Worries of religious hatred surround killing of three Muslims
It was a little after 5pm, a quiet time in a quiet neighbourhood, before many people had returned home from work on Tuesday, when two women called 911 to report multiple gunshots and screams echoing through a condominium complex here near the University of North Carolina (UNC).
By the time the police arrived, three people were dead — a newlywed couple and the woman’s sister. They were young university students, Muslims of Arab descent, and high achievers who regularly volunteered in the area. A neighbour, a middle-aged white man, was missing — then under arrest and charged with three counts of murder.
The victims’ families described it as a hate crime. The police said the shooting appeared to have been motivated by “an ongoing neighbourhood dispute over parking”, but that they were investigating whether religious hatred had contributed to the killing.
“To have him come in here and shoot three different innocent people in their head — I don’t know what kind of person that is,” said Namee Barakat, the father of the male victim, Deah Shaddy Barakat.
The killings immediately set off a debate throughout the world over whether the students had been targeted because of their religion, with Muslims picking up some of the language of those who protested police shootings in the United States, using the phrase #muslimlivesmatter.
Even as Chapel Hill awoke on Wednesday, frustration had already spread on Twitter throughout Europe and Asia, as Muslims as far away as Indonesia shared photographs and details of the victims’ lives.
The Chapel Hill police quickly tried to tamp down the fears, releasing a morning statement that identified parking as the cause of the dispute, without confirming whether the victims had been shot in the head. The police chief, Chris Blue, added: “We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated, and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case.”
In the afternoon, Ripley Rand, the US attorney for the region, said the shooting appeared to have been “an isolated incident”, and “not part of a targeted campaign against Muslims”.
Friends and neighbours struggled to make sense of what happened. Those who knew the victims — identified as Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21; her husband, Barakat, 23; and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19 — said they were all model students from well-educated, successful local families.
They had nonetheless run into previous problems over parking with the man who was arrested, Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, a former car parts salesman who was studying to be a paralegal at Durham Technical Community College.
He was one of their neighbours. They lived on opposite sides of the two-storey Finley Forest complex on Summerwalk Circle, where the shooting occurred — a condominium complex tucked into the woods about two kilometres east of the main University of North Carolina campus. Residents said Mr Hicks’ apartment was adjacent to the main parking lot; the students lived on the other side, where little parking could be found.
Mohammad Yousif Abu-Salha, the father of the two women who were killed, said Yusor had told him she and her husband had been harassed for their appearance by a neighbour who was wearing a gun on his belt. On his Facebook page, Mr Hicks recently posted a photograph of what he said was his .38-calibre, five-shot revolver.
A friend of Yusor said she knew that Mr Hicks had complained to the couple before about making noise and their visitors’ using parking spaces, and that he once came to their door carrying a rifle.
It is not clear whether they ever called the police about the altercations.
Their Facebook pages and other material online show a cheerful threesome who were devoted to family and charitable work. Barakat was a second-year student at the university’s graduate school of dentistry, and his wife was set to enrol in the same school later this year.
Her sister was an undergraduate at North Carolina State University, who had recently won an award for her artistic talents.
“They were gems of their communities, and left a lasting impression on the people around them,” Suzanne Barakat, a sister of Deah Barakat, said on Wednesday, reading a brief statement while flanked by several tearful family members. “We are still in a state of shock, and will never be able to make sense of this horrendous tragedy.”
Mr Hicks appeared to have a deep dislike of all religion. On his Facebook page, nearly all of his posts expressed support for atheism, criticism of Christian conservatives or both.
Last month, he posted a photograph that said, “Praying is pointless, useless, narcissistic, arrogant, and lazy; just like the imaginary god you pray to.”
Mr Hicks’ wife, Karen, insisted at a news conference that her husband was not a bigot. “I can say with absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims’ faith, but it was related to a longstanding parking dispute that my husband had with the neighbours,” she said.
His wife also pointed out his support for gay rights and the right to abortion.
But her comments, and the police department’s caution about what was behind the fatal confrontation, did not convince relatives of the dead who were familiar with details of the episode. One 911 caller, at 5.11pm Tuesday (5.11am Wednesday, Thai time), said she heard five to 10 shots and “kids screaming”. Another, calling a minute later, said she had heard about eight shots and multiple people screaming, then a pause, and then three more shots.
The victims were shot inside an apartment, according to one of the calls, and family members said the police told them they had been shot in the head.
Namee Barakat questioned the premise that a parking dispute alone could lead to such killings. “We all know it’s about more than that, unfortunately,” he said.
Many Muslims in the area of North Carolina known as the Research Triangle, where universities and technology companies are major employers, said they had been on edge in recent weeks. Although the area is dotted with mosques, and interfaith events are a staple at universities and houses of worship, tensions have been rising since the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, according to several Muslim leaders. Last month, Duke University abruptly cancelled plans to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer on Fridays, citing security concerns, after Franklin Graham, the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, raised vehement objections on Facebook.
Broadcasting the call to prayer from a church bell tower, intended as a symbol of religious inclusion, instead became a source of religious division.
“There is a tendency to say, ‘This is a nice place. These eruptions of violence don’t belong here,’” said Omid Safi, director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center and a professor of Islamic studies. “And yet here we are. This is, in all of the heartbreak and violence and sadness, where we are.”
Linda Sarsour, a longtime Arab-American activist in Brooklyn, who said she was working with the family, added that for those who fear mistreatment, the episode “sends a message to other young people in the Muslim community that the fear is valid”. Much of their rage online addressed a perceived double standard in the news media, with posts saying that the killing of three Muslims was not receiving much attention.
In fact, the police did not release the names of the victims or the accused until after 2am on Wednesday; Mr Hicks turned himself in to sheriff ’s deputies in Pittsboro, a few kilometres away, but it was not clear when. During a court appearance on Wednesday, a judge ordered him held without bond. By that point, most major US news organisations had reported the story, but that did not slow the allegations of news media neglect.
The #muslimlivesmatter hashtag echoed the #blacklivesmatter hashtag that gained popularity after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police officers. Both tap into a sense of grievance in minority communities that feel marginalised and disrespected.
To share the achievements of the slain students, friends and family members created a Facebook page, Our Three Winners. Several of the posts showed images of Deah Barakat and Yusor Abu-Salha at their wedding. Friends also praised Barakat’s work with a charity that provided dental supplies to the poor, and noted that he planned to travel to Turkey to provide dental care to refugees from Syria, narrating a video to raise money.
On the UNC campus on Wednesday evening, thousands packed the central plaza known as the Pit in a silent, dramatic show of solidarity. Friends and relatives offered remembrances. One concluded her speech: “Muslim lives matter. All lives matter.”