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Three Men Stood Up to Anti-Muslim Attack. Two Paid With Their Lives.

posted by n1 on Tuesday May 30 2017, @03:35AM   

butthurt writes:

An Army veteran, a recent college graduate and a student who once won a poetry contest by condemning prejudice stirred up by the Sept. 11 attacks intervened as a man screamed anti-Muslim insults at two women in Portland, Ore., on Friday.

[...] Two of the men — Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, 23, and Rick Best, 53 — died in the attack, which occurred on a commuter train. The third, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, 21, was treated on Saturday for injuries that the police said were serious but not life-threatening.

Jeremy Christian, 35, of North Portland, Ore., was charged with two counts of aggravated murder in the attack and could face additional charges when he is arraigned on Tuesday. Mr. Christian, who the authorities said had a history of making extremist statements on social media, was ranting at, and talking disparagingly about, the two women, one of whom was wearing a hijab.

Source: The New York Times

President Donald Trump has released his first official statement on the attack in Portland, Oregon, more than 48 hours after the two victims died.

"The violent attacks in Portland on Friday are unacceptable," Mr Trump tweeted. "The victims were standing up to hate and intolerance. Our prayers are w/ them."

Source: The Independent

Portland law enforcement leaders were tightlipped Saturday about the investigation into Friday's attacks that killed two men on a light rail train but a federal official did say it was too early to label the incident a hate crime.

[...] Loren Cannon, special agent in charge of the Portland FBI office, [...]

"It's too early to say whether last night's violence was an act of domestic terrorism or a federal hate crime," he said. "However, in the coming days, the FBI, PPB and the prosecutors will work together to share information, leverage resources and make determinations about future criminal charges."

[...] Leaders of the Muslim community said they were thankful for the men who gave their lives to save the girls from harm. They have raised $50,000 toward a goal of $60,000 to help support the victims and their families.

Source: The Oregonian

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Original Submission

• Re:I ride that line all the time Re:I ride that line all the time (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @11:18AM (3 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @11:18AM (#517586)

  1% is 200,000,000? That would mean there are 20 billion muslims. There are muslims than people on earth?

  Parent

• Re:I ride that line all the time Re:I ride that line all the time (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday May 30 2017, @03:56PM (2 children)

  by Runaway1956 (2926) on Tuesday May 30 2017, @03:56PM (#517702) Homepage Journal

  You got me - too many zero's. 20,000,000 is plenty enough though.

  --
  Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.

  Parent

  • Your innumeracy goes way beyond percentages Your innumeracy goes way beyond percentages (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @05:33PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @05:33PM (#517783)

    Your innumeracy goes way beyond not understanding percentages.

    Get back to us with a comparison of the number of violent assholes in islamic nations versus non-islamic nations.

    Ah, here I'll do it for you:

    In predominantly Muslim countries, on average, 0.65 percent of the population perished in major episodes of intrastate violence. In non-Muslim countries, 0.72 percent died in such episodes on average. In the postwar period, Muslim countries suffered slightly less severely from loss of life in major episodes of political violence than non-Muslim countries.

    Homicide rates in Muslim-majority countries average about two murders per annum per 100,000 people. In non-Muslim countries, the average rate is about 8 per 100,000. Murder rates fluctuate from year to year, but they are consistently low in Muslim societies. The homicide rate in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, is 1 per 100,000—one-fifth the rate of the world’s largest Christian country, the United States. Christian countries live with murder rates that are unknown in the Muslim world. Brazilians and Mexicans are used to murder rates in the 15-25 range; the rate in Venezuela tops 50. Turks, Egyptians, Iranians, and Malaysians live with rates in the 2-4 range. In a good year, Christian South Africa lives with a murder rate of around 30. In a bad year, the rate in Muslim Senegal is one-tenth of that.

    Differences this big call for an explanation. We can rule out several possibilities. One is that Muslims live under more authoritarian political regimes where the bad guys have more to fear from the authorities. In fact, the data show that authoritarian regimes do no better at controlling violent crime than democracies do. Even if Muslims generally live under harsher political regimes, they are not less prone to crime for that reason.

    Sacred texts don’t explain anything either. The Quran staunchly prohibits murder. But the Bible and the foundational texts of every other major religion do as well.

    But one possible explanation arises from the data: Greater socioeconomic inequality is correlated with higher homicide rates, and Muslim societies have comparatively low levels of inequality. The regions with the most murder, Latin America and southern Africa, also have the highest values on the so-called Gini score, the statistic that economists and political scientists use to measure class inequality. High economic inequalities (which is what a high Gini score indicates) and high murder rates go together. Statistical analysis shows that countries with proportionately larger Muslim populations have lower Gini scores and lower murder rates.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/15/no-islam-isn-t-inherently-violent-and-the-math-proves-it.html [thedailybeast.com]

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    • Re:Your innumeracy goes way beyond percentages (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @10:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2017, @10:13PM (#517919)

      Ah, I love the sound of Runaway being corrected in the morning! It's like the smell, of Chinese population figures.

      Parent