The Christian Shooter at Fort Hood

Much is being made of the fact that the man allegedly responsible for the mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, is Muslim.

I can’t help wondering what the reaction would have been had his name been John Matthew Smith, born in the U.S. but the child of British immigrants, and a practicing Christian who had once, years ago, attended the same church as Timothy McVeigh for a couple of years.

I suspect it would have been a mass shrug, followed by a “So what?”

And let’s take it one step further. What if he, John Matthew Smith, was, in fact, religiously motivated: a Christian fanatic attempting to bring about the apocalypse through mass murder? Would all of the Christian groups in the country be required to defend themselves, to say “he doesn’t represent us”? Of course not.

The public and the media would be saying that Smith was a troubled man who misinterpreted his religion to suit his illness. Someone who had done something horrible, certainly, but a lone actor, not representative of anything.

Smith. Hasan. A lot is in a name.