I wrote yesterday about the tragic triple-murder of three Muslim Americans in Chapel Hill, N.C. — and about the president’s shameful depiction of it as just another example of a supposed rising tide of “Islamophobia” in the United States. The president and others, I wrote, are keen to turn this heinous crime into “the Muslim Ferguson,” despite a complete lack of evidence that the crime was religiously motivated.

Now comes this op-ed from Brown University anthropology professor Sherine Hamdy, published today in the Providence Journal:

How can we understand last week’s shooting death of three Muslim students in Chapel Hill, N.C.? All were slain in their home. The accused killer, one of their neighbors, allegedly shot them execution-style, with a gun he had used to threaten them several times before.
Police officials and others in Chapel Hill rushed to portray this crime as stemming from a parking dispute. That obscures the fact that these slayings appear to be part of a long-standing and deeply disturbing pattern of hate crimes against Muslims in America. In the period since the 9/11 attacks, the number of hate crimes against Muslims has increased by 1,700 percent.
The Chapel Hill perpetrator’s white skin affords him the privilege of being described as “mentally disturbed” or a “lone wolf.”

It would be one thing if Hamdy simply peddled a narrative. But her op-ed is riddled not just with specious interpretations, but with outright factual errors, which ought not to be left uncontested.

The first, obvious point: No, these slayings do not “appear to be part of a long-standing and deeply disturbing pattern of hate crimes against Muslims” — largely because there is not a shred of evidence to indicate that the victims’ religion had anything to do with the crime. Yes, the killer, Craig Hicks, had threatened his victims previously — but he had also threatened just about everyone else in his condominium complex, according to neighbors. He exercised “equal-opportunity anger,” said one resident.

More broadly, there is not any such pattern of crimes as Hamdy describes, and the “1,700 percent” statistic she quotes is, in fact, incorrect. Hate crimes against Muslims increased 1,700 percent between 2000 and 2001 as result of the September 11 attacks, but they dropped by about two-thirds the next year, as FBI statistics show, and have remained basically static since. (Moreover, FBI statistics reveal that it is far more dangerous to be a Jew in the United States than a Muslim.)

And there are still other howlers:

“Michael Brown, unarmed and with hands raised in the air [false], was shot dead in Ferguson and accused of being a thief.”

“Since the Chapel Hill murders, an Islamic center in Houston was intentionally lit on fire [also apparently false].”

Craig Hicks’s crime was despicable, and more information may come out as the investigation continues. But there is, at present, no evidence to support Sherine Hamdy’s claims. More to the point, almost all of the “facts” she cites to support her broader narrative — of white privilege and rampant “Islamophobia” — are highly debatable, if not patently false. Expedient fictions cannot be allowed to trump the facts.