Don’t jump to conclusions
When the news started leaking out about the murders of four Muslim men in Albuquerque, New Mexico, suspicions quickly spread online and in mainstream media. Police suspected that the murders might be “related” in some fashion and asked for the public’s help in identifying a suspect. This of course prompted people on social media to suspect that these were hate crimes perpetrated against the Muslim community, no doubt by some sort of Christian white supremacist domestic terrorist, or whatever the flavor of the month is currently. Thanks to some solid investigative work by law enforcement, a suspect was soon identified and taken into custody, partly because of his car which was caught on camera near the scenes of two of the slayings. But rather than fitting the profile of the latest hate crime perpetrator, the accused is himself a Muslim who sometimes attended the same mosque as the victims.
