A Chinese Jesuit takes on the media-driven association of beheading with Islam.
Beheading and Religious Profiling
American Muslim leaders have been quick to condemn the beheading of a woman by her Muslim husband in Buffalo, saying it has nothing to do with religion. Is there a connection between religion and domestic violence?
By Aloysious Mowe, Washington Post
In April 2008 Jean Pierre Orlewicz was convicted in Michigan for the murder of Daniel Sorensen. The latter was stabbed, and then beheaded. Harrel Johnson was convicted in October 2008 for the murder of his step-daughter, Erica Green, in Missouri. The 3-year-old child was decapitated with hedge-clippers. In the same month, William Perry was indicted for the beheading murder of Brett Smith in Ohio. In Canada last July, Vince Weiguang Li stabbed and then beheaded a man on a Greyhound bus traveling from Edmonton to Winnipeg. Six months later, Virginia Tech student Haiyang Zhu was accused of decapitating a fellow student, Xin Yang.
In none of these cases was the beheading of the victim blamed on religion or ethnicity as a factor. But wait. Surely the last two instances of murder should set off all kinds of alarms: it must now be a truth universally acknowledged that two men of similar ethnic origins beheading their victims must be in want of an ethnic profiling.
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