"Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
I'm curious about Ricochet reactions to this Monday incident here in Columbus, OH:
The FBI has begun a civil-rights investigation because a Muslim woman said she was harassed and pepper-sprayed outside a West Side mosque Monday afternoon.
[...]
The FBI will report its findings to the Department of Justice civil-rights division in Washington to determine whether hate-crime charges should be filed, said FBI spokesman Mike Brooks of the Cincinnati field office.
First reaction, the offender (assuming he's caught - the assault was recorded by a security camera) should be punished as the stupid criminal he is. More importantly: why on earth would the FBI and the Department of Justice be involved in an Ohio assault case?
Ever since the term "hate crime" was first shoved in my face in college I have... well, I've hated it. Why is it important that [Insert name of protected group here]-phobia be treated as a crime worse than assault? Would creeps like the guy who attacked this Somali woman be any less of a menace to society if they cussed out and pepper-sprayed only random people, or rich people, or pudgy heterosexual white people?
The entire concept of hate crime is political correctness run amok - and it provides rich soil for tools like Romin Iqbal at the Council on American-Islamic Relations:
"I can't say that it never happens, but it's not something that happens every week," Brooks said of such attacks.
Romin Iqbal, a lawyer with CAIR's Columbus chapter, said Said's ordeal is part of a pattern of hatred across the nation toward Muslims living in American society.
Am I alone here? Do hate crime laws have some merit that I'm missing? Should federal agencies and professional victim groups be involved in every act of violence that happens in America?
Bonus question: how is it that CAIR can identify scattered assaults and vandalism as a nationwide pattern of hatred while failing to do the same for Islamic terrorism?
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Jun '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
Hate-crime laws are thought-crime laws, pure and simple. They are additionally exclusionary, which kind of forfeits the whole point. Even the rationale that supposedly justifies them doesn't stand up to scrutiny. I'm still a little curious as to why the FBI and DoJ are involved in this.
May '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
Hate crime laws have no merit because they punish the convictions that motivate assault. A man my aggress against another because he subscribes to some form of racism, but the government should apprehend the aggressor in this case because of his aggression, not because of the ideas that motivate aggression. It is legal to be a racist and should be legal to be a racist. The government should not delve into the realm of ideas since it is only an instrument of force and one cannot use force to compel rationality. Rationality is a choice and it cannot be imposed upon another. Racists will remain racists unless they choose otherwise. All the government should do is punish violent racists because of their violence, not because of their racism.
Edited on Dec 22, 2010 at 9:43pmDec '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
Every crime, in essence, is a hate crime. Creating a special law for a "hate" crime is unconstitutional in that it seeks an "unusual" punishment as others point out. It punishes thought which is truly weird indeed.
Jun '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
Hate crime legislation serves the leftist agenda in a number of ways:
1. It panders to certain constituent groups of the Democratic base keeping them firmly in the party.
2. It undermines the rule of law by affording special rights to designated grievance groups thereby providing a justification for wealth redistribution.
3. It excludes various demographic groups (e.g. white, male, and Christian) from its protection in order to foster national disunity. Democrats prefer a balkanized populace because small groups based in identity politics are easier to control.
4. And it reinforces politically correct thinking by exploiting individual incidents as public spectacle.
Edited on Dec 23, 2010 at 11:01amMay '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
Thanks for your thoughts, guys - always nice to know that if I'm crazy, at least I've got company!
I'll post another conversation if anything especially interesting comes of this case, though my guess is CAIR Columbus will file it in their catalog of America's unforgivable crimes after the perpetrator is charged with both Felony Assault and Impure Thought.
Aug '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
Paules nails it. Keep the balkanized groups fearful and grouped together, Canetti noted how easily that kind crowd can be mobilized, yet control is problematic. The thought crime concept is valid as well as it is always directed to those not toeing the government line . Occaisonal arrests are for show , doubtful anyone is doing time that didn't do a real crime . As for added penalty, most felony conviction sentence are only fractionally enforced.
Edited on Dec 23, 2010 at 11:08amRe: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
What we have here is affirmative action in criminal law -- an abandonment of the notion that we should all receive equal protection under the law for a system in which there is an aristocracy of victims. Hate-crime laws should -- along with affirmative action --be declared unconstitutional under the equal protection clause.
May '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
As Steyn often says, we're all equal under the law, but some are more equal than others.
Nov '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
CAIR is a jihadi front, Jason. Why on Earth would they want to call our attention to any pattern of Islamic terrorism?
We are agreed that the very concept of a "hate crime" is a legal abomination.
But there is another factor at work here, too. CAIR and similar groups have figured the game out and they are working it very hard. It boils down to this:
No matter how badly Muslims behave, no matter how much innocent blood they spill, they are always (at all times and in all places) the victims — or, to be more precise, potential victims. Mark Steyn summed it up beautifully with a parody headline (I paraphrase from memory): Muslims Fear Islamophobic Backlash after Terrorist Attack Tomorrow.
If a Muslim bomber kills 200 people, jihadi sympathisers react by practically reading off a cue card: "Who cares about the 200 dead non-believers? What about us? We have feelings, too. Please don't hate us, you dirty Islamophobic pigs. Or we'll sue."
The idea is to keep us off-balance and constantly on the defensive. And our Caliph-in-Chief and the rest of his idiotic administration play right along with it.
Edited on Dec 23, 2010 at 12:31pmJul '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
I dunno, guys. I see no problem with using evidence of an offender's animus against a particular group as at least an aggravating factor in sentencing, if perhaps not a separate category of offense. Incidentally, I remember reading somewhere that a large percentage of "hate crime" prosecutions were of minority defendants against white victims, so it's not just about protecting minorities from white people.
The thing about "hate crimes" (as generally presented) is that in most cases they really are more heinous than other forms of assault, because they are random and unprovoked. Someone attacking a stranger outside her house of worship is worse than one mouthy drunk taking a poke at another mouthy drunk in a bar.
And I guess I'm just in favor of any law that will actually make liberals willing to put violent criminals in jail and keep them there.
I kid, I kid. But not by much.
Nov '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
I agree that hate crime laws have to go.
Why they came into existence, and why the FBI and DoJ, are involved, are important. The laws were introduced in the 1964 Civil Rights legislation, and - if IIRC - (I was only a teenager) - were primarily useful for investigating what would now be considered terrorist organizations, like the KKK. At the time, leaving this in the hands of various states was not an option, because the major political machines and law enforcement in those states (largely Democratic, fwiw) also had close ties to such organizations.
Further, most legislators were old enough to have sharp memories of Hitlerism and its rise to power based on political destabilization through racial and class warfare. They also lived under the threat of Communism, which had succeeded in China and the USSR through similar means. Involving federal agencies at the time made sense because the threat to the nation as a whole from aggression against an individual's rights was, for them, clear.
America is a very different place than it was 45 years ago; the misuse of the law simply shows it's job has been done, it's time for it to go.
Dec '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
Right you are, Jason. The hate crime issue would be merely silly if it weren't actually a front to allow the (selective) prosecution of thought crimes.
May '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
Hate crime laws extend naturally from thinking of people not as individuals but as classes. In other words, it's hard to see how a bashed-in face on Victim A is any more heinous than the same injury on Victim B, or how the hatred that drives the fist forward is any different. But if you look at the world as Classes, and if you're conditioned to give some Classes preferential treatment, then – voila! -- you have a new category of crime.
Prof. Rahe's right: hate crime laws should be struct down on Equal Protection grounds.
Sep '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
I'm no legal scholar, but it has been pointed out elsewhere that state of mind, motive, and intention are the difference between murder and manslaughter. I don't like hate crimes law for all the reasons commenters have cited here, but I can see that there is legal reasoning behind them, not just legislatively and judicially sanctioned victim-mongering. As Wylee Coyote said, hate crimes are often worse than assaults caused by less socially shameful motives. As with so many things, if only there were some way to prevent irresponsible and bad people from perverting the laws for cheap political gain, and only prosecute real evildoers.
May '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
"Hate crimes" are synonymous with thought crimes and, as Prof. Rahe states create an aristocracy of victims. One of the best arguments against crimes against hate was written by Andrew Sullivan: http://www.racematters.org/nytarchjb206.htm.
Jul '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
Neither am I. The difference, as I understand it, is that while motive is an element useful in proving the commission of a crime, it's not, of itself, a crime.
Do "hate crimes" laws merely say: these are plausible motives?
Or do they say: believing this is criminal?
Edited on Dec 23, 2010 at 10:24pmMay '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
Is it me or is the entire left-wing agenda motivated by a kind of (ahem) hate? They resort to ad hominem arguments driven by a barely disguised emotion that resembles h*te, doncha think?
Nov '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
You are absolutely right.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/they-hate-our-guts_511739.html
Jul '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
Palaeologus Neither am I. The difference, as I understand it, is that while motive is an element useful in proving the commission of a crime, it's not, of itself, a crime.
Do "hate crimes" laws merely say: these are plausible motives?
Or do they say: believing this is criminal? · Dec 23 at 10:23pm
Edited on Dec 23 at 10:24 pm
But that's just it. In "hate crimes" prosecutions, it isn't the hate that is being prosecuted, it's the crime. The hate is merely an aggravating factor. You can't be charged with a hate crime for hating someone. But if you act on that hate with violence, you can.
May '10
Re: "Hate" Crimes and Islamophobia
I get that - labeling something as a hate crime is essentially a step up from adding "Aggravated" at the beginning of the charge. The point you made earlier was a good one, too; if a crime's motive is impersonal (attacking someone because they're gay, black, Muslim, or whatever) it makes the violence seem especially senseless.
I still don't see justification for a policy which, as Prof. Rahe mentioned, flies in the face of the equal protection clause. Assault should be treated as assault, with mitigating and aggravating factors handled by the prosecutor's office instead of the FBI or the DOJ.