Ahhhh, in a lot of cases I would agree with you, BUT here the Muslim angle was relevant. Many Muslin men do dehumanise no Muslim women, clearly in this case they did, thereby excusing there behaviour, at least to themselves.

Cultural or Religious, I don't know but still relevant.

If he was mentally ill then yes of course, what a silly question.

If however Mr Mohammed went into a shopping centre with a semtex and ball bearing overcoat and turned himself and a number of innocent shoppers into red mist, or indeed if Mr Right Wing Nutter did the same, then that is clearly about religion or race.

This incident was not about either, it was about a mentally Ill mans obsession with what he considered his right, and the fact that the country he lives in allowes him, in that mental state to carry a loaded gun.

Nothing more, no matter how you or the press try to portray it.

Arguably, an act of self destruction is going to be the proviso of a number of discourses about mental health problems and issues.

The fact we don't consider such behavior to be 'mentalist' is simply because its religious in its orientation. Invariably, I would generally regard any self destructive act as ultimately symptomatic of some rather serious issues.

I'd generally argue that suicide bombing is an 'abnormal psychological behavior'. Indeed, arguably terrorism, has a certain appeal to pathological behavior types which certain religious movements can 'glamourize'.

Usually most of these issues in the US all boil down to two very big social issues in the United States.

1) That the provision of mental health care and intervention in the US is piss poor to non-existent.

2) The availability of guns and US attitudes towards guns as a means of resolving person issues.

Why does someone being an atheist mean that they are not motivated to fear or harm Muslims?Becuase if you do not believe in something how can you possibley be fearfull of it ? There are an awful lot of hate crimes against Muslims and it's not like they're all perpetrated by devout Christians. This man expressed hatred towards religion online. Sure, that doesn't mean that this was the reason he committed this crime, or that it even factored in, but it is what it is. We don't need to remove nuance and proclaim that there is absolutely nothing to this when we don't know that.

Mental illness isn't a free pass. It doesn't mean there is no motivation to actions carried out. You've decided conclusively that there is no motivate based on very little. Well actually you said it was parking, then backtracked when I declared that if that can be motivation so can religion. I don't even like religion by the way. It's nonsensical. I don't like glaring partiality either though.

Edited by imbored (12 Feb 2015 4.20pm)

Becuase if you do not believe in something how can you possibley be fearfull of it ?

That's the point though, mental illness is a free pass, in a manner of speaking, for murder - we even created laws that cover diminished responsibility. But if we face the truth, that in fact most of these problems in the US relates to mental health and social problems (such as poverty), then the onis is with the state to actually address those problems.

Which is why the 'terrorist', 'culture of violence', 'evils of gangs, drugs' etc are all so popular, they are things we 'can do something about' without having to actually resort to massive social changes, in which we have to accept the consequences of things like welfare responsibility etc.

The absurdity is that the reaction to the problem is to typically take people and put them into even more violent, stressful and disturbing environments, and then eventually release them back into society and expect them to have improved.

We're all delusional, some of us just are delusion in more or less the same way, and call it normal.