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'They Are Us,' New Zealand PM Says of Mosque Shooting Victims
The Wired Word for the Week of March 24, 2019
IN THE NEWS
On March 15, a 28-year-old armed Australian man walked into Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, where hundreds of people were gathered for Friday Prayer, and opened fire. In nine minutes (including two minutes during which he left and returned -- all times approximate), he killed 42 people and wounded many others. He then drove about three miles to the Linwood Islamic Centre where he killed seven more worshipers. One other victim died later in the hospital, bringing to 50 the number killed. The perpetrator left after a few minutes, when a mosque member began to fight back, using what he could find at hand. Police captured the killer about 36 minutes after he started his rampage.
The mass murder was the deadliest in modern New Zealand history. The ages of those killed ranged from 2 to 71.
As of the most recent report available at the time of this writing, another 50 people between the two shooting sites were injured, with 36 being treated for gunshot wounds, and two of those in serious condition. Using a camera affixed to his helmet, the killer live-streamed the first of the attacks on Facebook Live, from which some Internet users reposted it. Online sites have since taken the videos down.
The perpetrator is described in media reports as an alt-right affiliated white supremacist and a terrorist, though a TWW consultant who has read his manifesto says the perpetrator describes himself as an "eco-fascist" who is opposing what he sees as a "genocide" against his culture, race and ethnicity, and that he is as likely to use the term "Europe[an]" as "white," mixing and conflating the terms quite freely. He specifically mentioned attacking Muslims in "revenge" for the Muslim invasions of Europe over the centuries, the Muslim enslavement of kidnapped Europeans, as well as other conflicts. In particular, he stated that he sought revenge for Ebba Akerlund, an 11-year-old Swedish schoolgirl killed by a jihadi attacker in 2017. He describes the girl as "young, innocent, and dead" -- and the trigger for his political beliefs.
Like the 9/11 terrorists, the shooter apparently sees himself as a warrior against an enemy cultural attack. He obviously is not a stable individual -- he claims to have been, successively, "a communist, then an anarchist and finally a libertarian before coming to be an eco-fascist."
Strong condemnation of the attack as well as statements of support and solidarity with the New Zealand Muslim community as well as with local Islamic groups have flowed in from around the world, coming from political figures, leaders from several religions and many other people.
The Jewish community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recalling the support from Muslim communities last year after a gunman killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, set up a fund to aid the New Zealand victims and their' families. Following the killings at the synagogue, "Muslims Unite for Pittsburgh Synagogue" used a crowdfunding campaign to raise more than $200,000 to help the shooting victims. Now the Jewish community in Pittsburgh is reciprocating the kindness, "paying it forward" to the New Zealand Islamic community.
Among Christian groups, leaders as varied as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the archbishop of Canterbury and the pope of the Roman Catholic Church have expressed support for and solidarity with the Muslim community, using terms like "neighbors" and "brothers and sisters" and others to indicate the sharing of a common humanity.
As the news of the shooting was coming in, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern broadcast a short speech to the nation. Here are part of her remarks: “Whilst I cannot give any confirmation at this stage around fatalities and casualties, what I can say is that it is clear that this is one of New Zealand's darkest days… Clearly, what has happened here is an extraordinary and unprecedented act of violence. Many of those who will have been directly affected by this shooting may be migrants to New Zealand, they may even be refugees here. They have chosen to make New Zealand their home, and it is their home.
“They are us. The person who has perpetrated this violence against us is not. They have no place in New Zealand. There is no place in New Zealand for such acts of extreme and unprecedented violence, which it is clear this act was. For now, my thoughts, and I'm sure the thoughts of all New Zealanders, are with those who have been affected, and also with their families.”
Ardern also said that New Zealand's gun laws would be reformed (and in fact, within 24 hours, New Zealand unanimously passed a ban on assault-style, rapid-fire weapons.—PM).
More on this story can be found at these links:
Suspect in New Zealand Mosque Shootings Was Prepared 'To Continue His Attack,' PM Says. CNN
A Mass Murder of, and for, the Internet. The New York Times
Jewish Group Reciprocates Kindness to the Muslim Community in New Zealand After Massacre. CNN
Religious Leaders Stand in Solidarity With Muslims in New Zealand. Church Leaders
THE BIG QUESTIONS
1. What does it mean to you to say that a person is "one of us"? Whom does that include? Whom does it exclude?
2. What does it mean to you to "stand in solidarity" with those who were attacked?
3. Given that most American Christians don't personally know any of the victims of the mosque massacre and don't have an intimate knowledge of Islam, what helps you distinguish the worshipers at the New Zealand mosques from Islamic extremists? What do you think helps Muslims distinguish between Christians and Christian extremists?
4. What can you do as an individual to steer fellow Americans away from extremist attitudes regarding people of faiths different from their own?
CONFRONTING THE NEWS WITH SCRIPTURE AND HOPE
Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:
Genesis 4:6-7
The LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it." (For context, read 4:1-12.)
In commentary on the Christian Today website about the New Zealand attack on Muslim worshipers, Rev. Mark Woods, a Baptist minister, referenced these two verses and the larger story of Cain and Abel as "a foundational text when it comes to understanding the nature of human beings. It sheds a cold light on what happened ... in New Zealand."
"In the story," Woods said, "God looks with favor on Abel's offering, but not on Cain's. No reason is given; that's just how things are. Very often there is no apparent reason why one person succeeds in life and another fails. The question is what we do with our failures. God says to Cain: 'Why are you angry?'" and then Woods quotes the rest of the two verses above.
Woods continues, "We don't know what led the Christchurch killer to do what he did. At one level, it's important to find out; at another, not so much. Because the Bible lays out the path to murder very precisely. There is a movement toward evil, an opening of the self to wrongdoing. Then 'sin' -- personified as a sort of [lurking] beast, waiting in ambush -- pounces, and there is a struggle between the desire to do right and the desire to do wrong. 'You must master it,' God says, but by then it is often too late. It was for Cain; it was for yesterday's murderer too. It mastered him."
What, for the killer, was the equivalent of Cain's rejected sacrifice? Woods asks. "A grudge against others he thought were more successful than him? A fear of those he saw as 'other'? A twisted loyalty to his own race or religion? What led him to walk toward the doorway into hell, where sin was crouching? Hate groups on social media, far-right conspiracy theories, drugs, bad company?"
"We might find out one day," Woods says, "But what's more important than satisfying our curiosity is recognizing the power of sin. It draws us where we don't want to go, until we find we do want to go there, and then it has mastered us. … The ancient story of Cain and Abel tells us that murder is the ultimate consequence of a movement toward evil, and that this movement is one we're all capable of making. Islamophobia, racism and resentment are the claws of the beast."
Questions: What do you make of Woods' assertion that crouching sin led the New Zealand shooter toward evil? Is he right that "Islamophobia, racism and resentment are the claws of the beast"? What other claws of the beast do you recognize as lurking in this life that work against us seeing others as kin?
Luke 10:29
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" (For context, read 10:25-37.)
The question above, asked by a lawyer who wanted to "test Jesus" (v. 25), is what led Jesus to tell the parable we call the Good Samaritan. Jesus doesn't state the ethnicity of the man in the parable who fell into the hands of robbers, but given that Jesus was talking to a Jewish audience and that he obviously wanted them to identify with this man, it's probable that his hearers saw the man as one of us. Thus, when Jesus introduced the Samaritan into the story as the rescuer of the beaten man, the audience would have identified him as not one of us.
Jesus, however, wanted his hearers to identify the Samaritan by a different term: neighbor.
Questions: Why is it vital to recognize our common humanity with people who are different from us? Is "one of us" an acceptable synonym for "neighbor"? Why or why not? Who have you thought of as "Samaritans," outsiders toward whom you felt distrust and dislike? What has your experience taught you about those you first thought about in such ways?
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