Jumping the Gun

So I know that I mentioned the bow attack in Kongsberg, Norway yesterday, and I really hadn't intended to beat that drum again. But when I saw the headline: "Kongsberg: Bow and arrow attack appears to be terrorism - officials," I figured I'd take a look.

A deadly bow and arrow attack in Norway which left five people dead appears to have been an act of terror, Norway's security service (PST) said.

The suspect, a 37-year-old Danish citizen named Espen Andersen Brathen, had converted to Islam and there were fears he had been radicalised.

However a motive has not yet been determined.

Um... if "a motive has not yet been determined" how can the attack appear to be terrorism? Just because the guy converted to Islam? That's shouldn't be enough to mark someone as a terrorist. Terrorism is supposed to be violence with a political motive, not simply violence by someone of a certain religion.

A police lawyer told public broadcaster NRK he would be assessed by psychiatrists. During a press conference PST head Hans Sverre Sjovold said the suspect had been "in and out of the health system for some time".

Chris Rock might seem to be an odd choice to quote here, but "Whatever happened to crazy?" Here's a man whose has apparently been treated for mental illness or instability on more than one occasion, and when he start walking around shooting people with arrows, he'd judged a terrorist because he converted to Islam?

A couple of years ago, someone once asked me, if I had to chose a religion, which would I select, and I said: "Islam." And this was my reasoning: Unlike other Americans, one never hears of a Moslem being mentally ill, or even simply criminally inclined - only radicalization, it seems, can prompt them to step out of line. Given that, as a closeted non-believer, I'd be unlikely to ever become devout enough that the more radical elements would hold any appeal to me, I could simply assure myself both of living an upright life, and being proof against the mental diseases and defects that have visited themselves upon various members of my extended family. And now it appears that even Europeans, for all that they're supposedly more enlightened than us here in the United States, buy into that same logic. It's bizarre.

It really should take more than someone deciding that it's time to avenge the Crusades to sustain the suspicion of terrorism. Especially when their mental health is in doubt. To do otherwise waters down the concept to next to nothing, and contributes to the idea that all of Islam's many and varied adherents are capable of becoming a threat for no other reason than their specific view of the face of the divine.