The Virginia Tech School Shootings

US university shooting kills 33

A US shooting rampage at the Virginia Tech university has left 33 people, including a suspected gunman, dead.

There were two incidents two hours apart, at a student dorm where two were killed and at an engineering building where 30 and the gunman died. Officers said they were working to link the attacks and had a preliminary ID of the gunman but would not release it. After the deadliest shooting rampage in US history, President George W Bush said the US was "shocked and saddened".

Of course, now we know that the identity of the killer is Cho Seung-Hui, an unstable South Korean student studying at the same university. This incident has managed to spark heated debate in many areas, including gun control and in general the tragic trend of school shootings.

Perhaps we should talk about the central figure in this drama: the perpetrator, Cho Seung-Hui. For ease of reading, we shall refer to him a "Cho" from this point on. Cho grew up in a dilapidated apartment in a low-income neighborhood in Korea. From young, he was always considered a bit strange, and his sister's accomplishments were always advertised over his.

Then, his family managed to emigrate to the US in search for better hopes there. In his videos, Cho rants and raves of people with the Mercedes cars, golden necklaces, trust funds, and vodkas and cognacs. Presumably, he must have met such a group of people when he emigrated. He claims that he will be as much of a martyr as Jesus Christ was.

Cho was twice accused of stalking women and in general never spoke to anyone. His current bizzare nature, coupled with this presumed torment, must have caused something to snap in his mind. Thus is the face of a mass murder. However, murder often requires three things: motive, means and opportunity. We have seen the motive, and he had plenty of opportunity.

Then how about the means? How could he so easily have shot and killed 32 other human beings? This is merely one piece of the paradoxical puzzle of gun rights in the United States of America. The Second Amendment clearly states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

What does this mean? Anti-gun control advocates state this clearly means that people should have guns, to use whenever necessary. However, the context of this statement should also be made clear. This was written at a time when police forces where uncommon, when people were expected to defend their own country. This amendment was a child of the violent and bloody American Revolution.

Now that the United States is free, how much sense does this make? Does each person have a right to carry an object that can kill? Personally, I advocate further gun control. Means to make violence only ensures it. One simply cannot assume that all those who buy weapons know how to be responsible for it.

I conclude: there are unstable people in this world, and we should at least make the effort to prevent this group, if not others, from getting such weapons.

Muslim Council of Britain's recommendations generate backlash.

Was Muslim guidance reasonable?

Muslims demand "Taleban-style" conditions in British schools.

That was the Daily Express' version of new guidelines for schools from the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). In fact, there was no reference to the Taleban anywhere in the report. Such are the dangers of polarising this debate by inflated language.

Indeed, the document stressed it was intended as "a source of reference" for schools when reviewing their policies in relation to Muslim pupils. Yet, what presumably upset the Express was the sheer length and detail of the requests that the MCB was making of schools.

Link goes here and a rather related story goes here.

Schools - the centres of learning, the paragons of academic achievement. This is where impressionable children learn the most in their lives, and the environments there are probably the largest influence on their lives at their age. Therefore, radical changes there are likely to beget even larger change in the student population.

Islam and Muslims - a large worldwide ethnic group, infamous for its conservative views on women, fasting, and so on and so forth. While not all terrorists and conservative groups are Muslim, many famous cases, like the aforementioned Taleban, or Fatah, or Hezbollah, all rather well-known to the world, are. To be fair, I have known few Muslims, and the above comments may seem unjustified to some, perhaps many.

When the two collide, it is imaginable that many sparks caused by the friction are likely to fly around, and perhaps even set some figurative fires alight, generating controversy. So it is not too difficult to see that the Muslim council's "recommendations" are likely to generate a generous amount of backlash.

Some of the terms in these suggestions range from amulets with Koranic verses being allowed, to boys being allowed to wear beards, to contact sports being limited to single-gender groups, to banning communal showering, to excusing pupils from swimming during Ramadan for fear that swallowing water would break their fast.

This begs the significant question: How far should institutions go in order to accommodate racial, social or perhaps even political groups? This, surely, is not merely a problem with Muslims, or Islam. This is a global problem, with groups ever seeking acceptance, while others would block such attempts.

However, acceptance can also be taken to extremes, where requests for tolerance can become excessive demands to create a more comfortable existence than others. Therefore, to make a true multiracial society stable, the fine line between the two must be found and drawn. This is especially so in multiracial Singapore, where the government at times struggles to find a balance between ethnicities.

While racism is necessarily a bad thing, exactly how far is out of taste? Racist jokes are abound in many primary and secondary schools, and some members of the minorities vehemently oppose such jokes, others are "fine with it", and take them in their stride.

Therein lies the difficulty in trying to accommodate minorities. Some will say that certain practices must be accepted, while other do not think much of whether these practices are all that necessary. Personally, I believe that while we should try to integrate minorities more, we still can remove practices that only a small amount of minorities believe to be necessary, and friendly jabs are still in taste. Were there no offense in jokes, they would cease being funny.

This brings one back to the issue of schools. I believe that in the end, schools should have the final authority on whether or not a certain policy is logical and should be admitted; after all, they have the most experience on these matters