I’d like to say my very first emotion after the July 16 Chattanooga mass murder was either horror or sadness, but that would be a lie. Americans saw 204 multiple-victim shootings in the first 204 days of 2015. By the time these words appear in print, I’ve no doubt the count will be higher.
These days, it takes time for the horror to sink in, for my stomach to lurch.
Instead, I wondered: With the targets being a military recruiting center and a Navy operations support center, would the shooter be Muslim? He was. Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, who’d been sent by his devout family to Jordan last year to address his depression and drug abuse.
His victims were Marine Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, Gunnery Sgt. Thomas J. Sullivan, Sgt. Carson Holmquist, Lance Cpl. Skip Wells and Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith, and those names are more important for me to remember.
Then I thought back to an interview earlier this year with Alan Godlas, an Islamic Studies professor at the University of Georgia, about another of the Tennessee legislature’s baffling anti-Islam proposals.
This one sought to ban non-existent Muslim “no-go zones” where, as the false story goes, police are turned away and Sharia law prevails.
Godlas also debunked the notion that you don’t hear denunciations from Muslims after criminal attacks.
And, as expected, my Muslim sources and friends again quickly issued those in the Chattanooga shooting. In fact, some condemned it before we even knew who did it. Very quickly, they’d piled on with social media posts and new releases expressing the very emotions that were so difficult for me to access.
By comparison, I didn’t ask myself what about the religious affiliation of Dylann Roof or John Russell Houser or worry that they might be Presbyterian, as I am. (Roof was Lutheran, and Houser praised Westboro Baptist Church as “the last real church in America.”)
So, even though they’re willing to do it, is it fair for us to demand a quick denunciation from Muslims when one of their own does something horrifying? I asked Drost Kokoye, a frequent presence in Tennessee media, about the Muslim response to Chattanooga.
A quick response is to be expected, she says, since 9/11 made so many Americans feel that any retaliation against Muslims is justified.
“We run to issue statements of condemnation and figure out ways to give support to the victims or their families in an effort to show plurality in our identity,” Kokoye explains.
“Yes, we have crazy Muslims who go on a shooting spree at a recruiting center. Yes, we also have sincere Muslims who are members of your community and want all of the great things for your community that you do.
“This is not specific to Muslims. This is the dynamic in every subculture in society.”
And she is sensitive to the speedy mainstream media framing of white Christians such as Roof and Houser as disturbed lone gunmen vs. Muslim attackers as possibly being part of a bigger plot.
“For Muslims, the stereotype is that we are all here to take over America by any means and to install an Islamic state,” she says. “This completely ignores that any one Muslim is an individual.”
The expectation for these swift denunciations is starting to baffle Paul Galloway, executive director of the American Muslim Advisory Council and a convert to Islam who lives in Nashville. Of course, Muslims condemn attacks like the one in Chattanooga, he says. Why wouldn’t they when such incidents are so unconscionable?
The media portrayals aren’t lost on him, either.
“In the Charleston shooting, where the guy attacked a church while people were praying, there’s all this discussion about mental health,” Galloway points out. “This guy in Chattanooga was on all sorts of substances, uppers and downers, marijuana and alcohol, and his religion was immediately front and center.
“I don’t mean to say his religion should not be examined, but cognitive dissonance plays a role. People are afraid of the Muslim community.”
He asks other questions that prompt self-examination.
Why haven’t we heard more about Robert Doggart, a Signal Mountain resident and former District 4 congressional candidate who admitted he’d gathered weapons for a plan to kill residents of a Muslim community in New York state? After pleading guilty, Doggart was let out of jail with a monitoring device.
Galloway had to remind me that Doggart even existed. I certainly don’t recall the outcry when he’d been set free.
And what about Craig Stephen Hicks, the Chapel Hill, N.C., man who shot three Muslims at point-blank range in what police chose to characterize as a parking dispute?
His social media posts pointed to a belief in atheism, but nobody sat by expecting a chorus of condemnation from atheists.
So that leads to a question I’ll be asking myself as the body count rises: In a pluralistic society that claims to value religious freedom for all protected by the First Amendment, is it fair to sit by and expect some sort of special response from our American brothers and sisters who practice Islam?
It’s worth considering, even if that response is one they’ve shown themselves so willing to provide.
Heidi Hall is a freelance writer and former religion editor for The Tennessean.