“Funerals set today for 3 Muslims killed in N.C.”
The victims, of Syrian descent, were all born in the USA and grew up in the North Carolina area.
Why not “funerals set today for dental student, his wife and sister-in-law”?
Are Muslims different from other young Americans? Would the headline have read “funerals set for 3 Baptists or 3 Mormons or 3 Amish or 3 Catholics or 3 Greek Orthodox killed in NC?”
How do we in America now make distinctions like this based on religion?
Oh yes, I am well aware, as you are, of what is going on in the world in the name of the Islamic religion, but while disgust with the Middle East makes it tempting to classify all believers in Islam in a single category, it seems to me a bit degrading to identify murdered individuals as American as you or I by their religion.
Are these three people any different than other first generation Americans?
This reminds me of Huck Finn upon the explosion of a riverboat.
“It warn’t the grounding — that didn’t keep us back but a little. We blowed out a cylinder-head.”
“Good gracious! anybody hurt?”
“No’m. Killed a nigger.”
“Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt. Two years ago last Christmas your uncle Silas was coming up from Newrleans on the old Lally Rook, and she blowed out a cylinder-head and crippled a man. And I think he died afterwards. He was a Baptist.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
It’s the USA today headline because it has become an emotional issue and that’s what sells newspapers. “If it bleeds, it leads”. The father of the deceased is calling for what is an apparent triple homicide to be investigated as a hate crime. Hate is an emotion. Emotions do not require reason or evidence to arrive at a conclusion and that provides a perfect narrative to sell ever more newsprint. Jumping to the conclusion that it must be a hate crime because the three were all Muslims, you have to ask yourself; what are the chances that a group of three family relatives will all have the same religion? Pretty high I would think. Without some further evidence of motive, this line of thinking is a fallacy. It appears from news accounts, that the perpetrator of the crime had issues with a number of people in his condominium and that religion didn’t play a part.
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I think that is a reasonable assessment.
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They weren’t highlighting why they were dead, they we stoking animosity and looking for a headline to grab attention. Regardless of why they were killed doesn’t change the fact they were three young Americans no different than any other Americans and I think it is wrong to label them by their religion. If they were killed simply for their religion, label the murderer, not the victim. And if they were murdered because of other disputes as is possible, we have done them a disservice as Americans.
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Apparently, some believe they were killed because of their religion. This is the opposite of president Obama’s assertion that the raid in Paris on the deli was “… violent, vicious zealots who … randomly shoot, uh, a bunch of folks in, uh, a deli in Paris,”
Something wrong with USA Today highlighting the reason why three are dead, why they were each and every one shot in the head, and why 2,500 or so showed up at the memorial ceremony? Or, do you subscribe to the President’s version of recent events concerning beheadings, burnings and other executions .. that these individuals in North Carolina were just “a bunch of folks” who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (a parking spot).
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