Hate: An Emotion, not a Crime

Correction: The murder as yet remains unsolved.

Michelle Malkin has been thoroughly covering the recent slayings of an entire Egyptian family who were Coptic Orthodox Christians. According to the post referenced above, the family may have been killed by practicioners of the "religion of peace" after its head, Hossam Armanious, had engaged Moslems in angry disputes over religion on an internet site. Thus the murders may have been terrorist attacks.

One might correctly make the point that it is a complete waste of time to discuss matters of faith since all standards of proof and evidence are out the window. However, that in no way would abridge Mr. Armanious's freedom of speech. If someone was offended by something Armanious said, his proper responses would include (a) ignoring Armanious, (b) complaining about him to the owners of the web site, (c) boycotting the site altogether, or (d) any combination of a, b, or c. Maybe I should check again, but I didn't see an "(e) use it as an excuse to kill him and his whole family."

I will admit that for a moment, even I was tempted to say, "He was asking for it." But then I remembered something: This is America. Armanious has the inalienable right to proseletyze all he wants without having so much as a hair on his head harmed. He could have made a complete ass of himself for all I know, but unless what he did actually harmed someone, it was his right to do so.

I will refrain -- for reasons I'll get into momentarily -- from using the term "hate crime" to describe these attacks even if they are due to religious motivations. But why would someone do this? It would certainly be yet another pathetic example on the part of Islamofascists of something I posted about a while back.

A religious fanatic like Osama bin Laden is not a self-confident man. For the religious fanatic, opinions that differ from his will ... shake [the] very foundations of his own worldview. [D]ispassionate inquiry and weighing of evidence have no place to the man blinded by faith... [H]e will seek to assuage his fear by removing its object -- the dissenting opinion. He will do this even if it means murdering a human being -- destroying a unique life, an entire universe, in the process.

This is the real, ugly little motive behind this kind of killing. But that motive, as morally wrong as it is, is not illegal: Acting upon it to commit a murder would be illegal. And while I understand the outrage expressed by Malkin in her use of the term "hate crime" to describe these attacks, I would urge her not to use that term to describe them. Why? Because, as Tammy Bruce points out in her book, The New Thought Police: Inside the Left's Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds:

The line between wanting to change society for the better and enforcing submission to a particular way of thinking can be a fine one. After all, if you want to change society, you have to decide what part of society needs fixing. Both sides of the political spectrum have come to their own conclusions in that regard, but the Left's efforts to eradicate injustice and discrimination have led it down an extraordinary road: the actual criminalization of ... what we think. ... That's what hate crime legislation is all about. (pp. 45-46)

I regard the Moslem faith as the ideology most nearly the opposite to that which man needs to live a proper and fulfilling life. Nevertheless, so long as an adherent does not, as Jefferson would say, "pick my pocket or break my leg," he has the right to poison his own mind with Islam as much as he wants. The fact that a crime has been committed because of the criminal's belief system may indeed be due to the fact that said belief system is evil. But it doesn't make the crime any worse than any other murder. A murder committed in Allah's name is neither more nor less evil than a murder committed for any other reason. To expand upon this point, I quote Bruce again:

Let's go back to our carjacker/grocery clerk scenario. This time, let's say that both of the victims are gay. The grocery-store clerk, as before, kills his victim because he hates gay people. In the case of the carjacking, the guy wants the woman's car, she's in the way and represents everything he hates (he's poor and disenfanchised, she is not), so he hates her and kills her. Whereas the grocery store clerk is still guilty of a hate crime, the carjacker is not, despite the fact that they both killed a gay woman. The actions were the same. The only difference is what the person was thinking when he committed the crime. (p. 46)

I would hope that Malkin's use of the term "hate crime" is riteous indignation, but coming from such a prominent journalist, it carries the following risk. It introduces the idea into the public discourse that using hate crime legislation against terrorists is an acceptable way to deal with the threat they pose. In this time of war, our government should be especially aware of the activities of Moslems, should prosecute all their crimes to the fullest extent of the law, and should remove the many politically correct barriers between that law and these individuals. This is not simply because they are Moslems, but because we are at war with Islamofascists, and, oddly enough, they're all Moslem! Aside from measures we must take because we are at war, this kind of vigilance also involves legitimate reforms that may be much more difficult to undertake than quick expedients like making terrorism or Islamofascism a "hate crime."

We have already made a mistake by introducing the dangerous concept of "hate crimes" into our legal system. But if we yield to the temptation to use this legislation as a weapon -- even against Islamofascist fanatics -- the consequences will come home to roost. If killing in the name of Islam makes some murders worse than other murders, which ideology will be outlawed next? And conversely, which murders will become "more OK" than others? If there's one thing we should all remember on MLK Day, it is the principle of equal treatment under the law.

Any use of "hate crime" legislation in this war would be just as foolhardy as unleashing an incurable plague: it may kill the enemy first, but then it will turn around and kill us. The only thing we should do with hate crime legislation is this: Abolish it.

-- CAV

Update

1-18-05: (1) Corrected post. The murder sure sounds like it could be a terrorist attack, but since there's a fat reward for information, we don't know that yet. Not to excuse myself for jumping to conclusions, but I guess we can chalk up another reason not to use a sensationalist title like "hate crime" to describe a murder that is under investigation. (2) Clarified why introducing the term "hate crime" into the public discourse is a bad idea.