Many Muslims were outraged that the killings on Tuesday night were slow to draw public attention. The hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter was widely used on Twitter as word spread on Wednesday morning that the 3 victims killed were Muslim.
When police inquiry indicated a parking dispute had triggered the shootings, several US Muslim leaders said the gruesome nature of the crime warranted a hate crime investigation from both federal and local law enforcement. The family of the victims also joined the call for a hate-crime inquiry.
Dalia Mogahed, director of the Institute for social policy and understanding, an NGO that specialises in Muslim issues, said she was worried that the media was slow on picking up the religious significance of the fatal shootings.
She said "How would we be dealing with this issue if the faith and ethnicity of the victims and perpetrator were switched, if a brown-skinned person went into the room of three white people and shot them?" Mogahed said. "We're all just floored by the blatant double standard that we're seeing in both law enforcement and media coverage of the issue."
The victims murdered were a newlywed couple, Deah Shaddy Barakat, aged 23, and Yusor Mohammad, aged 21, and Mohammad's sister, 19-year-old Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. Craig Stephen Hicks, 46years, was charged with 3 counts of first-degree murder in the shootings.
The Dad of the women, Mohammad Abu-Salha, stated to The News & Observer of Raleigh that Hicks had harassed his daughter and husband a couple of times before, and held a gun in his belt when he spoke with them. Abu-Salha further said his daughter Yusor, who lived next door to Hicks, wore a Muslim head scarf and reported to her family a week ago that she had "a hateful neighbor."
"Honest to God, she said, 'He hates us for what we are and how we look,'" he told the newspaper.
A civil rights organisation based in California, Muslim Advocates, pleaded with US attorney general Eric Holder to open a federal inquiry into the homicides. "We cannot ignore the environment in which this incident took place," said Madihha Ahussain of Muslim Advocates.
The council on American-Islamic relations also made a similar plea. Chapel Hill police chief Chris Blue said, "We understand the concerns about the possibility that this was hate-motivated, and we will exhaust every lead to determine if that is the case."
Muslim groups have held vigils for the victims in North Carolina, New York, Virginia and elsewhere, while some others organized a worldwide Quran reading as a memorial.
The reaction reflects the fear many American Muslims feel in the wake of anti-Muslim prejudice which has persisted since the September 11 terror attacks, often spiking after terror attacks overseas.
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