Muslims, Christians try to repair relations after arrests in family's murder

From the Associated Press, distributed by Newsday.com. Specifically, the local Coptic community, the American Coptic Association, and many others--including myself--all assumed that when a Coptic family died violently in their home, Muslim terrorists had done the deed. Now, however, the Jersey City Police have two very likely suspects in the case--caught on tape trying to use Hossam Armanious' ATM card one too many times, and with an opportunity that no outsider could match--and who are, by all account, not Muslims and definitely not Egyptian. So now, it seems, the local Muslim activists are demanding some apologies.

Well, I'm not ready to apologize just yet. I've already discussed about how I had every reason to assume that the police had ruled out those closest to Hossam Armanious and his family. We now learn that they utterly failed to take Edward McDonald, the upstairs tenant, into account until they finally checked into Hossam's financial records and found $3000 of ATM withdrawals--which in turn led them to the bank, where McDonald was caught on tape using Hossam's ATM card (only to have the ATM eat it). So if anyone has to apologize about the handling of this case, it's the police, for not "playing the percentages" and checking out the upstairs tenant from the get-go.

But I have some more questions:

1. Who was the Internet chat participant who irresponsibly threatened Hossam Armanious with death? Yes, I'm a veteran of Internet discussion, and that includes flame wars. I've singed myself dozens of times under circumstances that I'll not mention here. But last time I checked, threatening anyone with death is enough to cast suspicion on you if that person winds up dead.
2. Why did the Egyptian consulate threaten the extended family with an undisclosed sanction if they did not "keep quiet" about the circumstances of Hossam's death? The Egyptian Ambassador has some major 'splainin' to do. If his personnel had kept their mouths shut, they could have saved themselves a great deal of embarrassment.
3. Why don't we get a single straight answer on what the Koran actually demands of its followers?

If Muslims are interested in repairing damaged relations, then maybe they could start with the very real grievances that the Copts have with Muslims. Friends and relatives of Hossam Armanious suspected Muslim involvement because such involvement is typical--and also because some loose cannon on the gundeck made a threat in a public forum.

And besides--maybe those yo-yos aren't Muslim and not Arab after all. But we still don't know "boo" about what other associations they might have. The FBI needs to run down every associate that either suspect has--just to be complete.