Mass shootings and the islamic response
Every time I go to pray in the masjid, I fear I will never see my family again. I suppose everyone feels that way nowadays since mass shootings and violence happen in random places at random times to random people. You may feel the same way before you head out to the grocery store, your local Walmart or when you drop your child off to school. As the shootings and violence increases, the fear has become more palpable to everyone.
Just recently, we were warned of two suspicious males hanging around different masjids in the area with out-of-state plates. The Muslim community is being asked to suspend all activities in the masjids for the next 24 hours and keep an eye out for suspicious activity. To me, that only means that potential victims have every right to feel scared and their freedom curbed while potential killers have every right to exercise their freedom and walk without fear.
But shouldn’t it be the other way around? If we are too petrified to exercise our freedom, do we really have any freedom, and is it not true that freedom is then reserved only for the criminals of our society?
Here is the problem. Violence is being tolerated to a degree never imagined before even while the number of casualties mount daily. Over the last Memorial Holiday weekend, 17 shootings left 13 dead and 79 injured from cities across the country including Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Memphis and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Still nothing is being done to curb this unpredictable pattern of mayhem.[1]
The danger in our lack of response to the increasing violence is our desensitization to it. Eventually, a time will come when we expect to be shot down the next time we pick up a gallon of milk from the grocery store because that is how normal society will function. So, the increasing rate of violence without a swift and firm response is to our detriment.
Brothers and sisters, time is not our side.
But desensitization is also the reason for our lack of response mainly because violence is a vital source of entertainment. We enjoy watching it on the big screen and even allow our children to be violent, albeit virtually in video games. In fact, if you ever had the guts to watch the livestreamed shooting of some of the mass-shooters, you may have been under the impression that you were watching a first-person shooter video game.
Now the true-crime genre has added another level of fun, to the meaning of violence. The books and movies inspired by real acts of violence take you into the mind of a psychopath or a serial killer and how they maimed and cut up their victims. These criminals achieve new levels of infamy with major media journalists visiting them in their prison cells, taking their interviews and creating documentaries of their sick lives. The psychology of any depraved psycho would only be encouraged by such glorification commit their own very first act of violence.
For example, the Happy Face Killer was a 2014 Canadian-American television film that was inspired by the serial killer Hunter Jesperson. This is what he always wanted. He was very disappointed to hear he did not get the attention he thinks he deserved after his first murder. That kicked off a series of murders.
Even the nicknames that labels a killer on the loose is so encouraging. There is the Green River Killer, the Unabomber, the Zodiac Killer, and many more. These guys love the notoriety. We and the media love to delve on them while they love basking in all the attention. As Jack Levin writes,
“Becoming a popular-culture celebrity is an important part of the motivation that inspires serial killers to continue committing murder. Once they are identified with a superstar moniker, their frequency of murder increases. No longer satisfied with obscurity, they seek to prove that they deserve the superstar status to which they have been assigned.”[2]
As far as violence in movies is concerned, we don’t mind witnessing all the gory details of violence because we know it is just a big act. No one is actually dying, the blood is most likely red-food coloring, and the reality is actually very different. The victim and murderer will rise after the scene is over, maybe give each other a hug and move to the next scene. In the meantime, the viewers are still terrified by the violence of the act, while subconsciously comforted by the fact that it is not real.
But what about real life?
No way! Have you seen how funerals rites take place? It is a good place to start to understand how discomforted we are by a real-life death even its mildest form. The deceased is embalmed and dressed to suit a wedding ceremony. The dress code for mourners is to wear black, but that doesn’t mean style is going to be compromised. Their formal dresses and suits miss the mark in understanding that death will come upon all of us and we need to prepare accordingly.
The manicured lawns and overhanging trees of the cemetery are the same story all over again. They are fit for a picnic had it not been for the tombstones to remind you it’s the home of the dead. It’s a stage show to cover up the reminder of the imminence of death. Something no one wants to know or see.
If we shy from the sight of death at a funeral, how are we going to handle an image that shows what really happens in a shooting especially when a weapon like the Ar-15 is in use.
The AR-15 is a weapon of mass destruction. It decapitates and dismembers. It was the weapon of choice in the Vietnam War against the Vietcong.[3] It has also been the go-to weapon by many mass shooters in the past few years. Just in case you didn’t know, after the Uvalde shooting, the police made a chilling request to the parents. They needed DNA samples to help identify their children.
You know why?
The AR-15 had ripped the little innocents beyond recognition. But know this much:
In a typical gunshot wound, the bullet flies clean through an organ leaving a small, thin track that is not usually fatal. With the high-velocity bullet discharged by the AR-15, the organ recedes from the trajectory of the bullet like water when ploughed by a ship in the sea. The damage is irreversible and the wound always fatal. One radiologist examining a wound from an AR-15 described it like an ‘overripe melon smashed by a sledgehammer.’ The exit point of the bullet is ‘usually the size of an orange.’[4]
Need I say more about goriness.
All these rampages were widely reported, but have you seen a single nauseating image of how the AR-15 ravaged the victims? Did you hear or see any gruesome image of bodies blown up by this murderous weapon?
Nina Berman, a Columbia journalism professor writes, “For a culture so steeped in violence, we spend a lot of time preventing anyone from actually seeing that violence” … “Something else is going on here, and I’m not sure it’s just that we’re trying to be sensitive.”[5]
David Boardman, the dean of Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication, tweeted, “Couldn’t have imagined saying this years ago, but it’s time—with the permission of a surviving parent—to show what a slaughtered 7-year-old looks like. Maybe only then will we find the courage for more than thoughts and prayers.”
What many journalists and public advocates have been calling for is not harsher gun control laws, since a madman doesn’t necessarily need a gun to kill anyone. Stricter gun control is like Tylenol for the plague.
These journalists and other advocates for change are calling for the images of violence to be made public property. Let people see what really happens when an AR-15 comes in the hands of a madman. Show the gruesome images to the public and let them be incited to action. It has worked before.
In 1955, after her son was murdered by two white men and thrown in the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi, Mamie Till-Mobley invited the photographer David Jackson to take photos of her disfigured son, Emmett Till. She wanted the world to see how racism works and what it does for society. The photo helped spark the civil rights movement.
An image known as the ‘Whipped Peter’ depicted a runaway slave sitting on a chair. His back looked like shredded skin from top to bottom, the handiwork of the plantation overseer where the slave toiled. The abolitionists used this visual incrimination of slavery and racism to win over the North states most of whom had never seen the subjugation of black people.
I understand a sensitivity to gruesome images. They make us sick to the stomach, but they also give us a huge benefit. By access to the real face of violence, we are rid of complacency and forced into positive action. This maybe the reason why so much exaggerated effort is made to conceal the true identity of all this mayhem.
Since no one really sees what shootings do and the bloodbath they cause, we create a false sense of security for ourselves against death. So sensitized we have become to the maiming of our own conscience by this dark, inescapable reality that we continue to suppress any gruesome images that can be potential advocates for change.
Breaking that sensitivity and our desire to live in a delusional world where nothing evil happens is key to making the world a better place.
But gruesome images of the victims of shootings is not the solution.
Neither is gun control laws.
We are getting it all wrong.
For the images to fall into the hands of journalists or anyone, families must approve. The pain of seeing a loved one in a state spoiled beyond recognition is a trauma that is as fresh as the first day they learned of their loved one’s death.
It is like sprinkling salt over a wound.
This is why after the Newtown shooting the state of Connecticut passed an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act which allowed agencies to bar journalists from access to grisly photos and police records of the Newtown shooting victims. The idea was to protect the privacy of the victims’ families.[6]
To allow these images to be published and printed would mean to make families suffer twice; one, the death of their loved one and second, refreshing that pain and victimizing them through the images.
Hardly makes any sense.
As a Muslim, I wonder why even the question of putting up gruesome images has not already been put down as uncivilized and barbaric. I assume that it is not because we are trying to look at the bigger picture; to help curb violence and establish peace in society.
That is the whole purpose of qisas as mentioned in the Quran. There is life for you in qisas, of people of wisdom, so that you may refrain (from killing) (2:179).”
Qisas means public execution of a criminal for the letting of blood. It seems like a terrible thing to do, and that is true, but after all these shootings and all the terror they have spread in society, we have hopefully gained enough wisdom to know that Islam may offer the final solution on how to breathe some life back into society. Instead of victimizing a family member while giving the spotlight complete with biographies, documentaries, and dedicated T.V. series to the criminal, maybe its time to knock some sense into our heads.
How about shedding blood of the perpetrator for his crimes in a way that serves as a lesson for all others?
Too barbaric? If being civilized means to punish victims and glorify serial killers, then call me uncivilized by all means.
I hate to be pessimistic, but I don’t expect anyone to embrace the most sensible measure that only Islam offers to a raging epidemic where bloodshed is capitalized on for business ventures[7] and fads.[8]
But you never know. That’s why I wrote the article.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/dead-23-injured-wave-weekend-mass-shootings-us/story?id=85341621
[2] https://web.northeastern.edu/jfox/Columns/usatoday%20monikers%20oct%2023.htm
[3] https://www.gawker.com/the-ar-15-was-built-for-slaughter-in-war-zones-1781891338
[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/02/what-i-saw-treating-the-victims-from-parkland-should-change-the-debate-on-guns/553937/
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/30/us/politics/photos-uvalde.html
[6] https://www.rcfp.org/connecticut-passes-law-restricting-access-newtown-shooting-other-pol/
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2019/sep/18/bstroy-school-shooting-hoodies-clothes-line-backlash
[8] https://web.northeastern.edu/jfox/Columns/usatoday%20monikers%20oct%2023.htm
