Religion and Hate Crimes among the Amish

Sam Mullet

Back home in Iowa, my family does business with some of the local Amish, and life always seemed so peaceful when we visited them.  Under the surface, however, all may not be well.  Several years ago members of one community in Ohio ganged up and cut off another member's beard, under the leadership Bishop Samuel Mullet, pictured at left.   That is a big deal for the Amish (and to be fair, if I had spent as much time growing that beard, I'd be pretty ticked off, too).

They were found guilty of committing a hate crime.  On appeal, the hate crime conviction was overturned.   There were two key issues in the case.

First, was the attack motivated by religion (the victim didn't accept Bishop Mullet's interpretations of religious rules) or by personal animosity (the victim didn't obey Mullet because he thought Mullet was a bully, and Mullet wanted to put him down)?  The opinion says:

They said it was unfair to conclude that "because faith permeates most, if not all, aspects of life in the Amish community, it necessarily permeates the motives for the assaults in this case."  Church leaders, "whether Samuel Mullet or Henry VIII, may do things, including committing crimes or even creating a new religion, for irreligious reasons," they wrote.

Second, and perhaps better fodder for comments, should all religiously motivated harm be considered hate crimes?  The defendants' lawyers argued:

The impetus behind the hate-crime statute, the Matthew Shepard tragedy and James Bird - those are heinous, egregious, tragic crimes, and I think in responding to those crimes, (the statute) is a little overbroad, and I think it can have an effect that perhaps Congress didn't intend.  This is a really good case that exemplifies where that line can be drawn of what is a hate crime and what is not a hate crime.

What do you think?   The full article is here

Straining the limits of empathy

Today in class we talked about the challenge of seeing seemingly irrational behavior as rational in the understanding of the person acting.   If you think you might have trouble doing this in your own fieldwork site, try reading this article about members of a new religion on trial in China.  I suspect it will make what you encounter seem much more rational by comparison.

In late May, the group entered the McDonald's in Zhaoyuan to solicit phone numbers and recruit new members.  37-year-old Wu Shuoyan, who was dining there at the time, refused to give over her number.  Witnesses say the group then became enraged, and began beating the victim with a mop handle, all the while screaming at the other customers to stay away.

Full story 

Start of a new semester

I've secured access to the blog again, and will be posting material relevant to our Politics and Religion class this semester.