astounding tolerance?

The museum of tolerance had exhibits that unwittingly showed how astoundingly tolerant Americans prove to be. When you enter the museum there is a huge picture of several current events that showed murder out of hatred for an individual or group. Two I would mention are the murder of an abortion clinic doctor and the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi.

Since the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1972, how many abortion clinic murders have there been, either at the clinic or staff murdered off campus? 1000? 500? 100? How about 7. Total.

An interesting side note is the murderers were not all self-professed “Christians” either. Bombing abortion clinics is often used as evidence that there are radically violent “Christian” terrorists, of which I have no doubt there may be people who call themselves “Christian” who commit terrorism. It’s just they need better PR because we are not hearing about it.

After the September 11th attack, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas station owner, was killed in Mesa, Arizona. He was a Sikh, which is not Islam, but a blend of Muslim/ Hindu/ other faith. His picture is in the exhibit as a hate crime murder against a Muslim who wasn’t Muslim. Well, how many more hate crime murders have there been against Muslims since 9-11, besides this?

100? 50? How about 0? Yes, none. Two more murders after 9/11 are in dispute as to reason for the crime, and the FBI did not classify them as hate crimes. One was a man killing a Muslim man dating his ex-girlfriend. According to FBI hate crime statistics for 2001-2004 (the latest report) all hate crimes against Muslims in America look like this.

Incidents of hate crime

Year/incidents/murders and manslaughters/assaults
2001/ 554/ 0/ 95
2002/ 170/ 0/ 34
2003/ 155/ 0/ 33
2004/ 193/ 0/ 26

Besides the murders and assaults, the rest of the incidents are verbal assault or intimidation.

Do you see what I mean by astounding tolerance? Some people because of philosophical or religious belief consider abortion, murder, and yet, how few actually lash out violently against people they would consider accessories to murder.

When it comes to bigotry against Muslims, the American response has been amazingly calm. By any figment of the imagination, an attack of the magnitude of 9/11, followed by war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and yet bigots in America have lashed out so rarely.

I spoke to the docent of the museum about these observations and wasn’t it interesting that two of the major exhibits really were an unbelievable exception of the general trend of what is overwhelmingly tolerant about our nation’s people. She said they are teaching zero- tolerance.

It is commendable to teach zero-tolerance. I just thought it would be encouraging to let students going to the museum know, wherever they are getting their tolerance, at least in terms of not striking out with violent behavior goes, keep it up.