Whenever a frenzied stabbing, mass shooting or suicide bombing occurs, I try to reserve my judgement on who the perpetrator was and what motivated him. But these stories are becoming so common, that it is hard not to leap to certain conclusions. Still, I do the diligent thing and gather information from multiple news websites to form an accurate picture of the tragedy. I have been doing this for a while and have come to notice that in our PC world there is only one type of person who kills en masse.
When Ismaaiyl Brinsley killed two police officers and wounded his girlfriend in New York in December 2014, people wanted answers. They wanted to know what motivated him and whether this atrocity could have been prevented. Thankfully his family and the Chief of Police enlightened the public. They stated that Brinsley was not religiously motivated, but he may have been suffering from an undiagnosed, untreated mental illness. Thus, despite a complete lack of evidence to suggest a mental illness, and hard evidence to suggest religious motivation, a mental illness was still the preferred explanation.
If there is ever a choice in how to describe a perpetrator, the preferred description is always mentally ill. The guy who beheaded a co-worker in Oklahoma? mentally ill. The guy in Sydney who held a bunch of café patrons’ hostage? mentally ill. The bloke who killed a soldier at the Canadian War Memorial? Also mentally ill. By sheer coincidence they were all Muslims too. But let’s not entertain the idea that something else may have possibly caused their spasm of violence.
But all of this, does beg the question, why are so many people with violent mental illnesses also Muslims? Were they mentally ill due to Islam, or were they Muslims due to their mental illness. Or possibly, were the two completely unrelated? And why, without any evidence, is mental illness always the preferred explanation.
If I was a mentally ill person I would get pretty sick of these perpetrators being labelled as mentally ill. They are only ever considered mentally ill after their horrific spasm of violence. It is as if mental illness is only provided to deflect attention away from the far more likely explanation, which is that they are motivated by religion.
But, just remember, in our PC world, if there is ever a mass killing of any kind, and you wonder whether the perpetrator was motivated by religion or spurred on by a mental illness, it is always a mental illness. Evidence be damned.