The campus murder of Professor Richard Antoun
From the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, news of a campus murder that appears to be more than your average street crime:
Richard T. Antoun, a respected Binghamton University anthropology professor who grew up in Shrewsbury, spent his entire career seeking peace. His work focused on bridging the divide between religions and cultures, particularly in the Middle East.
But the 77-year-old professor’s life ended violently Friday when he was stabbed multiple times in his campus office, allegedly by a graduate student whom he was advising on his doctoral thesis.
The student, Abdulsalam S. al-Zahrani, 46, was from Saudi Arabia. Mr. Antoun was serving on the dissertation committee for Mr. Zahrani’s graduate thesis and apparently had known him for quite some time, according to news reports. The university’s Web site says Mr. Zahrani’s doctoral thesis is called “Sacred Voice, Profane Sight: The Senses, Cosmology, and Epistemology in Early Arabic Culture.”
Mr. Zahrani was immediately arrested and charged with second-degree murder and is being held without bail. The motive for the attack is unclear.
Candace de Russy notes:
The two apartment-mates of Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani, the Saudi national and doctoral student charged with stabbing to death Richard Antoun, a Binghamton University professor emeritus, said the suspect was (as Press Connects reports) “confrontational, argumentative and ‘acted like a terrorist.’”
Al-Zahrani is a graduate student in cultural anthropology, while Antoun, an expert on comparative religion, is described as a “gentle man dedicated to dispelling stereotypes about different cultures.”
Souleyman Sukho, a Senegalese doctoral student at BU who was one of Al-Zahrani’s apartment-mates, stated he “‘came at me with a knife . . . asked me if I was afraid of dying . . . behaved like a terrorist . . . . would open his door and would be screaming on the phone . . . [and] claimed he was persecuted.’”
The other apartment-mate, Luis Pena, a master’s-degree student at BU, related that Al-Zahrani would abruptly exclaim “I just feel like destroying the world” and would “make weird remarks.”
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You’re welcome for the tip.
…not a hate crime though…
Just what the United States and the rest of the Civilized, Western World needs: More H1B Student Visas.
Tons of readers e-mailed the article.
Why 2nd degree murder?
Master Po: Time for you to leave Grasshopper.”
Abdulsalam S. al-Zahrani: “I kill you!”
I think he wants a cookie.
the motive is clear to me….this creep murdered the man just because he was Jewish…I wonder if he’ll be charged with a “hate crime”….NOT.
RAAAAACIST! Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani is enriching and strengthening our cultural diversity.
Why do we kiss a** to the middle east? Why are there any middle eastern students here and probably at taxpayers’ expense under some ridiculous program created by our imbecilic politicians with pork funds. Let them get educated in their own country.
This COULD be just one weird dude but we seem to get a lot of people killed by importing “young men from known terrorist supporting nations”. Saudi Arabia is home to the whaabi sect which being confrontational, argumentative and ‘acting like a terrorist’” is the norm.
As Al-Zahrani is of The Religion of Peace allowance must be made. No good people this should not be looked at as a murder but merely an expression of differences. Richard T. Antoun was not all that good at bridging that divide was he?
Well if he hadn’t been living in poverty and poorly educated…
I could have stopped after reading this sentence. I knew it was going to be followed by a killer’s name I couldn’t pronounce but I would recognize as being mid-eastern.
Binghamton is only ~40 miles from islamberg “children’s academy” in Hancock, NY.
Perhaps merely a coincidence….
Perhaps not.
yes, yes, yes, academias chickens are coming home to roost. for money these colleges invite in criminals and terrorists from every dump around the globe. then they don’t keep track of them, and when they overstay their visa, oh well that’s not my responsibility. when they murder or mass murder, oh well, that’s not my responsibility. when they send our taxpayer funded trade secrets back to the homeland so they too can develop nuclear and biological and space based weapons, oh well, that’s not my responsibility. SO WHO’S RESPONSIBILITY IS IT, YOU BROUGHT THEM HERE.
Of course.
I want a cookie too, maybe three.
Stereotypes aren’t invented out of thin air.
I don’t see anything in the main stream media, so I guess this didn’t happen.
Oh, really?
Yet you remained as his roommate. Either a sheep or a fellow traveller.
And just as likely to remain unclear.
My money is on real severe mental health issues (schizophrenia, paranoid/delusional) along with being a radical Muslim. Was it a terrorist act? No. It has no resemblence to the other acts of terrorism we’ve seen recently. Note the lack of “Allah Akbar”. Actually, it resembles a number of cases of doctoral students blowing their dissertation and taking it out on someone.
That being said, he should be going to prison for a long time…..
Are they open to suggestions?
I’m sorry his idealism and rose-colored glasses finally got him killed.
We won’t have a perfect world until Jesus Christ returns.
Of course, the lack of any living witnesses makes that difficult to determine.
Agreed.
Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.
Not to mention that it appears neither one reported it even in the wake of the Maj Hassan terrorist attack at Ft Hood.
Another day in a world of jihad…
They won’t admit this is a problem until the last guy standing notices he’s the last guy standing, then who’s left to give a $h!t?
Or he had really good weed.
It’s in the genes. I lived next door to a man who worked in the US foreign service in Arab countries for many years. His kids told me that most of the Muslims they came in contact with were total loons.
Suggestion: If these ivory tower academics want to do cultural anthropology let them examine the negative effects of inbreeding in Arab cultures. Combine that with Mohammedanism and you’ve got a real problem.
But will he be charged under Sharia law?
Nope he would be rewarded.
saw his head off.
The science is settled.
The last 10 years have been the hottest period for muslim terrorism since the middle ages.
And it even looks like a hockey stick.
***
What part of premeditated murder don’t the authorities understand? This is FIRST DEGREE MURDER with HATE CRIME providing the aggrevated “kicker” that should make this a DEATH PENALTY case.
***
Stop coddling these criminals and “hang em high” if they are convicted–after one appeal. Give them their well deserved “ticket to Allah” and their 72 virgins.
***
Lots of people around this Jihadi could have reported him to the University and didn’t. Canceling his “student” visa and shipping his sorry A** back to his home country would have saved a life. Why do we need to suffer these murderers in our country?
***
John Bibb
***
LOL. Thanks, I needed that.
blame the liberals and their dream of utopia for this stuff. I can’t really comment on this stuff anymore, it infuriates me so.
Cookie-schmookie! Break out the cheddar!
We have enough dangerous loons here. Why import them?
We won’t drill here and now.
Diversity.
Don’t forget the milk. It would be nice to get milk and cookies whenever we come to play at Mrs. Malkin’s house.
We are engaged in the Long War on Terror. Liberal politicians’ position on illegal immigration are the reason we are flooded with these student visas. We need someone with the stones Eisenhower had to throw them the hell out of the country!
Like Misscheryl – I am infuriated by our immigration policies from Bush to Obeyme. Enough already. Get armed, you too ladies.
You mean like Major Hasan?
On Dec. 8 at 10:20 A.M., Calgirl stated that Mr. Antoun was Jewish. According to the news article, he was Unitarian Universalist. This in no way mitigates his murder or the hateful motive behind it.
Oh, no. Immediately the DA said there was no religious or ethnic motivation, even when he added the investigation is at its early stages! In other words, he is making sure noone should EVEN think about probable (and apparent) motive!
Heh!
Aloha Guy…
You’re absolutely correct. I had a memory lapse during my outrage.
And how many more thousands like him are running around?
I can’t imagine that it was only his roommates that knew about this guys behaviour. Moreover, why did those other guys elect to live with Al-Zahrani?
A number of jobs can be created to interview and keep tabs on visiting students, workers and vacationers. Part of that job description would include, but not limited, to deporting these individuals who overstay their visas and keeping track of who comes and goes in and out of the country.
This unfortunate event sounds as if it could have been avoided.
Our military fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan would not have impacted this event, but a more robust law enforcement (State Dept, Homeland Security, Customs, and/or FBI) could have.
On December 8th, 2009 at 11:35 am, rocketman said:
I gotta agree with you on that one.
The Department of Homeland Security must be willing to enforce our existing laws before any additional personnel will do any good.
Increased robustness isn’t always about a larger budget.
zyzzyg, you should stop pretending to be any type of fiscal conservative. A conservative would never refer to increased government spending as job creation.
Cookies for tips??? Prepare for the onslaught, ms. Malkin…
Making alternative living arrangements isn’t always easy or immediately possible. I don’t think we need to make any assumptions about the roommates.
Unitarian Universalist is not exactly, er, right-wing.
http://www.uua.org/
If this was politically motivated, people who think the Islamofascists would back off if we were nicer to them might want to take note.
The issue isn’t just Islamofascists. It’s crazy people of all stripe, and our reluctance to confront the issue. So, in our efforts to be “non-judgmental”, people die.
This reminds me of the shooting at the Appalachian school of law back in 2002, where people noted the shooter was “off” and “just wasn’t right” before he went on his rampage, but was most likely coddled because of his protected minority status. That seems to be a trend ….a lethal one.
You said it YTZGal…all this PC liberalism is gonna prove disastrous.
Has obama said “let’s not jump to any conclusions” yet?