RE: Terrorist Attack In New Orleans – Resist The Urge To Scapegoat

2025 is off to a bloody start in the USA with a violent terrorist attack in New Orleans. As despicable as the villain was who perpetrated this attack, we let his ideology win if we scapegoat an entire group as a result.

Confronting Our Urge To Scapegoat After New Orleans Terrorist Attack

In an unrelated post yesterday, a regular reader left the following comment:

The news is it was a Muslim terrorist who killed and maimed the innocent people just celebrating New Years in NOLA. Once again showing it’s a cult of jealousy and hatred of Americans.

For all of you who support them living here, you are contributing to the animal’s actions. Even worse is those of you who “visit” the wastelands of humanity they come from. You are funding their terrorist goals. Keep saying it’s only a “few”, it’s not, it’s imbedded in their religion. And too many have forgotten 9/11, they would do it again if they could.

The anger average Americans are going to have against them in the coming days is well deserved. F you Mr Jabbar! RIP innocent victims.

I do understand the anger. I’m angry too at the pig named Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old, Texas-born US citizen who served in US Army and worked for accounting firm Deloitte. While information is still emerging about his motives, it appears Jabbar was radicalized after a messy second divorce. After originally planning to murder his family, decided to murder New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans instead.

I’ve lamented the debauchery of New Orleans in the past, but that debauchery does not remotely justify the carnage inflicted on 01/01.

Had Jabbar still been alive, I would have advocated for his swift execution…our appeals system is a hallmark of equal justice under law, but in this case there is incontrovertible evidence in the form of a manifesto and surveillance footage of his attack. Hang him without delay.

But scapegoating is the worst type of overreaction and serves to at least partially validate Jabbar’s radical hatred that inspired his attack.

Scapegoating is a hostile tactic often employed to characterize an entire group of individuals according to the unethical or immoral conduct of a small number of individuals belonging to that group.

How little we have learned through history when we condemn a whole people for the actions of a subset of them.

Rather than foolishly lump all Muslim Americans with the “terrorist”  label, I want to paint a contrast and praise Salwa Sarameh, a lovely Muslim woman who owns a Mediterranean restaurant called Oasis in Gallup, New. Mexico. I recently enjoyed a delicious dinner there and was impressed not only by the warm hospitality and succulent lamb kabobs followed by knafeh, but the entrepreneurial spirit that is at the core of the United States…something that makes me proud to be an American.

How dare any of you say, “X is like this so everyone who looks like X or has the same faith system as X is like this.” It’s pure ignorance and absolutely counterproductive in creating a society in which we can all flourish together.

We live in a land in which “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” As much as I love the trappings of the Church of England or the Evangelische Kirche (EKD) in Germany, I’m so thankful for the separation of church and state in the USA that has allowed faith to flourish and prevented government overreach, including during the pandemic. Let’s celebrate that across the ideological spectrum and realize that such freedom and mutual respect has allowed all of us to prosper together…a blessing of being an American citizen.

It’s very simple: judge others on their own merits, not by their religion or skin color. We all make this country a little better than when we do so. I condemn the NOLA terrorist attacks and mourn for the lost. But a tragic situation becomes all the more tragic when we respond by scapegoating.