'Are You Muslim?' Hate Crime
 

'Are You Muslim?' Question Leads to Cabbie Stabbing, Hate Crime Charge


Driver Answered Yes, Passenger Pulled Knife, Says NYPD

A New York City cab driver was attacked Tuesday evening just after 6 p.m. by a passenger who asked him if he was Muslim, says the NYPD. A spokesman for a New York City cabbie group blamed the attack on the proposed construction of an Islamic center near Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attack, but police said they were not aware of any link.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/muslim...ry?id=11480081

******************

As many of you know, hate crimes are a form of informal social control that are used when the perpetrators feel that the laws and policies of society are failing them and "those people" are becoming more influential.

I hope he is convicted of attempted murder and punished to the fullest extent of the law. He's a waste of oxygen. Regardless of how you feel about the Islamic center being built, we have hate crime legislation for a very good reason.

You gotta have someone to hate, and the easiest way is to just pick whichever group is hot on Faux News today. The good news is gays and Mexicans can maybe take a breather for a minute. Or are haters good multi-taskers?

I won't get on my speech but suffice it to say that these types of hate crimes tend to be about more than just looking for someone to hate and finding the new hot topic. The 21 yo college student who perpetrated this crime had spent time in Afghanistan and perhaps used the Islamic center debate as a breaking point.

And I still don't understand why people have given Fox News a nickname. Surely people don't think Fox News is doing something that CNN and MSNBC are not.

More details: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...,5698658.story
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/25/...ex.html?hpt=T2

Last I heard the "alleged" slasher was in the psych ward for evaluation. That could affect how he'll be prosecuted moving forward.

And, Fox is worse about blurring the line between "news" and "opinion." It's a level of brazenness.

I'm not sure - I find MSNBC to be fairly slanted as well (the other way, obviously).

They're all slanted...it's just that Fox is slanted opposite of every other one, so it's an easy target. I don't believe half of what I hear on mainstream media, regardless of the source.

I agree, for me it's about the blurring though. I've never had a hard time separating the news side and the opinion side on MSNBC.

And I do really like Shep Smith on Fox, I just feel like he's the lone voice of sanity.

Exactly.

Back to the hate crime story. We shall see whether this man is able to lean on his mental state or something to escape the punishment that he deserves.

http://justiceleagueunlimited.files....aters-ball.jpg

"Well you see, hateration isn't just a casual thang, it's a sicence. We hate on a diverse array of mark-ass marks, trick-ass marks, punk bitches, skig-skag skanks and scallywags, ho's, heifers, heehaws, and hoolihoos."

+1 interwebs!

Hate Crime Laws are bullshit.

The penalties for a crime should be the same regardless of motivation.

This made me laugh out loud. Classic liberal double standard. Well, I'm on the conservative side and I've never had a hard time separating the news side and the opinion side on Fox News. Shall we call it a draw and all you liberals stop throwing out your "Faux News" slurs?


Totally agree with this!!!

Wow, "all you liberals?" Seriously? Comments on obviously slanted left and right news sources warrant that? Asking others not to throw out slurs while being insulting?

Well, if it's tit for tat: STFU and DIAF.

:rolleyes:

I guess I could say "classic conservative comeback," but that doesn't add anymore to the conversation than "clasic liberal double standard." It's so much easier to dismiss the opinions of others when you can just shrug them off as "classic liberal" or "classic conservative" jerks of the knee.

The law has long considered it permissible and appropriate to aggravate the penalty or seriousness of a crime based the offender's intent/motivation: assault with intent to kill, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, crimes committed for pecuniary gain, crimes committed for the purpose of impeding law enforcement . . . .

Right?? Why can't people see that?

Yet the penalties for treason are not the same as the penalties for theft or assault. The penalties for killing someone on purpose is not the same as killing them by accident.

Motivation is always important in crimes. Furthermore, like a previous poster said, if the motivation is to take the law into your own hands and control segments of the population through terror, then law enforcement has a burden to stomp it out. While people will always hate, they will always kill and steal, we make laws and punishments to discourage people from such actions. If you disagree with that, then you disagree with our whole legal system.

That's because treason, theft, assault, murder (first or second degree) and manslaughter are all different crimes with different elements. The differing penalties have nothing to do with motivation in those instances.

I thought manslaughter was unintentional while murder was intentional? I have no idea on the degree of murder though.

In that sense, and generally speaking, yes. Intent to kill is an element of murder; it is not an element of manslaughter.

But that's not the same as talking about motivation, or intent in the sense of motivation. Talking about motivation raises the question of whether someone who kills another because he is mad at him (motivation = anger) should be punished differently from someone who, say, kills another for money or beause the victim is black/Muslim/gay . . . .

Generally speaking, people who say there shouldn't be hate crime legislation are people who A) as MysticCat stated, don't realize that motivation and intent matter for most crimes and/or B) are not identified as members of power minority groups who tend to be the victims of hate crimes.

Got it.

Agree.

There is no way someone should burn a cross on a Black person's lawn and get charged with vandalism or trespassing. The same is true with spray painting swastikas on synagoges. I heard that this week someone walked in to a mosque and starting peeing on the prayer area and rugs. Is that disorderly conduct?
The thing about hate crimes is that you have to put yourself in the complete shoes of the minority group. That includes historical and socio-political context.

I also contend that intent/motivation is a factor in sentencing even if not explicitly. People who kill because they fear for their safety are usually not treated the same (by courts and/or juries) as people who kill for insurance money. Our legal system does not take kindly to people who use crime to enforce a vigilante form of justice or control. We don't like it when drug dealers try to silence witnesses. We don't like it when people shoot up abortion clinics and we don't like it when people try to intimidate or kill people because of their religious beliefs.

I completely agree. I think it's incredibly naive to think that hate crime laws should be abolished and they should be treated as normal crimes for all the reasons you guys have been stating.

Regarding this particular stabbing, I get the sense this guy was not in his right mind. Something seems off, but I guess we'll see what happens with that.

And finally, regarding the unfair and unbalanced reporting on cable news networks... the fact is the only "fair and balanced" network is C-SPAN. Period. The key to watching cable news is filtering out the bullshit and recognizing that everything--including how they choose headlines and what stories get the most time--in full of bias.

:rolleyes: You can sit at the grown-up table when you don't use liberal (or conservative) as a slam.

And I see hate crimes essentially as terrorism. It's an attack not just on the individual harmed but on the larger community.

Yep because it illicits fear and control based on group membership. Crime is as formulaic as any other human behavior. We can predict when hate crimes will increase and which groups will be the growing targets.

More losers:
Drunk shouts 'terrorists,' urinates on mosque rugs
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38863919

or C) People who realize that hate is in the intent for many (if not most)violent crimes, whether they be based on race or the fact that your wife is sleeping with another guy.

And I'm not sure how one defines "minority groups" since we're all minorities.

Furthermore, it's a bit difficult to discern whether or not the crime was motivated by hate for a certain group...

This is sort of unrelated, but this is an interesting story....
http://reason.com/blog/2008/03/07/pu...k-and-step-awa

It's a story about how a man was reprimanded for "Racial Harassment" for reading a book about how Notre Dame students fought the Klan in 1924 in front of African-American employees.

Are you serious?

Absolutely.

So . . . huh? The analogy just fails everywhere - there's no 'social control' aspect to killing your wife's lover. There is a strong precedent for the law to protect the minority from the majority - hate crime laws make tons of sense from that standpoint, and seem very American (in a variety of good and bad senses).

Luckily, the law does it for us, so we don't have to rely on specious interpretations of "minority" that lead to things like "we're all minorities."

I was hoping that you were joking. I find it hard to believe that you're not familiar with the power majority in this country.

You can't prove that there isn't "social control" in that analogy. Maybe that was the guys intent. His intent was to terrorize anyone that cheats. You don't know, and the law won't know.

Furthermore, someone who kills a person and says specifically "I hate this specific race" may have no intent on social control, but simply killed the person. Even if the most obvious "hate crime" is given, there's likely no proof there's "social control" unless he says "I plan to terrorize all persons of XYZ ethnicity". And then, I agree...some form of exacerbated punishment needs to be doled out. But I'm not sure that happens much.

Let's put this one out there:
If the precedent for the law was to protect the majority from the minority, then clearly if a black person kills a white person, and says expressly that he hates white people... he should only get simple murder. Or does it apply to all? And then, what necessity is the precedence if it applies to all?

I'm not sure it's a "specious interpretation", it's the interpretation of a definition of minority.

Incorrect.

Incorrect.

Incorrect.

I know you won't, because you can't disprove, but please do instead of simply saying "incorrect".

If I have you down correctly, it will be something like "I don't want to waste time on it" which is the surest sign that you can't disprove.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, everyone else knows what "social control" means.

This is when I must tell you to research. The origin of hate crime legislation does not mean that those who target the majority cannot be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It means that the legislation covers group victimization that is GENERALLY that of the minority.

When using broad terms such as "social control" one can construe it into any such form.

Yes, I know. I was using that person's definition.

Thank me later.....

First off, Elephant Walk, you tried to reduce "hate" in the sense that it is used for hate crimes to "anger" and negative emotionality. There is a huge difference between someone being murdered as a result of a bar fight (hint: most violent crimes have minimal planning and minimal targeting therefore the emotions and "hatred" are extremely shortlived and fleeting) as compared to someone who has a sense of group threat or rage that is directed at particular groups.

If you can't see the racial and ethnic references, think of it in terms of sexual offenses. There are sexual predators who target children and women and there are perpetrators of crimes such as rape and sexual assault which are about power (and not sex). The laws are geared toward the fact that these tend not to be as random in terms of intent and target as some other crimes are. All crimes are generally based on the daily routine activities of the perpetrator and the victims (hence you're more likely to be victimized by family, friend, or level of acquaintance than you are a complete stranger). But, crimes that target on the bases of sex, age, gender, sexual orientation, race, etc. are even more non-random. The perpetrator goes into it with that intention.

And, yes, we know all of this because of years of quantitative and qualitative research. I don't understand why people can't grasp that our social world is complex yet humans are generally profilable and predictable based on what we have studied about human behaviors.

Social control is not a broad term.

It means exactly what it sounds like. It is a macro-level approach to a sense of threat. Harming someone who cheats on you because you hate cheaters (as many people do) is not a social control mechanism.

This is difficult because we're not speaking in specific terms. You're generalizing in every sense of the word. Yes, SOME violent actions are like that. But, SOME are not.

Thus anger does not necessarily accompany hate, but SOMETIMES it does.

Generalizing, yet again.

I hope you don't do this for all your examples. Yes, SOMETIMES those things occur. SOMETIMES they don't.

I would sure hate to sentence someone to life in prison for generalizations.

I agree.

Obviously.

The point is that, you simply don't know. The intent of the person could be using it as a social control mechanism, whether or not you see it as one is irrelevent. The intent is there.

Some fraternity men wear tutus but you'd have a difficult time writing a speech about that exception to the rule. You'd be spinning in circles and twirling your thumbs up your ass waiting for someone to grasp the larger point while not being baffled by the rarity of fraternity men in tutus.

Caution: You're agreeing with me.

Wait, you agree when you said earlier that we don't know whether something is really a hate crime because we don't know the motivation and intent in most of these crimes?

Please make your mind up because I really hate (pun intended) "devil's advocates" and wishy washy discourse.