Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
What if Jared Loughner Were a Muslim Arab Immigrant?
What if the alleged gunman in Tucson were named Ali Mohammed instead of Jared Lee Loughner?
The repercussions of the attempted assassination in Tucson of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in which six people were murdered and 13 wounded, continue to resonate. The discussion--and discussions about the discussion--continues. Meanwhile, we're failing to have a meaningful debate about how we can achieve real changes that would make a repeat of this tragedy impossible.
That would mean standing up to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and working to enact real, stronger gun-control laws. It would require making mental health care truly accessible for those who so desperately need it. And ending all hostile, eliminationist rhetoric, especially gimmicks that feature crosshairs over congressional districts, "second amendment remedies," and offers to "shoot a fully automatic M-16" as a campaign souvenir.
It's hard to predict if U.S. political discourse will become less toxic and more civil because of this outrageous attack. President Barack Obama's funeral oration at the Tucson memorial hit all the right notes. He urged all who listened to live our lives and transform our country into the nation that nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green was just beginning to claim as her own. It was a powerful moment.
He didn't say a word about the alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner, or about the possible consequences of the vitriol and violence that has infected contemporary political debate. Maybe that was a good call. Certainly Loughner is mentally disturbed, and while there's no question his delusional rants reflect some of the right-wing tirades all too common on the Internet, it's certainly possible those ideas had nothing to do with his targeting of a politically moderate congresswoman.
What if things were just a little bit different? What if the alleged gunman were named Ali Mohammed instead of Jared Lee Loughner? What if he had been a mentally ill Muslim Arab immigrant instead of a mentally ill white, Christian-Jewish, native-born U.S. citizen? What if his delusional rants seemed to channel not those found-on-the-Internet right-wing rants about the gold standard and government invasion, but rather those found-on-the-Internet calls for violent jihad?
Would we still be so careful not to place any responsibility on those who spew hateful, violent rhetoric? Would we still be so certain that there's no link between violent rhetoric and the response of an unstable mind? When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City federal building, which at the time was the worst terrorist act ever committed on U.S. soil, the immediate assumption was that an Arab and/or Muslim terrorist "had to be" responsible. For the few days after the bombing, before McVeigh was captured, initial media reports were packed with experts who were certain the attack bore all the hallmarks of "Middle Eastern terrorism." Then white Christian American citizen McVeigh was caught. Oops. Sorry.
Did anyone even bother to check whether would-be underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab might actually be mentally ill or unstable? How about Maj. Nidal Hasan, the army psychiatrist accused of shooting 13 people at Fort Hood? Does it matter? Or do we simply assume that anyone who carries out an act of violence inspired by some warped version of Islam is "sane," but that anyone who may have been inspired or influenced by "don't retreat, reload" rhetoric while on a shooting spree--but who maybe looks and talks a little more "like us"--must be inherently deranged?
Think about it. What if things were just a little bit different? What if the Tucson shooter's name were Ali Mohammed? What would be our response to the Tucson shootings then?
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
28 Comments so far
Show AllNot Arizona. South Dakota perhaps.
Joe
"What if Jared Loughner Were a Muslim Arab Immigrant?"
Then some would try to excuse his actions by pointing out the US use of unmanned drones on Muslims, therefore his action would be justified as retribution. Right now the only excuse he has is the fact that he's a friggin nutcase.
He is a nutcase, but the issue of nutcases with guns (and without) is real.
We need mental health care in the US and we need to discuss it. I don't even think it is a debate more of a process of nationally accepting that mental health really isn't different than physical health.
His associates and family would have been rounded up and his mosque would have been raided, some killed by the police/FBI as they wear breaking down the doors of these presumed terrorists in the middle of the night. The violence and deaths caused by the police raids would inspire Congressman King to call for hearings on Muslim extremism.
I am sorry. How many friends and relations of those arrested by the FBI have been killed since 9/11. I remember 1 I believe.
Do you work for the FBI? Do you think the FBI advertises their 'mistakes'? Are you aware that the FBI has over 1,000 charges against it as an organization RIGHT NOW for illegal use of the patriot act? (democracy now has the details).
The FBI is CYA from the word go. Their incredibly brutal activities on Native American reservations is just a small example. You don't know what you are talking about if you think the FBI is something like the PR Jimmy Stewart movies.
They were thoroughly corrupted during Hoover's time. Now it's worse.
But I'm wasting my time. You think you live in a republic. You think we aren't a police state. Good luck with that. Even if you are one of them, it'll eventually catch up with you. Stop assuming.
I think the root commentator exaggerated. I agree with that commentator that overly intense fears of muslim terrorism has triggered a hysterical over-reaction, one which has triggered a backlash against muslims who aren't associated with terrorism. Following 9-11 tens of thousands of muslims who weren't US citizens were rounded up by the INS. They weren't held in Guantanamo style conditions. But they were held in very unpleasant conditions, some were held for years.
Following suicide bombings in London, UK's subway, security officials had a house under surviellance, based on a suspicion that other potential bombers lived there. Watchers reported a brown-skinned man left that house, and walked to the nearby subway station. Armed security officials following that man stormed the subway car the man had entered, didn't identify themselves, didn't order him to stop, or raise his hands. They felt it was necessary to shoot him in the head.
The brown-skinned man was an innocent victim of mistaken identity. He wasn't even a muslim
This kind of hysterical over-reaction is possible in the UK, in the USA, Russia, France, Spain, Italy, India, Pakistan.
Actual deaths are not my only concern. I am concerned over security officials who are feeling the hysterical over-reaction, and who are unnecessarily tough on individuals who are apprehended, but who may be innocent, or if not totally innocent, then guilty only of visa violations.
Unfortunately, some American security officials seem to feel that an unwritten part of their job is to serve as the public's designated vengeance takers, who should use their jobs to dish out some payback to muslims, even if the muslims they dish it out to are innocent bystanders.
I think the American public needs to remember that the violent muslim extremists don't represent the vast majority of muslims -- that they represent the kooky fringe, just like David Koresh, Timothy McViegh, and those anti-abortion activists who assassinate doctors, or who plant bombs, aren't a fair representation of the Christain community
It would be a big mistake to continue to allow rogue security officials to mistreat muslims who may be innocent of ties to terrorism. Allowing rogue security officials to act unprofessionally and mistreat those in their custody is polarizing. It is a mistake to place on muslims sympathetic to the USA the burden of trying to defend or explain this unprofessional violence. It is a mistake to polarize the moderate muslims, and offer the radicals with evidence of unprofessional violence by US security officials that may cause some moderates to gain sympathy.
Gun Control is not the answer and it is not going to happen. Too many people on the right and the left oppose it.
However, mental health is an issue that we need to address. Loughner, as my manager stated at the time, is bat-shit crazy. We can all see that, his class mates could see it, his parents could see it. Why wasn't he committed?
Answer, because we live in a society where we allow people to be "different" and we rely on courts to follow laws to protect personal freedoms before most other things. Till the 1960s we locked up people that we thought were "insane" and that definition was fungible from place to place. There were homosexuals locked up because being gay was insane. We abused and drugged and warehoused people that today might be seen as the old cat lady or the guy that yells at thin air as he walks down the street.
As long as they don't hurt anyone, they don't get committed.
Today someone has to be proven to be unbalanced to be committed. In balance that is right and correct, but what about the people that we all think are problems that haven't hurt anyone, how do they get forced into treatment and how do their names get surfaced to the authorities?
it isn't simple.
Who decides someone is a danger if not the courts? How can we force someone into treatment? I don't think anyone wants a permissive system to decide without a due process who should and should not be roaming free? Yet without getting the "as of yet not violent, but who might soon BE violent" off the streets or at least into the databases of who should not be allowed at any given time to buy a firearm.
I worked at a gun store in the 1980s and 90s. We were next to the sherrif's office and a block from the police station. We had cops in all the time. One of them was named Bob... or Robert... depending on what sort of day he was having. Had two different signatures. One slanted one way one the other. Bob was a nice guy. Robert was an ass. You could sell to one and the other would pick it up 10 days later. It was scary. What could we do? He wasn't on any list. He was an authority. What if we ask police to OK gun purchases? If you get Bob, you get a gun, if you get Robert you don't?
The gun buying background check is good, but only as good as the information that goes into it. For a crime, you get in it and that limits your ability to buy. Mental illness, either permanent and non-violent (thus not elevated to having been committed) and the temporarily ill should be barred, but how do we keep track of that.
Concomitant with tracking is treatment. There simply is not treatment out there and the priority is low in society because mental illness is varied and buried. I had a nutty aunt, who hasn't. Did they get treatment or live in the inlaw unit behind someone's house?
Bet they didn't get treatment or if they did that they were not forced to take their meds.
I do not want the insane/temporarily unstable to get guns, but how do you stop it in context of their rights not to be medicated/committed?
We need a discussion and a set of smart solutions. No bans or quick solutions will work.
Not only are we NOT treating people, we have a societal construct that actively promotes ill health, both mental and physical (not that they're really separate). Autistic kids, teen killing sprees, soldier suicides from the strain of coping with the amoral acts of war, and the constant, aggressive pushing of drugs to cure your problems are some of the symptoms of a sick society.
A whole nation bearing the guilt of millions of strangers being massacred in their name creates a miasma of stressful helplessness. To those sick of being helpless and unable to express concern in rational ways, encouragement to lash out and destroy is amply provided by media hate mongers (with names and addresses provided).
Fear and denial and cognitive dissonance are served up on full platters by those who are supposed to be looking out for us.
If our nation's leaders were not so mentally, physically and financially unbalanced our people would be less so as well.
the same as our response to 911:
a total lack of self-reflection and an all-out arrogant muscle-flexing, just because we have the biggest guns, we are more than willing to use them, and we think we can get away with it.
It the gunman has expressed any leftist viewpoints, the reaction would have been very different too.
what if the perpetrators of the WTC demolition were NOT Muslim terrorists?
What if the South had won the civil war?
If Jared L. had been an Arab or Muslim...Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, and Palin would have just looooved it!
He wasn't so who cares.
You should.
Nice to see all the trolls out in force on this topic to misdirect attention from the theme of the article.
You all know what would have happened if the shooter was a Muslim. The people who have been increasingly becoming livid propounding hatred for any and all Muslims and the people who listen would have started hunting Muslims with guns and ropes.
Look at the incident over the weekend in Dearborn, MI and multiply by a factor of a thousand.
And yet it was only today that another 'mentally ill' white man, Roger Stockham, was detained on his way to explode a carload of fireworks and aerosol paint cans as an IED at a mosque in Detroit.
An astute bar employee recorded and reported his license plate to police after he bragged that he was a Muslim (then what the HELL was he doing in a bar?!), that Timothy McVeigh was his hero, and he was on his way "to cause an explosion that would be "here, there, the mosque."
Yet again, the white man is depicted as 'mentally ill', not as a 'terrorist'.
Double standard, much?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/01/30/state/n095551S75.DTL
http://www.wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=13941011
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
Jared Lee Loughner is an atheist. However, he is ethnically a JEW.
That is important.
That is why Gifford's husband is willing to talk to Jared's parents.
That is why the story has disappeared.
That is why homeland security hasn't come up with some cockamany addition to to the 'feel and humiliate' routine at the airports.
I'm sure that Jared, himself, is unconcerned. But AIPAC IS CONCERNED. Their job is to besmirch anyone who doesn't support Israel. Had Jared been a Muslim, AIPAC would be all over this story.
That's how piss poor our objectivity has gotten in this country.
The zionist predators have conned the Jewish people into thinking zionist=Jew. Bad mistake for the Jews.
Why?
Because zionists have captured BRAND NAME as joyful torturers and baby killers. If the Jews continue to allow the zionists to hijack Judaism, they will suffer mightily when retribution comes (and it will) for the zionists.
Jared was stupid. Jared was angry. But Jared wasn't crazy.
Giffords was known for one thing in congress; a 'safe' vote for all things for Israel including refusal too recognize the validity of the Goldstone report and, of course. always voting in favor of 'aid' for poor Israel.
For an angry punk, she was a target of opportunity.
As a matter of fact he did what many in our intelligence services have done throughout their carriers except that he committed the sin of getting caught.
Whatever you think of what Jared did, I've got news for you. AIPAC is going to 'rehabilitate' him. He'll get medical attention and parole. It's a family thing. There is selective justice in our country. And when you're part of the power ethnic group, they fix you just so they keep looking good.
Our goose is pretty well cooked in a zionist pot. Did you hear the news? Loyd Blankfein, loyal Israel supporter and CEO of Goldman Sachs just had his salary (that doesn't count the multimillion dollar bonuses and stock options) TRIPLED. His salary was around $600,000. Inflation and all that.
The water sure is getting hot in the USA.
Post deleted by me.
What does Jewish have to do with anything?
Do you know how many Jewish organizations do great work for the benefit of all of Americans, regardless of creed?
Jews helped me when no one else would, because it was the right thing to do.
Get off the Jew baiting.
This article really hits the mark-- terrorism and double standards.
AD
I will admit when I first heard early reports about the shootings in Tucson on the car radio my first thought was, "I hope to hell the guy's not a Mexican national, or has any kind of Hispanic name." What if he had been Mexican or Mexican-American? Jan Brewer would be our next president, her delusions about the threat from Mexico justified. I also have to say the discourse and use of denigrating terms for the mentally ill, clinically or rhetorically, is getting me down. While people object to Fox commentators calling liberals Nazis, everyone uses terms like "nutcase" and "loonie" etc. freely. This rhetorical overkill has the same effect as using Nazi inappropriately. In this case it further stigmatizes a group which seriously needs help and it trivializes what we as a society take to be categories of thought which could help to identify those in need of help. If everyone is a nutcase then everyone might as well have a gun too, right?
I posted comments that parallel this article a couple of weeks ago. I believe it was a piece by Bob Koehler and it was about compassion.
Everyone who wishes to be fair knows that guns are a problem in this nation.
But, it is a well managed problem. For the population, diversity, and number of guns in the public hands, this nation has a very small number of gun murders.
Yes, I know the statistics: 12000 plus killed a year. In my life, I have only seen one murder, in the USA. Four people killed by firearms, two perps and two cops.
If the cops did nothing but enforce gun laws, no other laws would be enforced. Regulation is not perfect, but it gives us some security.
We don't live in a milieu of the old West or modern Afghanistan, so our rights here are fairly well balanced on guns, if you compare.
You write: "For the population, diversity, and number of guns in the public hands, this nation has a very small number of gun murders."
Maybe, but no nation has greater gun ownership. The result is that the USA has an enormous number of gun deaths and gun injuries.
Don't accidental gun deaths and gun injuries in the USA outnumber premeditated gun deaths and gun injuries by an order of magnitude?
If I understand the press reports some ordinary civilians in the vicinity of the shooting were armed. If I understand the press reports the unarmed civilians who subdued Loughner risked being shot by those armed civilians.
One thing that disturbs me are the commentators who insist that (1) Loughner was "not political"; (2) so Sarah Palin and other US pundits who used inflammatory language played no role in triggering his outburst.
Individuals with mental health, even serious mental health issues, do become interested in politics; they do hang frame their mental issues in political terms; sometimes individuals with mental health issues are accepted in political parties and other political groups; and sometimes individuals with serious mental health issues do rise to lead countries, consider not just Hitler, but Stalin, Idi Amin, Muammar Ghaddafi. Nor is it just dictators -- consider Italy's Berlisconi, with his self-destructive pursuit of extremely young women, and his frequent off-color comments. Isn't he also an example of a democratic leader who couldn't claim 100 percent mental health?
There is a friend or neighbor of Loughner, who said he knew Loughner, who insisted he wasn't political. He has been frequently quoted. I see this as grasping at straws. It seems to me it shows how desperate commentators are for some reason to claim Loughner was non-political -- in spite of framing his concerns in political terms.
Congressional rep Gifford went on record when Sarah Palin first published the posters with the cross-hairs. I think her comments showed that she was concerned that the poster could incite violence. Ms Gifford seems to be showing unexpected progress in her recovery. I am sure almost everyone shares my hope that she achieves a close to complete recovery. I hope her recovery is complete enough that she can speak publicly, and repeat that she had anticipated that Palin was inciting violence. I think Palin and her defenders will find it harder the role she plays in inciting violence if Gifford can personally remind the public of the concerns
she felt prior to the shooting.