Murder of an Editor
The ugly face of intolerance from the extremist Islamist world has apparently surfaced in our own country with the brutal murder of the editor of the Oakland Post, Chauncey Bailey. We qualify the suggestion with the word "apparently" because no one has yet been tried or convicted of the crime. But it's not too soon to say that the facts of Bailey's killing, as alleged by the authorities, are a reminder of the depravity of these religious fanatics and an example of the hatred that we face both here and abroad.
The reporter and editor at the Post, a weekly newspaper serving the African American community, was working on an expose of the finances of Your Black Muslim Bakery, known for its bean pies. But a handyman at the bakery, 19-year-old Devaughndre Broussard, would have nothing of it. Police told California reporters that Broussard was angry over Bailey's stories. Authorities say he went to the newspaper office to confront him. When he discovered that Bailey was not at the office yet, he drove in a van searching for the journalist.
The alleged killer eventually found him and, according to California authorities, shot him several times, including one blast directly into the fallen editor's face. The killing of a journalist for crossing Islam seems like something out of the streets of Saudi Arabia or Yemen, not the United States. Broussard, who is to be formally arraigned on murder charges Thursday, reportedly confessed to police after being arrested. Now that he faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life behind bars, he is trying to recant that confession.
Some have tried to excuse Broussard as an isolated incident. One can only wish it were so. In fact, resorting to violence to silence an enemy seems to be a frequent weapon in the arsenal of Islamic extremists. Some Muslims insist that the bakery operators were not true Muslims. If they mean to dissociate themselves from the crime, good for them; if they mean to blur the reality of the situation, too bad. While the bakery wasn't part of a mainstream Islamic movement, its actions fit with a pattern.
When Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh made a movie critical of Islam, he too was savagely murdered. Others were killed when Muslims from around the world engaged in violent protests over newspaper cartoons mocking Islam. It's clear from this pattern of violence that Islamic extremists are not interested in debate or dialogue or the normal scrutiny that all sectors face in a democratic society or, for that matter, attempts to bring a peaceful settlement to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.
Rather Islamic extremists are all too frequently interested in killing anybody that even remotely questions their beliefs or institutions. Chauncey Bailey was said by those who know him to have been a brave journalist, committed to truth and justice. Our profession is worse off without him. It is but a small consolation that the circumstances of his murder may prove more conclusive demonstration of the evil of the Islamist extremists than even the best-written and reported investigation of the bakery could have.
