Americas Current Affairs

Terrorist Atheist Kills Three Innocent Muslim Students

Written by Shoaib

In what the Independent reported as an “execution style” murder, three young professionals were killed in what appears to be another Islamophobic killing yesterday. An atheist man who had recently been preaching hate online was charged with the murder.

The Victim’s Profile

The victims Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor and her sister Razan were described as exemplary citizens. Deah was a doctoral student in UNC-Chapel Hill’s school of Dentistry. The two sisters were students at N.C. State University.

A heart wrenching video has surfaced in which Deah’s father is asking police what has happened to his son.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPuJU0VP4Aw

16781_819485251432377_4884138684769480084_nOutside of their university lives they had been known for their charity work. Yusor had recently travelled to Turkey to help with humanitarian work for the Syrian refugees there. In the photo she had uploaded to her Facebook account we are given a glimpse into her selfless contributions.

 

Deah was scheduled to travel to Turkey in the summer in order to carry out humanitarian aid but in place of saving lives of Syrian refugee’s, Deah’s own life was cut short by hatred. His friends and family described him as a source of joy and expressed how proud they had felt for his involvement in humanitarian work around the world. Even the day before he was killed he had been campaigning for his trip to save Syrian children. Below you can see Deah taking part in an appeal video.

Yusor and Deah had only been married for just over two months. At the time they were with Yusor’s sister Razan, who was only 19 years old had just begun studying architecture and environmental design at the NCSU. The family were all-in-all from a respectable community and well educated. This along with their selfless charity work has left their local community in shock.

The Atheist Terrorist Who Killed Them

Craig Hicks described himself as an anti-theist and had had trouble with ABC11 station in the past. He posted pictures of his gun and regularly posted hatred on his Facebook account. He is to appear in court today charged with multiple homicide after he turned himself in. He is married and his wife is understood to work at UNC hospital.

In a chilling Facebook post he blamed Muslims for his actions:

“Your religion started this, not me. If your religion kept its big mouth shut, so would I”
– online post by the killer

World Reaction

Online people showed their outpouring grief. Initially it wasn’t reported widely in the media but it seems after growing anger from people on social media the mainstream media have now covered the story, however stopped short of calling the atheist terrorist a terrorist. The family of the victims are still in shock at the great loss.

10268647_819461434768092_1686202989279098168_nHicks was linked to an atheist organisation called United Atheists of America. In a tweet earlier today, Richard Dawkins who Hicks regularly quoted, condemned the killing.

The Chapel Hill Police Department said in a statement that they believe there is reason to believe that there is no ongoing threat to the public.

How Many Victims of Terrorism Are Muslim?

Its often misrepresented that most terrorists are Muslim. However it seems to be the complete opposite if we look at the facts. Most VICTIMS of terrorism are Muslim.

report by the National Counterterrorism Centre in the USA found that

“In cases where the religious affiliation of terrorism casualties could be determined, Muslims suffered between 82 and 97% of terrorism-related fatalities over the past five years”

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About the author

Shoaib

CEO of Hujjaj.co | Director of the Organisation for the Conservation of Islamic Heritage | President of itiba.tv | Editor Muslim World Journal | Pharmacist | You can find me on Instagram and Facebook

shoaib@muslimworldjournal.com

15 Comments

  • You site valid and important statistics about the majority of terrorism victims being Muslim. But it is misleading to start that paragraph with “Its often misrepresented that most terrorists are Muslim” when the very same report you site also says “Sunni extremists accounted for the greatest number of terrorist attacks and fatalities for the third consecutive year. More than 5,700 incidents were attributed to Sunni extremists, accounting for nearly 56 percent of all attacks and about 70 percent of all fatalities.”

    • I find that many of the US reports on ‘terrorist’ activity fail to document our own activities with drones – and the slaughter in Gaza by Israel, to name a few of the ongoing organized murder of Muslims and others (non-Christians etc). If we add some of these events to the general tally, maybe the numbers would be different? I imagine its all based on one’s world view first, the numbers have a tendency to be procured depending on which end of the elephant we are describing with a blindfold.

  • I would bet almost anything that this guy was no an atheist, but instead is a Muslim hating right winger. Most atheists are not gun fanatics who have confederate flags all over their house. Most atheists are not violent people. And most atheists in this country have probably a greater dislike for Christians than they do Muslims, I know because I am one of them and I often stick up for Muslims when the right wing attacks them online. There was a ten hour lapse in between the time of the shootings and the time it became a “news” story, plenty of time for the right wing propagandists to spin the story. On the day of the Gabriel Giffords shooting, I was posting on Slate when it happened. Everyone knew the guy did it because he had overdosed on the hate the rightwing media was spreading, even right wing bloggers were calling for an end to the hate-filled rhetoric. But with in an hour the spinmasters had formed a plan to deflect the blamed from Fox noise and place it firmly on the left. Paid trolls began posting over and over that the shooter was “a liberal who shot her because she wasn’t liberal enough”, a “hippie high on pot”, “an “angry atheist who shot her because she was a Christian.” We all knew the truth but the rightwing propagandists planted the seeds of doubt and by midday the truth vanished in a sea of lies. Atheists are not violent people, but rightwing Christians are!

    • The reason I described him as an atheist was due to his numerous Facebook posts in which he labelled himself as anti-theist. He had been ripping into Muslims and Christians on his Facebook account, so I doubt he was a Christian.

      Nathan, I have many atheist friends. I completely understand this man has nothing to do with atheism but that is just as much as Muslim terrorists have nothing to do with Islam. Islamic terrorism has only been a problem recently and is more to do with socio-economical problems as well as foreign policy and Israel.

      This shows us that bad apples exist in every community. We need to realise that hate is a human problem we need to solve as oppose to one group or another.

      • You are conflating anti-theist with atheists. Atheists merely disbelieve in a god, while anti-theism is a conscious and deliberate opposition to theism.

      • He’s an “anti-theist”. There is no such ideology as “atheism”, it merely describes a lack of belief in a supernatural god. Describing atheism as a “belief system”, for example, is liking describing not collecting stamps as a hobby. So, you might describe a killer as being a “stamp collector”, but this is like saying “the killer was not a stamp collector”. This murder was not driven by the killer not believing in god, it was driven by hatred of people who believe in god. So, an anti-theist.

      • “I completely understand this man has nothing to do with atheism but that is just as much as Muslim terrorists have nothing to do with Islam”

        …and yet you wrote an article “terrorist atheist kills”

        • Yes. The title was framed such only because I used the template set by the mainstream media. This man seems to have killed because of his hatred for religion and being an atheist.

          Similarly “islamic terrorists” seem to kill because they have a hatred for people who don’t believe what they believe.

          Just the way a Muslim is about believing in God and Muhammad and nothing to do with killing, similarly an atheists’s belief in this situation is the same.

          If this doesn’t stop the mainstream media for Muslims, why have the rules changed for an atheist?

      • yes, yes, yes, this reply is the most sound and honest I have heard following this tragedy. It would be so typical of cowardly Christians to murder innocent Muslims, then blame atheists. Most likely.

        Granted, yes, there are bad in all groups even atheists like myself. The majority of all religions and atheists, are, I hope, peaceful and tolerant. And therefore, my comrades.

      • So his lack of religion makes in the terrorist? You realize that any criminal action performed by a Muslim could then be connected to is along. Shall we call Boko Haram Muslim rapists? The Islamic state practices child rape so therefore Islam is the religion of Child rapists? Really? So the guy said some things on Facebook, well now we know all the depths of his mind. Maybe he was just a troll. The killer and victims had argued about parking in the past. It weakens valid claims of islamophobia to connect every killing of a Muslim to anti-Muslim fervor. Sometimes it is just a tragically ending neighborhood dispute. Most of my neighbors are Muslim, I wouldn’t call them and good neighbors nor good parkers. Of course, I’m not crazy so I’m not going to kill anyone. But if I did, I wouldn’t be a terrorist just a crazy jerk. And who I pray to or not pray to would have nothing to do with it.

        • Why are these considerations and arguments not made when the killer is a Muslim? Did you think this about the Charlie Hebdo killers?

      • As a Christian minister, I can accept the statement that Muslim terrorists are outside of the mainstream of Islam (in fact I have defended Muslims in many a debate) – but to say they are not Muslims is to deny their self identification as Muslims. Additionally, the requirements for becoming a Muslims, as we both know, are quite basics. A simple statement of belief is all that is required – leaving a great deal of leeway for a Muslim to stray from the mainstream of Islamic thought and still be a Muslim. Christianity is much more structured. A parallel would be the Jonesborough Baptist Church. I would contend that they practice a perverted form of Christianity – but they still identify themselves as Christians.

        Your thoughts?

        • A good point. Telling them they are not Muslims is the same as them telling me I am not Muslim. That would be incorrect which is why I do not ever make such statements

  • Another case of atheist murder. It’s not really news that atheists are hateful and abusive toward anyone who isn’t an atheist, nor is it news that atheists do scummy, bigoted, terrible things and try to blame it on their victims (e.g. Muslims, Jews, Christians… like I said, anyone who isn’t an atheist). It disgusts me that people try to defend this monster because, for some weird reason, the media LOVES atheists and hates anyone who doesn’t meet their “white, straight, atheist, American male” standards. They blame all Muslims for the murder of Charlie Hebdo, but when an atheist murders three innocent Muslims, the media is all, “Nuh-uh! Not ALL atheists are like that! This guy was just a bad person!” The hypocrisy of atheists knows no bounds! (And I don’t want to hear, “Not all atheists hate religious people.” Atheists believe the world would be a better place if people stopped thinking for themselves and converted to atheism. How do they expect to accomplish that? By force? By murder? What ever happened to their beliefs in “equality”? They don’t care about equality. All they care about is themselves.)

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