QUOTE=Reuters - Texas police shot dead two gunmen who opened fire at an exhibit near Dallas of caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad organized by an anti-Islamic group, authorities said on Sunday.
[…]
The exhibit was organized by Pamela Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI). Her organization, which is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group, has sponsored anti-Islamic advertising campaigns in transit systems across the country.
Lone nuts? Workplace violence? Terrorism? Too soon to tell for sure of course, but it’s an interesting topic. I’m glad the security officer wasn’t killed.
(May as well merge the threads, I had already started one.)
Looks like the police have not yet publicly identified the dead suspects or possible motives, though certainly there is speculation running around some of the media about links to violent hate groups (e.g. Daesh/IS/ISIL/ISIS or Al Qaeda).
@romanigypsyeyes You’re right, that is a bit strange. I guess it means that they were mocking Muhammed at an organized event, not throwing rocks at or looting from or shooting Muslims.
Hate groups can be non-violent, although if they succeed in swaying opinions, some of those who are swayed may have tendencies toward violence. As described in http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/civil-rights/stop-islamization-of-america-2013-1-11-v1.pdf , AFDI’s methods of promoting hate involve things like purchasing advertising, which is a peaceful activity, as is the event that they had where the shooting occurred.
I am not anti-free speech and I am almost never, ever for violence (I am a pacifist with an exception for people who abuse people and animals for the fun of it). However, I sincerely wish people would use their free speech for good and not to purposely provoke hostility.
Do I think people should be hostile over cartoons? No. (But I’ve seen people be hostile over the removal of Christmas carols so hostility is sure as hell not limited to a single x category of people.) Do I think speech like this should be regulated against? No. Do I wish people would make more respectful choices? Yup.
And oh look, around the same time, here’s a random shooting in a small town in Wisconsin. Public area, crowded, three people and the shooter dead. Hmm, wonder why this isn’t in blaring headlines on CNN…
To me, the contest/exhibit/conference showed exactly what the problem is: violent Muslims who want to stamp out free speech and who, in the end, want to control all social expression in the name of their beliefs.
We’ve had Westboro Baptist fools protest at our school and no one shot at them. I watched a couple of Nazi Party rallies and the only thing that happened was in Ann Arbor people threw eggs at them.
I’m sticking this at the bottom: I expect someone will say “This isn’t reflective of Muslims and Islam generally” and that is another important part of the problem for two related reasons. That is, obviously extremism is not reflective of everyone and that’s true of all groups but so many Muslims use that “it’s not me” to say “this isn’t Islam” as though the people doing evil things are somehow aliens from another planet instead of people who directly affirm they are Muslims. Rather than say “this is a huge problem in Islam that needs to be fixed”, there is way too much “these aren’t Muslims” and then using that to deflect discussion about Islam’s violent trends and, even worse, using that to say things like it’s all our fault because these people are alienated.
Here’s the bottom line…this event was organized to get a reaction (“we’ll create offensive images of Mohammad to see if we can get Muslims angry.”) And it worked. And like actors on the stage of a worn-old play, everyone is playing their accustomed roles as the reactions pour in…
The reaction speaks to the depravity of the provoked, rather than to the provocateur. Lots of things that are not intentionally provocative in our society provoke deadly rage in some people. Things like gay marriage. Or live Jews.