Back of the Envelope

Now this is more than a little disturbing (from Derbyshire in The Corner):

The father of a murdered New Jersey family was threatened for making anti-Muslim remarks online — and the gruesome quadruple slaying may have been the hateful retaliation, sources told The Post yesterday.

Hossam Armanious, 47, who along with his wife and two daughters was found stabbed to death in his Jersey City home early Friday, would regularly debate religion in a Middle Eastern chat room, one source said.

Armanious, an Egyptian Christian, was well known for expressing his Coptic beliefs and engaging in fiery back-and-forth with Muslims on the Web site paltalk.com.
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Armanious' fervor apparently rubbed off on his daughter, Sylvia — who would have turned 16 yesterday.

"She was very religious and very opinionated," said Jessica Cimino, 15, a fellow sophomore at Dickenson HS.

A family member who viewed photos of the bloodbath said Sylvia seemed to have taken the most savage punishment.

"When we saw the pictures, you could tell that they were hurt really, really bad in the face; especially Sylvia," said Milad Garas, the high-school sophomore's great-uncle.

The heartless killer not only slit Sylvia's throat, but also sliced a huge gash in her chest and stabbed her in the wrist, where she had a tattoo of a Coptic cross.

The fact that Sylvia was the one who took the brunt of the punishment indicates to me that it's more likely someone who knew the family personally rather than through the chatroom. This is vicious, and I want to see those who did this caught and punished. This isn't organized terrorism, but in a way, it's what the terrorists are all about: fear and intimidation, making people afraid of being too open about any beliefs other than the terrorists'. By the sounds of it, Armanious was outspoken to the point of rudeness, but rudeness and murder are orders of magnitude apart, and a tolerance for uncivil discourse is a truer test of one's appreciation of free speech than a tolerance of learned academic debates.

The article gives fewer clues as to why someone might have hated Sylvia so much, and like I said, it seems more like it was someone who knew Sylvia who did this, but still, if it wasn't through personal contact, this article raises another concern. It is ridiculously easy to track someone down through the Internet. I don't post my address online, but my full name's there, and with online whitepages, business directories, and a few hints about my life, it shouldn't be hard for someone to find where I live. I doubt I've done anything to tick someone off enough to incite murder, but give me time: I'm not shy about my opinions. And it's not as if I'm rich enough to have any real protection. The same applies to most bloggers, even the high traffic, famous ones. If some violent group wanted to seriously intimidate the blogosphere, to make it dangerous to be an outspoken blogger, it could. In that case, how many blogs would just go quiet?

Update: CNN has more on this incident:

Authorities insist a theory that a Muslim angry over Internet postings was responsible for the slaying of an Egyptian Christian family is just one of several under investigation.

But the theory — embraced as fact by some — has touched off a new round of anti-Muslim sentiment in a city still stinging from a post-September 11 backlash.
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Investigators are looking into the possibility that Hossam Armanious, 47, his 37-year-old wife, Amal Garas, and their daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8, were slain by someone angered over postings that Armanious, a Coptic Christian, wrote in an Internet chat room. The Coptic Orthodox Church is one of the oldest communities in Christendom, believed to have been founded in the first century A.D. by the apostle Mark.

Authorities say the killings could have occurred during a robbery since no cash or valuables were found in the home. Prosecutor Guy Gregory said the father's wallet was found empty.

This article is pretty standard CNN. "Murders? Who cares? But look, there's anti-Muslim sentiment!" The information about valuables and the father's wallet seems to contradict the earlier reports, but early reports are often unreliable, so the latter information is more likely accurate. Does that mean it was just a robbery? My thinking is that it's just too brutal for a robbery. You shouldn't rule it out entirely, and I'm glad the police haven't, but my gut instinct says no.