n

Do groups with whom the shooter has some connection, have an obligation to condemn the attack and \u201cprove\u201d to the community at large their innocence? \u00a0And do they bear any\u00a0blame for the attack?<\/p>\n

The easy answer to both is \u201cno.\u201d \u00a0Of course it\u2019s foolish to demand that every individual who has ever taken a pro-life stand, or made an Islamic profession of faith,\u00a0condemn these acts via\u00a0twitter, facebook, or other online forums. \u00a0And the mere fact that an individual shares your causes, and chooses violence, should in no way prevent you from being able to advocate peacefully.<\/p>\n

But the extent that an organization has a public face, it never hurts to say things like, from a right-to-life perspective: \u201cIf 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\u2019ll harm the cause you\u2019re trying to serve,\u201d or, from a Muslim perspective, \u201cIf you think you\u2019re serving God by killing infidels, you are wrong, and you will go to Hell.\u201d \u00a0In fact, let\u2019s call this the \u201cpress conference test\u201d: \u00a0if your group has enough prominence that you can call a press conference and have the media show up, then maybe you should do so \u2014 not to wail about unjust accusations of culpability but simply to state clearly that anyone who thinks they\u2019re furthering the cause by turning to violence is wrong.<\/p>\n

In addition: \u00a0well, quite some time ago (pre-Patheos, back in January), I wrote a piece I called \u201cIslam needs a \u2018Jewish Enlightenment\u2019<\/a>\u201c, 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\u2019s Ark is not a retelling of an actual, historical event). \u00a0As 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. \u00a0Ayaan Hirsi Ali (per her book Heretic<\/em><\/a>) believes that Muslims need to make fundamental changes to the whole of their belief system because it leads inexorably to extremism. \u00a0Without 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\u2019t want to be, and perhaps transforms others as well. \u00a0And 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.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u201cPlanned Parenthood shooter,\u201d who is believed to have been motivated by an anti-abortion ideology due to an anonymous source\u2019s claim that he said \u201cno more baby parts\u201d in police […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA few stabs in the dark at saying something of any relevance today<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I have a facebook friend who right now is keeping track of which prolife organizations, Republicans, and Catholic bishops have gone on record as\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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