Benoit, Cho and anti-Muslim hysteria

According to Fayette County authorities, pro wrestler Chris Benoit placed Bibles next to his wife and child after he murdered them last weekend.

Will American journalists and bloggers use the placement of the Bibles to speculate about Benoit’s motives and whip up anti-Christian hysteria?

Of course not.

Only morons and anti-religious bigots would use the mere presence of Bibles to link an apparent murder-suicide to religion or global religious extremism.

Contrast the news coverage of and blogging about the Benoit family deaths with the Virginia Tech shooting.

After reports surfaced that Virginia Tech mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho had the phrase “Ismail Ax” written on his arm when he was found dead by police, right-wing talking heads and assorted cyberbigots immediately tried to connect the massacre to Islam. According to their idiot logic, “Ismail” is the Arabic spelling of Ishmael, therefore Cho was a Muslim extremist (examples: 1, 2, 3).

Among the speculators was Washington Post conservative columnist and Fox News talk-show staple Charles Krauthammer. “I suspect it has some more to do with Islamic terror and the inspiration than it does with the opening line of Moby Dick,” said Krauthammer on Fox.

Nevermind that Cho was raised a churchgoing Christian or that he’d suffered from mental illness. And nevermind that “Ismail” isn’t the Arabic spelling of anything (Arabic doesn’t use the Roman alphabet) or that he actually wrote “Ismael” instead of “Ismail” on the video package he mailed to NBC News.

When you’re a bigot, you see what you want to see. Imagine what these idiots would be saying if copies of the Quran were found in Benoit’s home.