The bodies of the three young Muslims who were murdered in Chapel Hill were barely cold before the finger-pointing began. Predictably, the religious, including some Muslims, expressed absolute assurance that this was a “hate crime” motivated by Craig Stephen Hicks’s animus towards Muslims.

What was almost as predictable but, perhaps, more reprehensible, was the eagerness of some atheists to blame this crime on the “militancy” of New Atheists. Indeed, some atheists accused people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Lawrence Krauss of creating a climate of hatred and “dehumanization” of Muslims that gave rise to the murders, and even of being complicit in the murders themselves. Those same accusatory atheists sneered at explanations, like mental illness, a parking dispute, and so on, that didn’t involve New Atheism and “Islamophobia” (see here, here, here and here for examples). In the rush to judgement, the facts were either unknown or ignored.

Well, the grand jury that just indicted Hicks didn’t indict him for committing a “hate crime,” which they could have done. As PuffHo says of hate crimes in the state:

To win a hate-crime conviction, however, legal experts say prosecutors would have to prove Hicks deliberately targeted those killed because of their religion, race or national origin. North Carolina does not have a specific “hate crime” statute, though its laws cover such acts of “ethnic intimidation” as hanging a noose, burning a cross or setting fire to a church.

In the absence of strong evidence that there was religious animus behind the crime, a grand jury indicted Hicks on three counts of murder and one count of discharging a firearm in an occupied building. That, of course, won’t stop those with an ideological agenda to continue calling it a hate crime—one motivated by atheism, “Islamophobia,” or both. But the evidence of an anti-Muslim animus is virtually nonexistent in this case. In the only analysis I know that minutely dissected Hicks’s motives, at least from his writings, Michael Nugent, after thoroughly analyzing Hicks’s Facebook page (see his posts here and here), concluded this:

It may be that [Hicks] murdered them because he was an atheist and they were Muslims, and that he simply did not reflect that part of his personality online. But the available evidence does not support that idea, and those who are engaging in speculation should take into account the available evidence.

I agree. Speculation not only outran the facts in this case, but is now obdurately against the facts. Unless and until Hicks or someone else provides evidence that he killed the Muslims in the name of atheism, I won’t accept that as a motive, and until I see evidence that he killed them because they were Muslims, I can’t bring myself to call this a hate crime. That, of course, is in distinction to the actions of those like the Charlie Hebdo terrorists, who told us their reasons for killing.

One of those accused of creating a climate that led to this murder, Sam Harris, produced an eloquent 24-minute audio response on his website, a response called “The Chapel Hill murders and ‘militant’ atheism.” It is a calm, reasoned, and eloquent piece in which Harris not only abjures responsibility for the crime and the climate that supposedly created it, but indicts those like Reza Aslan and Glenn Greenwald, who, by being quick to accuse New Atheists of complicity in the murders, actually endanger the safety of those New Atheists. I know, for example, that Sam gets hate mail in Arabic after these accusations get into the Twi**ersphere. That would scare the bejeesus out of me.

Click on the screenshot below (or the link above) to go to Sam’s podcast:

Sam begins his piece with an expression of horror at the murder of these three young people, and ends with a plea addressed to those of us who want to maintain our rights to speak freely and publicly about what we need to express, including the dangers of faith, and yet not fear for our lives by doing so. Harris asks us to push back on social media against the distortions of people like Greenwald and Aslan who, using the Chapel Hill murders as an excuse, demand that we give up criticizing religion.

As Harris says:

“If you care about our ability to notice, and criticize, and correct for bad ideas, then you have to condemn this behavior. You have to condemn the deliberate manufacture of lies designed to make it unsafe to have honest conversations.”

Lest we forget that what’s getting lost in these ideological battles is the inexpressible tragedy of people whose lives were snuffed out before they had much of a chance to live them. Here are the victims:

The dead have been identified as: Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, of Chapel Hill

Yusor Mohammad Barakat, 21, of Chapel Hill

Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, of Raleigh Barakat was Mohammad’s husband; Abu-Salha was her sister. Barakat was a second-year student at the UNC School of Dentistry, who was raising money on a fundraising site to provide dental care to Syrian refugees in Turkey. He had been married for just over a month to Yusor Mohammad, who was planning to begin her dental studies at UNC in the fall, according to the school.