{"id":3558,"date":"2015-05-04T17:57:35","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T23:57:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/?p=3558"},"modified":"2015-05-04T17:57:35","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T23:57:35","slug":"the-garland-shooting-innocents-get-hurt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2015\/05\/the-garland-shooting-innocents-get-hurt.html","title":{"rendered":"The Garland Shooting: Innocents Get Hurt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"black<\/a>When the powerful and privileged behave in ways that are hateful, cruel, or stupid, innocent people get hurt.<\/p>\n

Last night in Garland, Texas \u2013 22 miles from my home \u2013 a group calling itself the American Freedom Defense Initiative<\/a> held an event called the \u201cMuhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest\u201d at the Curtis Culwell Center.\u00a0 They picked this location because in January, a local Muslim group booked the Culwell Center<\/a> for their own event called \u201cStand With the Prophet in Honor and Respect.\u201d\u00a0 The Culwell Center is owned by the Garland Independent School District \u2013 in accordance with the law, they rent to anyone who wants to book the center for a legal purpose, even if some Garland residents would prefer\u00a0to exclude those who follow unpopular religions.<\/p>\n

Just before last night\u2019s event was to conclude, two men drove up, got out of their car and started shooting.\u00a0 They wounded an unarmed security guard before an armed police officer shot and killed them both.\u00a0 The shooters are from Arizona \u2013 one had ties to terrorist groups and had been under investigation by the FBI.\u00a0 The other was his roommate.<\/p>\n

Local Muslims<\/a> ignored the event and imams have condemned the attack.<\/p>\n

This was billed as a \u201cfree speech\u201d event by its organizers.\u00a0 But its real purpose was clear:\u00a0 to poke American Muslims with a sharp stick and tell them \u201cyou\u2019re not welcome here.\u201d\u00a0 I think that\u2019s both rude and counterproductive, but they can do that \u2013 it\u2019s their constitutional right.\u00a0 And because they could, they did.<\/p>\n

And because they did, an unarmed security guard was shot.\u00a0 Thankfully, his injuries were not severe \u2013 he was treated and released.\u00a0 When the powerful and privileged behave in ways that are hateful, cruel, or stupid, innocent people get hurt.<\/p>\n

It would have been much worse had the armed police officer not responded so quickly and accurately.\u00a0 As an aside, this is why we can\u2019t disarm the police.\u00a0 We have an armed society and it\u2019s far too late to change that.\u00a0 But there\u2019s a huge difference between armed terrorists and children with toy guns<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Let me be clear \u2013 the primary fault lies with the shooters.\u00a0 No speech can ever be offensive enough to justify violence.\u00a0 But the organizers are at fault as well.\u00a0 They were fully aware that something like this might happen and they did it anyway.\u00a0 There is a difference between satire and hatred, between speaking your mind and getting in people\u2019s faces seeking to cause offense.<\/p>\n

When the powerful and privileged behave in ways that are hateful, cruel, or stupid, innocent people get hurt.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019m thinking about this, I can\u2019t help but think about the violence in Baltimore.\u00a0 The police killed a person in their custody (perhaps through negligence, though the nature of the injuries point toward it being intentional) and the community exploded.\u00a0 People have been injured, property has been destroyed, and protesters have been beaten and jailed.\u00a0 The police killed Freddie Gray and that sparked the violence, but the root cause lies deeper, in the structural racism, poverty, and abuse that make desperate acts seem like the only reasonable option.<\/p>\n

When the powerful and privileged behave in ways that are hateful, cruel, or stupid, innocent people get hurt.<\/p>\n

I hate to compare these two situations.\u00a0 I\u2019m in strong sympathy with the people of Baltimore and elsewhere who\u2019ve had enough.\u00a0 I\u2019m in strong opposition to terrorists who want to convert the world to Islam by force<\/a>.\u00a0 But in both cases it\u2019s a gross oversimplification to say \u201cthere\u2019s no excuse for violence\u201d and fail to look for deeper reasons.<\/p>\n

Nature teaches cause and effect, action and reaction.\u00a0 We can argue all day long that people \u201cshould\u201d act in ways we find reasonable and moral, but if they do not share our experiences of the world, their ideas of what is reasonable and moral are likely to be very different from our own.<\/p>\n

Nothing we do touches only ourselves.\u00a0 Those who hold power and privilege have an obligation to consider the downstream effects of the institutions they support, the systems they build, and the events they promote.<\/p>\n

When the powerful and privileged behave in ways that are hateful, cruel, or stupid, innocent people get hurt.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The two men who attacked an anti-Islam gathering in Garland last night are dead and I can\u2019t say I\u2019m sorry. But I wonder if the organizers of the event understood that innocent people could also get hurt… or if they cared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":3559,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[680,678,615,679,4,5],"class_list":["post-3558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-curtis-culwell-center","tag-garland","tag-islam","tag-muhammad-art-exhibit","tag-pagan","tag-paganism"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Garland Shooting: Innocents Get Hurt<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The two men who attacked an anti-Islam gathering in Garland last night are dead and I can\u2019t say I\u2019m sorry. 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