A Culture of Death

El Paso and Dayton: we can now add two more to the already depressingly-lengthy register of mass shootings in this country. It is at once a disorienting, frustrating, and tragic occurrence. Senseless murders and deranged motivations, all enabled by powerful technologies of death. What in the world is going on, and why does this seem to keep happening?

The profiles of the killers could not have been more different. The El Paso shooter preoccupied himself in the most extreme corners of alt-right online activity as a rather active member of 8chan. Radicalized in this sadistic space, the shooters trajectory led him from run-of-the-mill alt-right convictions to full-on white supremacy, with a gamification of his shooting that mirrored in important respects the New Zealand shooter’s online behavior and sentiments. Both posted frequently on 8chan, released manifestos (the El Paso shooter mentioning the NZ one as motivation), and expressed anxieties over white “replacement.” 8chan members reportedly posted online cheering the shooters actions and tracking his “kill score.” The presence of an online syndicate comprised of anonymous white supremacists enthusiastically cheering body counts as chasing after a “high score” is terrifying in its brutality and inhumanity. Researcher Robert Evans has predicted “more killers, more gleeful celebration of body counts on 8chan, and more bloody attempts to beat the last killer’s “high score”” if law enforcement and the media do not adjust to the clear and present danger that fora like 8chan (and those participating on them) pose to the stability of Western society.

The Dayton shooter’s profile struck a slightly different chord. A self described “leftist,” the shooter once posted on Twitter that he wanted socialism and was not going to wait for “idiots” to finally come around to understanding it. His twitter profile read “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i’m going to hell and i’m not coming back,” and on the passing of John McCain, tweeted: “F*** John McCain.” The shooter had apparently kept a “hit list” for those he wanted to kill and a “rape list” for women he wanted to sexually brutalize. An ex-girlfriend described the killer as somewhat “charming,” though she admitted feeling more than a little disturbed by his obsession with mass killings. As disturbing was the killers role as lead singer of a “pornogrind” metal band with a Buzzfeed article describing the genre and killers band as follows:

Pornogrind is a subgenre of a fast and extreme kind of heavy metal called grindcore, which is known for its mostly dark, satirical themes of sexual violence and gore delivered for shock value.

The band’s song titles are explicitly sexually violent, such as “Preteen Daughter Pu$$y Slaughter” and “Cunt Stuffed With Medical Waste — Sexual Abuse Of A Teenage Corpse.” The album art is equally explicit. One album cover shows a woman consuming feces, while another shows an illustration of a young woman’s headless body chained to a bed, covered in blood, as a man puts his pants back on.

The Dayton killer died wearing a hoodie bearing his band’s name with a quote from one of its songs “Ramirez,” an ode to satanist serial killer, rapist, and burglar Richard Ramirez.

In attempting to make sense of this, the dominant tendency has been to compartmentalize and diagnose. The El Paso shooting has been connected by many in the media with the nativism of our sociopathically self-absorbed president. It is he who has incited rage, inspired his followers through race baiting of the worst kind, and instrumentalized bigotry for partisan gain. Far from composing the nation in moments of grief and instability, he has aggravated social anxieties, exacerbating an already fractious political climate and fomenting cultural hostilities that are now taking the form of violence.

Ross Douthat at the New York Times has written a piece connecting Trump, the El Paso shooter, and the Dayton shooter through the shared promotion of cultural nihilism and self-indulgent narcissism. On this, Douthat writes,

Cultural conservatives get a lot of grief when they respond to these massacres by citing moral and spiritual issues, rather than leaping straight to gun policy (or in this case, racist ideology). But to look at the trend in these massacres, the spikes of narcissistic acting-out in a time of generally-declining violence, the shared bravado and nihilism driving shooters of many different ideological persuasions, is to necessarily encounter a moral and spiritual problem, not just a technocratic one.

But the dilemma that conservatives have to confront is that you can chase this cultural problem all the way down to its source in lonely egomania and alienated narcissism, and you’ll still find Donald Trump’s face staring back to you.

The Dayton shooters pathologies have not been given proper treatment, and his leftist politics have been used to advance a “both sides” argument by those on the right. Trump expeditiously cited the shooters political affiliations to take aim at the media once again for purportedly treating him unfairly (it is, of course, always about him). On the White House lawn speaking to the media, President Trump said about the shooter: “He was a fan of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, nothing to do with Trump. Nobody ever mentions that.”

Public discussions have emerged once again centering on gun control and mental health therapy. For what it is worth, I am in favor of the second amendment and maintaining some measure of gun rights even as I see the need for much greater gun control than is currently in place. Having said that, if the second amendment were to be repealed (highly — and I mean highly — unlikely), I personally would not see it as a major cause for concern and struggle with the attitudes of those who treat assault rifles as a birthright. I am also in favor of mental health investment and the promotion of robust and serious psychiatric research, even as I hold reservations about the significant divergences between the decidedly materialist assumptions inherent in contemporary psychotherapy and Islam (or, for that matter, any therapeutic approach anchored in religious traditions with a more expansive notion of the metaphysical dimensions of human existence).

But I do not see in these endeavors anything approaching a meaningful solution to the task at hand. At best, they are mitigations. A culture of violence and the pursuit of death is not extinguished by removing some weapons, and an attempt to confiscate them from gun owners may well provoke a well-armed constituency to act. Mental health therapy and psychiatric medication can sublimate personal anxieties and provide for more effective management of personal stress, but they do not give hope to the hopeless or meaning to those ridden with despair, anxiety, and rage.

Stop gaps and short cuts are the “radical” interventions of our political class. The social, cultural, economic, and political dysfunction that has engendered repeated bouts of fury and ballistic campaigns of murder is rarely reflected upon, and it is within these that our distempers reside.

The modern world has worked hard to unmoor individuals from the notion of moral duty or personal accountability. Unencumbered agents in a world of limited meaning, we behave with the determination of our indulgences, and sate our passions with an array of addictions: Netflix, WhatsApp, fast food, masturbation, porn, and social media gossip are but a few of the activities that engross us. A society of untamed addicts neglecting the consequences of their addictions cannot effectively negotiate conflict or develop the stability necessary to feel whole. Though the depressions of living tethered to one’s whims and passions are occasionally acknowledged, they are more often obscured in the name of living “strong” and “independent” lives. It is the absence of socio-familial situatedness, the collapse of real community, and erosion of spiritual resolve that has left many utterly hopeless, despair-ridden, and lonely.

This dysfunctionality bleeds us dry, leaving us in a life of constriction (ma‘ishatan danka). An estimated 1.7 million of our fellow citizens are now addicted to opioids, the vast majority of whom consume fentanyl, a drug estimated to be roughly 100 times more potent than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. Opioids are instruments of escape, providing for the depressed a means by which they can receive respite from the difficulties of the world. These are people who routinely flirt with discontinuing their existence and relish the moments in which they psychologically withdraw from its demands. Many push the boundary too far and unwittingly, and for some wittingly, lose their lives in the process.

Our penchant for “intervention” and global militarism has for too long been carried out in similarly pathological terms. A foreign policy program bereft of any concern except for the most jingoistically self-interested, our nation has single-mindedly pursued geopolitical and economic gain, kept disagreeable states at bay, and protected American interests at all costs. Futile wars that have completely destabilized regions, resulting in famine, mass dispossession, and turmoil, have been justified tendentiously, while the aggressors of war crimes have been immunized from accountability. Spreading “freedom,” “independence,” and “democracy” — once taken seriously by political pundits — are now widely viewed as vacuous, ugly cliches bandied by moneyed elites to justify global oppression and resource exploitation.

Trump for his part has paid little homage to these rhetorical norms, ridiculing the facade of American virtue (while simultaneously trafficking in it elsewhere — no one ever said his strong suit was coherence) and insisting that wars like Iraq were “disasters” because we didn’t pillage more natural resources. Since entering office, Trump has floated the idea of plundering Iraq’s oil reserves as “repayment” for the war effort to former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on more than one occasion. The global oppression of Muslims — in China, Kashmir, Palestine, Syria, and elsewhere — hardly registers on this map, while the worst autocrats in the world have long found in our political class willing allies.

Domestically, whatever communal sanctity life once had has long been compromised. For years now, between half a million and a million pregnancies have been electively terminated via abortion. Though this has for most of the past few decades occurred with considerable social consternation, today’s politics have radicalized the abortion debate even further, virtually eliminating the question of life from the minds of the left while tragically trivializing the right-wing “pro-life” posture as just another political football rather than a sincere and genuine worry over protecting the unborn. When the social fabric of our society is steeped in violence, in romanticizing the taking of life with manifest savagery throughout media and entertainment, in showing nothing other than callous indifference to the lives of those escaping poverty and repression at our southern border, and in adopting postures of indifference to the lives we take around the world, sudden concerns over life in the womb ring disingenuous.

The prevailing economic order in the West exacerbates this situation, cultivating an atmosphere of mutual enmity and aggressive hostility. Heartfelt solidarities are difficult to form when we are incented to view one another as competitors seeking from the same pot. The pursuit of wealth and power have become primary motivators of human action in a society structured around capital gain, and the rapacity on constant display, encouraged by the valorization of the affluent, betrays lowly, animalistic behavior, not virtue. Our higher callings — to care for the less fortunate, to forgive and seek forgiveness, to show leniency with one another in our exchanges — are irrelevant to the neoliberal enterprise. “May Allah’s mercy be on him who is lenient in his buying, selling, and in requesting back his money” is a teaching rarely observed in an economy whose defining principle is usurious “wealth creation.”

The list could go on. However, it is of course easy to fulminate against the world we are in (“apocalypse chic” as Charlie Tyson recently called it) and far more difficult to propound solutions. I for one — and I never thought I’d say this — increasingly see myself agreeing with aspects of Marianne Williamson’s thought who has spoken openly about the need for a moral politics and the pursuit of an ethical society. The rapid decline in religion in the modern West has had considerable effects on the sense of alienation we feel, and there is no political party, no social justice cause, and no therapist that can fill the metaphysical void in the heart of our society. The forms of social bonds that continue to hold currency, such as those formed around particular political ends (progressives, alt-right ethnonationalists, etc.), social formulations (critical theorists, etc.), gender advocates, and more betray superficialities, and when put to even mild test, quickly disintegrate through violent in-fighting (often in spectacular ways). These ersatz bonds have supplanted traditionally durable relationships of marriage, family, and faith. Any attempt to restore stronger forms of faith-based community and family continue to be viewed as a threat to liberal society and individual freedom.

When we begin to recognize that our most powerful moments in this world are unlikely to occur online or on the front lines of a protest and are far more likely to occur in our homes with our family, masjids, alone in the last third of the night, and while submitting to Allah — inasmuch as we can, and with the fulness of our being — we will find in that wholeness, a comportment towards Truth, and an affirmation of life as something sacred, temporary, and purpose-driven. But such a comportment militates profoundly against the open society of freedom we inhabit today. God has created man with a yearning beyond himself, and the western political consensus remains fixated upon delimiting that fundamental desire for transcendental commitment to the most narrow of confines. A full, rich faith that is reflected in our lives and among one another, with spaces where we can form bonds in its name will go a far way in restoring what has been lost. We need to push back — not only for our children, but for our own collective sanity.

We ask Allah to guide us and to make us a source of guidance for those around us. Ameen.

Other thoughts:

There has been a bit of an “online melee” recently over American Muslim political participation. Triggered by Ali al-Arian’s recent Al-Jazeera op-ed, both Dr. Sherman Jackson and Imam Zaid Shakir have authored responses defending themselves from accusations of contributing to what Arian characterizes as “political impotence.” A few thoughts from my end:

• Although there is an important and substantive disagreement here, there is also much that is contributed to by the nature of social media. In the real world we discern more readily degrees of grievances and are generally reticent to confront wrongs. Getting cut off on the road does not emotionally impair most of us, though we may feel a passing resentment at the one cutting us off. In conversations, our interlocutors may inadvertently cut us off or talk over us, and at home we are surrounded by those we love in spite of their (and our) faults, though all are committed to bearing one another patiently, at least for the most part. This discretion is not misguided domestication. It is a type of social nuance and dialogical conditioning that is arrived at through years of interpersonal exchanges and experiences. When we melt down, go ‘guns blazing’ on another person, become hysterical, and unravel emotionally, the after effects are often permanent — and at times, we are willing to live with them. But more often than not, we are not.
• This is not at all the case with social media. Social media discourse favors melodramatic output. Exaggerated anger and performative outpouring are rewarded, and people are quickly regarded “truth tellers” when they flagrantly pronounce on others. The more extreme the actor, the more radical the rhetoric, the greater the reward. Whereas frantic and unrestrained admonishments in the real world leave us exhausted, ridden with guilt, and desiring reconciliation, online tantrums lead to self-satisfaction and messiah complexes. Likes, shares, and praise from strangers and “friends” alike all contribute to the building of a persona that can quickly obtain some marginal popularity (itself quite the ego boost).
• Far too many people on social media view themselves as combatants in a cosmic battle of good verses evil. Liberal, conservative, traditional, reform, etc. it really doesn't matter. These combatants often act like cornered animals willing to pounce at the slightest provocation. Their arsenal is locked and loaded with a high supply of sarcasm, ridicule, profanity, personal insult, and related artillery designed to force opponents into submission. Some seem to genuinely hate this state of affairs, but they feel the only way out is cultural conquest through sustained sharing, trolling, arguing, etc. When the stakes are emotionally intense, this war footing can be especially high-strung.
• It goes without saying that such a discursive setting is regrettable, as it makes it more difficult to adopt any position that does not exist at a particular “pole” of an ongoing battle. Either you are for or against somebody, and you must, accordingly, take category positions with respect to all that they do. Thus debates such as this one end up being more about ones willingness to endorse al-Arian, Jackson, or Shakir, than what prudent political engagement looks like or the relative merits and demerits of CVE.
• Like others, I too found al-Arian’s piece hedging too strongly on points that were not reasonably substantiated (or outright false) and in other cases relied on chain incrimination which, if applied consistently, could easily be deployed against just about anyone to make them into a sell out of some sort. Beyond that, the piece was highly infelicitous in certain instances (say, in proffering financial motives as an explanation for political decisions, or describing the “defining feature” of American Muslim institutions as “political cowardice”) while engaging in more than a little bit of revisionist history when discussing what being Muslim “meant” at some point in the (recent) past.
• Dr. Jackson’s rejoinder drew attention to some important features of Muslim public discourse, in particular his treatment and mention of demagoguery. One senses almost immediately the great personal offense he took at al-Arian’s characterization of him, and there is no doubt that Jackson is correct when he argues that our greatest challenges as a community are not political (and, accordingly, do not evince a political solution). However, it did seem to me that Jackson fell prey on occasion to the very ‘oppression Olympics’ he has maligned in other settings by appealing to the various difficulties faced by converts alongside his personal contributions to the community at large (which could just as easily be countered with the many challenges and struggles faced by the “immigrants” he derides). Moreover, Jackson’s appeal to the immigrant/indigenous dichotomy to explain al-Arian’s attitudes weakened his footing in my view, largely because it is a dichotomy which has outlived its usefulness (even if it can provide important insights on occasion). The concerns over social justice expressed by al-Arian are shared by many Blackamerican and white Muslims — would the piece have been any more justified if the race of the author was different? What if it was authored by a white or black Muslim impugning an “immigrant” Muslim imam? I of course do not think the piece would magically gain credibility merely through a shift in races, but reducing all (or much) disagreement to a matter of cultural or racial location certainly suggests as much.
• I was glad to read Dr. Jackson’s critique of al-Arian’s usage of “white supremacy,” however I do not think he is correct in stating that those using it are just “angry at white people” (or, perhaps, that it is all that is going on). I actually believe it to be far more nefarious. For many, the rhetoric of white supremacy (and its attendant privilege discursive) has become a vehicle for transferring the burden and guilt of racial injustice — along with the entire history of America’s racial oppression — from wealthy elite white liberals to working class and poor whites in middle America. It is only through the specifically progressive framing of racial justice, white supremacy, and white privilege that wealthy executives and privileged yuppies on the coasts can recite the latest progressive pieties and be viewed as “woke” while poor white families living in trailers get cast as “privileged.” We should reject this demonization as somehow acceptable just because it has achieved some measure of political and social acceptance in leftist corners.
• I understand it is now common to cite the 2000 election as a turning point in American Muslim history and lament the allegedly poor decision made by Muslims in supporting George Bush at the time. I have to say, even in hindsight, it is not so obvious to me that Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman would have been a better alternative. Lieberman is (and was) as much a hawk as Cheney, and Gore was not the “green” liberal he became years down the road. We are of course dealing with matters of great speculation and uncertainty, and no one knows for certain how Gore would have responded following an attack like 9/11 as president, and there is some reason to think he may have responded in worse ways than Bush.
• Imam Zaid’s Facebook post was not as impassioned as Dr. Jackson’s, though it too took on a strident tone. I found it largely on point and well articulated, though at times it came off too accusatory or otherwise evasive. For instance, it is fine to highlight the regional role played by Qatar in facilitating violence. But al-Arian’s profile and publishing an Aljazeera Op-Ed cannot be construed as a meaningful equivalent to the UAE Peace Forum which is attended by and connected to a number of the country’s ruling elites. Moreover, the accusation of supporting “coldblooded murder” by implication was unnecessary and certainly not well founded or in keeping with the fairness we should accord our interlocutors
• Al-Arian is right that we need to re-evaluate the politics of American Muslims. This is especially so in light of an impending election, one that will leave many Muslims emotionally traumatized if Trump wins again (a likely outcome in my view). Striving to be moral agents in our society and globally, Muslims need to think long and hard about the types of political activities and activists they are willing to get behind, and the assimilation of many carrying the badge of Islam into community settings has occurred far too often simply because someone or another was allegedly doing some good. Just as we don’t want radical social reforms of sexual autonomy and gender fluidity instantiated into law, we should be equally concerned by CVE, the actions of Muslim states opposing the practice of Islam, imprisoning scholars, and killing other Muslims, just as we should oppose alt-right actors trafficking heavily in nativism and ethnonationalist rhetoric.
• I have said before that Muslims who care about the religion of Allah should be willing to accommodate those that disagree deeply with the political activities of certain actors (especially those mentioned in the article), and that we cannot make support for some Muslim scholars discretionary political decisions a precondition of orthodox belief, particularly when they have no bearing on the question of orthodoxy (either explicitly or by immediate implication). Although there will be some angry objectors who resort to ad hominem, public disparagement, invoking the “cancel culture,” etc., we should do what we can to be generous with our interlocutors and understand that we are dealing with a diverse community and many young Muslims for whom social justice is of paramount importance. Demonstrating that we can be discursively engaged, charitable, and transparent in articulating our political rationale in less-intense settings may help deflate the emotional intensity that can build up when people feel their concerns are being ignored or when, due to public accusations, everyone adopts a war footing.
• Adab is blighted when it is an expedient used against those we don’t like but ignored otherwise. People are wont today to criticize adab-policing, but adab matters, and as such we should try to consider our own in these situations just as much we should remind one another to “speak well or remain silent” and that “a goodly word is charity.”

Shocked to hear about Andrew Luck’s retirement. Wonder how many more early retirement’s we’ll see in the coming seasons and whether this will signal an end to the era of quarterbacks playing forever (Brady, Roethlesberger, etc.).

Allah Knows Best.