The right to psychology

To understand what the magnificent sensitivity displayed in Paris against "terror" after the Charlie Hebdo case meant, apparently one had to see, right after it, three Muslims being slaughtered in America in the same kind of attack, only because they were Muslims.

The killing of three young Muslims in the town of Chapel Hill, Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Muhammad Abu Talha and his sister-in-law Razan Muhammad, without any provocative act, without any extra sin, only because they were Muslims, was not counted as "atheist" terror.

After all, given the cultural origins of the killer, it was never counted as "Christian" terror either.

In fact, this murder was not even counted as "terror."

Because of this murder, nobody even thought of feeling, or of voicing, a danger against the bigotry, whose footsteps, aimed at all Muslims because of the Muslims who died, had actually begun to be heard more truly.

Only the Muslims living in America felt this real danger, and the funeral of the three young Muslims was carried out with great dignity by nearly five thousand people gathered in a stadium.

While carrying the funeral on their shoulders, they did not chant slogans, they did not raise a commotion. Even a person warning those who were reciting takbir and salawat while the funeral was being carried, saying "In Islam there is an etiquette to the funeral too, and in that etiquette there is not even takbir; please walk silently, saying your prayers within yourselves," was reflected in the cameras.

For President Obama to become aware of this savage and dangerous manifestation of what is clearly Islamophobia and hatred in his own country, it was necessary for the President of the Republic of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was on a visit to Latin America, to call out to him, "Where are you, Obama!"

Obama, who until then had kept silent about the incident, could only raise his voice after that warning. He said that no one in his country could be subjected to such violence on account of their religion, language or race. The American dream continues from where it left off. There is no cause for concern anyway. Nor is there any situation requiring a declaration of war on anyone.

Now, inevitably, the Muslims who are subjected to this violence also rewind the film a little and go back to Charlie Hebdo: Was the issue that 12 people died rather than 3? But every day in the Muslim geography many more were dying anyway, far more savagely, far more cruelly.

Was it that those who died had drawn cartoons rather than being killed for their headscarves that made a difference? Was the difference that the event happened in Paris? No, that could not be it either; every day in Paris too, a lot of murders were being committed for one reason or another.

Or was the difference that people with Muslim identities had had the audacity to come and commit a murder on land that they call "ours"?

After all, the soldiers and agents we call "ours," with the weapons "we" produce, could cause the most violent deaths of dozens, hundreds, even thousands of Muslims every day in the Muslim geography. But this relationship is so one-sided that the reverse could never be accepted. This relationship can apparently be accepted as normal only when those who die are Muslims and those who kill are the people they call "our own."

Was it not so? On the same day as Charlie Hebdo and in the days after, did not thousands of people in Syria, women and children, die horribly under barrel bombs? Also in those same days, did not two thousand people lose their lives all at once in Nigeria at the hands of Boko Haram, using weapons produced in the West?

In Iraq alone, after the American occupation, more than a million people were killed with weapons used or handed over by the occupiers themselves. All these deaths are normal, but the revenge, rancor, hatred and all the other psychological traumas and reactions that emerge against these deaths in the atmosphere these deaths produce are abnormal. Because "they," that is, the Muslims, do not have a psychology that would require their actions to be met with understanding.

A deep dive was immediately made into the psychology of the criminal of the town of Chapel Hill. Attempts were made to understand the psychological and social causes of what he did. The fact that he had turned the parking problem into a constant "psychological" obsession was brought to the fore.

Psychology, that is, the impressive science of meeting such behaviors "with understanding" under the physiological effects a person experiences. In the courts it comes into play through expert witnesses and gives its verdict before the judge: No one commits a crime like murder, suicide or theft out of the blue. Pardon, not no one, one has to say no one "of us." Because they, that is, "they" who die every day by the hundreds and thousands along with their relatives, kin, children, neighbors and loved ones, the Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans, Egyptians, Yemenis, Syrians... They have no psychology. Whatever they do, they do out of their criminality, having deserved every kind of punishment and reaction.

Ah, and of course, more importantly, whatever they are doing, they do under the incitement of their religion, which turns them into criminals. Just shoot them.

To discriminate truly between deaths and sufferings is shameful. But for God's sake, who is it that is making this discrimination now, rubbing it in our faces?