RUTHFULLY YOURS

Yesterday an angry leftist supporter of the Ground Zero Mosque shot three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina over a parking dispute.  Jibril Hough, the spokesman for the Islamic Center of Charlotte, called the parking space shooting “domestic terrorism.”

Which “domestic terrorist” group did Craig Stephen Hicks, the shooter, belong to? His Facebook likes give us a partial clue. Maybe it was “Liberals Against Conservative Propaganda,” “LGBT Activism” or “The Rachel Maddow Fan Page.”

There’s no doubt that the Islamic Center of Charlotte has a great deal of expertise when it comes to terrorism. It was owned by the North American Islamic Trust which the FBI described as supporting Jihad in the United States. NAIT was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case over that charity’s funneling of money to Hamas.

Four years ago, Hough had defended Hamas. Instead he claimed that America and Israel were the real terrorists.

“What is ‘terrorism?” Jibril Hough asked. “Terrorism against Iraqis, Palestinians, Afghanis?”

Apparently shooting people over a parking dispute is terrorism, but terrorist groups murdering Americans and Israelis in a holy war isn’t.

While the police, the brother of one of the victims and the shooter’s wife had agreed that the issue was a parking dispute, not Islam, the usual Islamic advocacy groups rushed to get in on the victimhood. CAIR called on law enforcement to, in its own words, “address speculation about a bias motive.” But it’s not the job of the police to address online speculation. It’s their job to deal with the actual evidence.

CAIR has its own extensive history with actual terrorism. CAIR’s Nihad Awad, who asked the Federal authorities to step in, had said, “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”

There is no need to speculate as to Awad’s position on terrorism. He has already told us what it is.

While Deah Barakat’s brother stated that Hicks had not made anti-Muslim remarks, his wife’s father began claiming that it was a hate crime. Linda Sarsour, who had expressed sympathy for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, is currently being quoted as the “family spokeswoman.”

On Twitter, Linda Sarsour complained that CNN had described the Al Qaeda attack in Paris as terrorism, but not Hicks’ parking space shooting. It’s a predictable agenda from Sarsour who has a history of spreading conspiracy theories about Muslim terrorist attacks in the United States.

The only reason to bring Linda Sarsour into a case is to manufacture victimhood and conspiracy theories.

But the truth is that Hicks did not single out the people he shot because they were Muslim. He did it because he was obsessed, not with Muslims or even atheism, but with parking spaces.

A tow truck driver described Hicks as manically fixated on his parking space. According to him, Hicks was making calls nearly every day to have cars towed.

“The news is saying, ‘hate crime, hate crime,’ but then I found out it was that guy and I thought, ‘Hmm, it actually might have been a parking issue,’” the tow truck driver said. “He was all about towing.”

One of his neighbors, Robert Maitland, said, “This man was frustrated day in and day out about not being able to park where he wanted.”

On Facebook, Hicks called the entire thing “my parking lot” and described calling the police on a couple in their car who were not, apparently, even in what he considered his space.

But on Twitter, Jibril Hough, who had defended Hamas, claimed that Hicks was the “atheist version of ISIS.” “Who shoots 3 people in the head over a parking spot?” he demanded.” A Rasict and Islamophobic man in Chapel Hill.”

Or a man who was really attached to his parking space. But who plants bombs in supermarkets, sends suicide bombers to buses and murders Rabbis in synagogues? Not terrorists, according to Jibril Hough.

The atheist version of ISIS wouldn’t be a guy who shot people over a parking space. It would be a mass movement of angry Bill Maher fans beheading Muslims and then turning their women into sex slaves. That hasn’t happened. What is happening is that Muslim groups with ties to terrorism use every opportunity to promote Muslim victimhood, whether Muslims kill or are killed in an ordinary crime.

Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins and other “militant atheists” are not urging their followers to kill Muslims. Meanwhile Charlotte area Muslims like Samir Khan, who founded Al Qaeda’s Inspire magazine, have done just that. Khan called September 11 an “act of retaliation.” He was later taken out by a drone.

Jibril Hough ought to be familiar with Khan as his family attends the Islamic Center of Charlotte.

Maher and Dawkins are critics of Islam. If Jibril Hough wants to see ISIS, he can look in his own mosque. Or he can look to his fellow organizer of Jumah at the DNC, Imam Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj was an unindicted coconspirator in the World Trade Center bombing who said, “You don’t need nuclear weapons or even guns! If you have faith in Allah and a knife!”

In a sermon he stated, “I will never ever tell people, ‘don’t be violent, that is not the Islamic way.’ The violence has to be selected.”

Jibril Hough and other Muslim leaders are playing up the Chapel Hill shootings to divert attention from the likes of Siraj Wahhaj and Samir Khan.

Islamists like Hough are quick to play the victim by labeling anything Muslims don’t like as terrorism and equally quick to deny that a Muslim atrocity is terrorism. There is a deep failure of empathy behind that attitude that goes a long way to explaining everything from ISIS to Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood.

Meanwhile Sam Wazan, author of “The Last Moderate Muslim”, blamed Pamela Geller and FOX News for the shootings.  If we believe Sam, then the shooter, in between enjoying the work of Sarah Silverman, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson, was getting his politics from their exact opposites.

Craig Stephen Hicks was not a terrorist. He was an angry leftist whose three great passions in life seemed to be loathing Christianity, gay rights and protecting his parking space. Those subjects made up the bulk of his contribution to social media.

Nor was he remotely of the right. His politics were shot through with leftist anger. And while he did despise religion, he hated Christians and conservatives so much that he was willing to defend the Ground Zero Mosque and to ridicule the American Family Association for complaining about Halal.

Like many on the left, Hicks hated Christians and conservatives so much that he was willing to overcome his hatred of religion to defend Muslims. Not consistently, but he had clearly picked a side.

In a perverse way, Hicks had much in common with the Hamas supporters who are exploiting his killing spree. Like them, Hicks felt a misguided sense of ownership for a particular space and was willing to kill innocent people for it. In his own mind, his murderous behavior was justified by his outrage.

Many Muslim activists traffic in that same entitled outrage. Like Hicks, they justify horrifying atrocities through their outrage. It was that attitude which led to the murders in Chapel Hill. Instead of treating the tragedy as a reality check, Muslim leaders like Jibril Hough and Linda Sarsour have retreated into an entitled victimhood devoid of empathy for others that they unfortunately share with Craig Hicks.