John Muhammad is not being treated like a terrorist - in fact - CNN is actually referring to him as John Williams despite the fact that he legally changed his name to Muhammad. A whole bunch more discussion on this issue over here. And lest anyone think its me trying to tie the sniper to his religion - remember it was him who said "Call me God" in his little notes to police (which you can read here in PDF format)

Also notice that the Muslims who took the theater hostage in Moscow are being called rebels, captors, guerillas, gunmen, hostage-takers - pretty much everything but terrorists. Meryl Yourish's take is right on: In my lexicon, guerrilla fighters and rebels are names for the people fighting military forces and choosing military targets. The second you move on to deliberately targeting civilians, you are no longer anything but a terrorist. But hey, what do I know?

There's just no arguing with that. Also, although I do feel that both the situation in Russia was clearly terrorism, and I think it likely that John Muhammad's shootings were terrorism - its also important to not try and link every crime committed by a Muslim to terrorism. There is a distinction there, and I regognize it - I just don't think its a distinction that fits these two scenerios.

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