John Allen Muhammad: Gulf War Veteran, D.C. Sniper, & Scapegoat for The State
Through violence you may murder a liar but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.
So goes the phrase by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who in so few words called out the great deception of justified violence…the illusion that through acts of violence some semblance of redemptive value can be found. But it is for nought. No matter how noble one believes their cause to be; when the smoke clears it will be found that violence only begets violence.
And so it is ironic that last night at 9:11PM, John Allen Muhammad, known as the “D.C. Sniper” was executed by the state of Virginia.
As someone who has experienced a family member being murdered my heart and prayers go out to those families impacted by this tragedy, however, I still must say that as heinous as the shootings of 2002 were, I still do not support the death penalty. To me, if we as a society agree that murder is wrong, then how do we justify becoming murderers ourselves? As a person of Faith, I read that Jesus found that the “eye for an eye” philosophy was not aligned with God’s Will for humanity. However, last night at 9:11PM, we sent a message to Muhammad that said, “you killed others, now we kill you.” An eye for an eye…
And ironically enough, we don’t ask the question: “Who taught Muhammad to shoot so well?” After all it was his skills as a sniper that were so feared. He didn’t miss. If he wanted you dead, he took you out. Would it be blasphemous for me to say on this Veteran’s Day that the United States Military trained John Allen Muhammad to be a killer? And that his skill for killing in 2002 was the same skill that was likely applauded on the battlefield of Iraq during the first Gulf War?
John Allen Muhammad was trained to be a killer by the United States Military and something snapped within him. Much like something seemed to snap within Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood last week. The number of soldiers who commit suicide has risen tremendously as well. And I won’t even attempt to state the number of veterans who suffer from war-related post traumatic stress syndrome.
The sad reality of these occurrences and the number of soldiers and soldier’s families who are suffering under the weight of The State’s wars, occupations, and invasions, affirms my belief that God did not wire us to commit violence against one another. And when we step into a realm like the military that exposes us and encourages us to be violent toward other human beings; it’s akin to stepping into a sort of Bizarro World where what is shunned in this civil society is encouraged and expected in that one. Where what is frowned upon and criminalized in popular culture, will earn you ribbons, stars, and commendations in that one.
We expect soldiers to go to foreign soil and kill in our name, but when they return – after seeing what they’ve seen, doing what they were ordered to do, and losing dear friends in combat – we expect them to flip the switch off and enter once more into the realm and cultural rules of civilized society. I’m not a veteran so I can’t speak for them, but while I see some veterans able to locate avenues of redemption like the group, Veterans for Peace, I sense that many other veterans can’t turn off that switch and the society that sent them to war doesn’t fully embrace them back to a place of healing and wholeness when they return. Thus, you’ll see many veterans on this Veterans Day living under bridges, going without the physical and mental care they need, and having no spiritual sanctuary where they can be truly reconciled back to God and their sisters and brothers.
So on the eve of Veterans Day, the United States Government, murdered a murderer that it helped to create without taking an ounce of responsibility for its complicity. And the tragedy is compounded by the realization of some victim’s family members who came face to face with the fallacious notion of justice via state-sanctioned murder. Steven Moore, a witness to last night’s execution whose sister was killed in 2002 said, “...No, I don’t feel any closure. I mean, it’s … it … nothing changes.”
So on this Veterans Day I reaffirm my position against the Death Penalty, my position for the sanctity of human life, and refusal to subjugate myself to spiritual wickedness in high places that orders my participation in the killing of others in the name of democracy, capitalism, “freedom” or the “American quality of life.” I confess my complicity in supporting the United States War Machine that murders the innocents all around the world with the taxes I pay every year. And I support active and former soldiers by today making a life-long commitment to advocate for an end to war, their redeployment to their families and communities, and the promotion of spiritual sanctuaries that help them find reconciliation with God and their neighbors.
On this Veterans Day, I pledge to preach an unpopular message: violence only begets violence!
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When you execute a murderer like John Allen Muhammad, it is not murder, it is justice. Eye for an eye tooth for a tooth has nothing to do with it. God has scantioned capital punishment for certain crimes against humanity, and the cold, calculated killing of innocents people is one of those crimes.