AND IN ANOTHER CASE - AT 8:27 A.M.:  The beltway killer, who terrorized the Washington, D.C. area, is scheduled to be executed this evening.  The Washington Post reports:

If attorney Jon Sheldon's final plea to save the life of John Allen Muhammad fails, he will go to Virginia's death chamber Tuesday night to watch the sniper die.

Most of those who will gather at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt readily see the execution as just punishment for the man who masterminded a wave of random shootings that left 10 people dead and terrorized the Washington region for more than three weeks in October 2002.

COMMENT:  I am not indifferent to the moral concerns regarding the death penalty.  The questions involving the state putting an individual to death are profound. 

That having been said, this is another case where we were not permitted to ask questions.  Why would a man named "Muhammad" do this?  Why would he engage in mass murder?  I am not suggesting that I know the answer, or have any private information, but surely we were due a more thorough investigation of the influences over him.   Just "catching the guy" and his accomplice was not enough.

In no way does this cast aspersions on any other Muslims.  Indeed, Muhammad's victims were chosen at random, and some could easily have been Muslims.  But questions should have been raised.  If a member of the Ku Klux Klan, which misuses Christian symbols, had done this, you would have seen whole newspaper series devoted to the ideology of the Klan.  But here, silence.  Once again.

Maybe Fort Hood will wake us up to the fact that the people do in fact have a right to know the extent to which a great religious tradition is compromised by a hateful ideology.

November 10,  2009