Saturday 7 November 2009

"Don't jump to conclusions"

I hear on BBC this morning that Obama has urged people "not to jump to conclusions" about the motivation of Major Hasan who killed 13 people in a killing spree at the Texan army base yesterday.  That "don't jump to conclusions" seems to be a code, used whenever the killing is done by a Muslim.  I can't imagine the same would be said were the killer Christian, Buddhist or Atheist.  It means: don't assume that his religion had anything to do with it (for Islam is "religion of peace", doncha know).
But what happens when we find that the motivation was indeed to do with his religion? That he couldn't stand to see a Muslim country "attacked" by "Crusaders"?  What conclusion will we then be urged not to jump to?
Update: it seems the Major shouted "Alahu Akbar" before he started shooting.  I wonder: he has made the connection between his religion and the shooting.  The connection between his "God" being "Great" and the fact that the infidels had to be shot.  He made that connection.  What conclusion are we not allowed to come to now?  That Islam had something to do with it? Are we permitted to come to that conclusion, now?
Update 2:  the blogosphere is spinning, of course, with the two opposing views of this: from the pro-Jihadis and fellow travelling apologists for Islam, vs the anti-Jihadis and critics of Islam.  The former saying that this has nothing to do with religion, or, Obama-speak "don't jump to conclusions", which is a veiled way of saying, don't come to the conclusion that your common sense tells you -- "who do you believe, me or your lying eyes?".  The latter pointing to the fact that Hasan gave away Korans on the day of the massacre, wore Islamic garb and shouted "Allahu Akbar" throughout, to make the link to his religion crystal clear.  The two groups have mirror-image problems.  The pro-islamists are bumping up against reality and common sense when they say that the killings have "nothing to do with religion", but they do have a gullible audience that "wants to believe", wants to believe that the killings are just random craziness, nothing to do with Islam, wants to believe that Islam indeed is a religion of peace. The anti-islamists have all the common sense and facts on their side (the fellow was doing this in the name, explicitly, of Allah, for God's sake!), but they have an audience unwilling to listen, and who thinks that to acknowledge the fact of the connection to Islam would be "Islamphobic", "bigoted", or, sillier, "racist".  There is a massive global cognitive dissonance on the issue of Islam and violence.