Thursday, March 09, 2006

No Motive But Fun?

Nine churches in Alabama, all of them Baptist, are burned down in arson attacks. It turns out to be the work of three college students, two of them "aspiring actors". They claim that there was no religious element to the attacks , that they were merely "pranks".

The fires broke out at five Baptist churches in Bibb County south of Birmingham on Feb. 3 and four Baptist churches in west Alabama on Feb. 7.

A federal source said the apparent motive was that the three students just liked to set and watch fires.

Well, that's what they say. If they just liked to set fires, why did they specifically attack nine churches. Why not shops, homes, shacks, barns, or anything else that wasn't a church? Why not set fire to a car?

There obviously was some reason they selected churches as the sole target of their arson campaign. If this had been a group of- for example- mosques burned down by three white kids, then surely they would be accused of a "hate crime" regardless of their "we just like to burn things" statement.

It seems to me- and perhaps I'm wrong- that if these weren't Baptist churches being burned down, people would be having a hard time accepting these college thugs' excuses.

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