Canada: Driver Kills 4 Members of Muslim Family

This article first appeared in New English Review. 

On Sunday, a 20-year-old man identified as Nathaniel Veltman drove his vehicle onto the curb of a street in the town of London, Ontario, Canada, killing 4 members of a Pakistani immigrant family and injuring a 5th. The victims, all of the same family, were aged 9-74. The surviving victim is 9 years old. Veltman, who reportedly drove away from the scene and was later arrested, is being charged with four counts of premeditated murder and one count of attempted murder. Police and local authorities are calling this a deliberate and premeditated hate crime directed against Muslims.

If all this is accurate, then we must all condemn this act of violence against an innocent family of victims. That includes those of us who are critics of the Islamic ideology and oppose massive Muslim immigration into the West. It is never right to attack innocent people no matter how many terrorist acts are carried out by Islamic terrorists and jihadists, no matter how much hate against Christians and Jews may be spewed by certain Muslims.

Many, including myself, will point out the hypocrisy of the narrative that is sure to follow about “evil, Islamophobic, white nationalists who are the biggest threat to our security and our democracy” while ignoring all the hate and violence perpetrated daily by Muslims (not all Muslims) against non-Muslims. As I speak, many in the West are pointedly ignoring the wave of anti-Semitism being directed against Jews, primarily by Muslims (again, not all Muslims), not only in the Middle East, but in Europe and North America as well.

But that in no way justifies what happened in Canada Sunday. It is one thing to criticize certain teachings of Islam-especially those that impact non-Muslims. It is one thing to oppose Muslim immigration to the West as being a threat to public safety- which it is. It is one thing to document the horrible acts being carried out daily by certain Muslim migrants in Europe. It is one thing to condemn the excuses and apologia offered up by Western liberals and elites, who want to eliminate all criticism of Islam to the point of lying to their own people and silencing those who disagree with them. This site speaks about all of the above.

But it is quite another to blame innocent individuals for the excesses of others. It is quite another to single out innocent people for violence because they belong to a particular group. It is quite another to commit murder.

I have already seen comments on the internet applauding this act. This is unacceptable. Civilized people do not celebrate barbarity. That is what ISIS does. That is Al Qaeda does. That is what Hamas does. They not only celebrate these kinds of acts when carried out against us, but they also encourage them. Are we to put ourselves down to their level?

If our side is to maintain our credibility and our decency, then we need to vigorously condemn these acts.