{"id":56021,"date":"2015-03-30T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=56021"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:54","slug":"whats-religion-got-to-do-with-it-german-co-pilot-as-terrorist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/03\/whats-religion-got-to-do-with-it-german-co-pilot-as-terrorist\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Religion Got to Do With It? German Co-Pilot as Terrorist"},"content":{"rendered":"

26 Mar 2015 – <\/em>Once it became clear that Andreas Lubitz, 28, <\/a>deliberately crashed Germanwings Flight 9525, a reporter immediately asked \u201cwhat was his religion?\u201d (Parent company Lufthansa said they didn\u2019t know). Authorities said there was no evidence it was \u201cterrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lubitz is from Rhineland-Palatinate, known for its wine-growing and pharmaceuticals. It is roughly 2\/5s Roman Catholic and a third Lutheran. A fourth of its people don\u2019t really care about religion one way or another.<\/p>\n

Why in the world would his religion be relevant? If he did crash the plane on purpose then presumably he was depressed and wanted not only to commit suicide but also to be a mass murderer. You could understand how a depressed person with low self-esteem might think it ego-boosting to determine the fate of so many others.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t political terrorism, likely, but certainly it was a terroristic act of killing.<\/p>\n

But we know why they asked. It was out of bigotry against Muslims, probing whether another one had gone postal. The subtext is that white Christians don\u2019t go off the deep end, even though obviously they do, in large numbers. It isn\u2019t a logical question about Andreas Lubitz from Rhineland-Palatinate. Zeynep Tufekci tweeted,<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Zeynep Tufekci @zeynep<\/strong> <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Worst example was CNN anchors wondering “maybe” Anders Breivik was a Muslim convert. Long after Norway police said he was white supremacist.<\/em><\/p>\n

12:25 PM – 26 Mar 2015<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Maybe I need to add some more principles to my Top Ten differences between White Terrorists and Others<\/a>, like \u201cterrorism is only ruled out when the whiteness of the perp can be firmly established.\u201d<\/p>\n

BBC News: \u201cGermanwings plane crash: Co-pilot \u2018wanted to destroy plane\u2019 BBC News\u201d <\/a><\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fuCZLPvOn_c#t=22<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Juan Ricardo Cole is a public intellectual, prominent blogger and essayist, and the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 juancole.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26 Mar 2015 – Once it became clear that Andreas Lubitz, 28, deliberately crashed Germanwings Flight 9525, a reporter immediately asked \u201cwhat was his religion?\u201d (Parent company Lufthansa said they didn\u2019t know). Authorities said there was no evidence it was \u201cterrorism.\u201d It isn\u2019t political terrorism, likely, but certainly it was a terroristic act of killing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56021\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}