Fortunately, the stabbing spree earlier this month at the University of California-Merced resulted in no deaths for the four victims who are expected to make a full recovery. A campus police officer did kill the attacker, however, 18-year old Faisal Mohammad.
The College Fix is reporting that the campus community is mourning Mohammad’s death in some noteworthy ways, including through a “teach-in” faculty members had Monday night. The event was titled “Teach-In: Don’t Turn Our Tragedy Into Hate” and featured the following discussion points, according to flier:
- What does mental health have to do with this?
- What has been the narrative and why?
- Why are men more likely to be perpetrators of violence?
- Why are campus police armed?
- How do we define our community-what lives are grievable?
- What do race and religion have to do with this?
Those seem like fair points. But simply looking at the facts may address many, if not all, of those question. It was discovered that Mohammad had an image of the ISIS flag, a handwritten manifesto with instructions on how to behead someone, and reminders to pray to Allah.
Clearly, religion objectively prayed a role.
It is laudable that the event is seeking to prevent hate. But in doing so through a manner which neglects facts, they may be seeking to prevent hate by promoting ignorance.
As the College Fix pointed out, authorities, university officials, and the campus as a whole blame it on how he was kicked out of a study group.
Not only that, but the College Fix also spoke with a student present at the teach-in who raised the issue of “Islamophobia,” in that faculty claimed that was why people wanted to consider it a terrorist attack. The student said they downplayed the role of radical Islam and instead focused on masculinity as the issue.
The audio recording the College Fix obtained also backs this up:
“So when you have this limited ability to sort of express your emotions and possible feelings of emasculation, of low self esteem, how do you really [deal with] that? A lot of times they … engage in violence. They need to compensate for their loss of masculinity in the most manly way they have access to, and unfortunately, a lot of times that’s violence.”
Those might be fair points, but they’re not so much relevant or useful. Even more concerning is the utter denial from some in the way in which they spin the narrative, all while accusing others of doing the same.
The Odyssey Online posted a column by PhD student Hassan Harb from Nov. 9 titled “UC Merced Students Say NO to Xenophobia.” That’s great. Except stating the facts as they are isn’t being xenophobic or not.
The post includes such features as calling out Fox News, a paragraph which contains the single sentence of “But the Bobcats decided to strike back!,” and bolding the word diversity.
Harb wrote that “the Chancellor and the police report insisted that this had nothing to do with terrorism.” And he claimed that:
It’s one thing to grieve a life. Mohammad, even though he committed such a horrible act and had to be killed so that others could be saved, was still a life. It’s another to be “aware that the suspect was passing through hard times.”
And, when you find an ISIS flag amongst his things, it’s a safe conclusion to say there might have been ties to radical Islamic terrorism. It’s at least forgivable that some would make the connection, and they shouldn’t have to be considered “xenophobic” for it.
