The alleged assassination by an outspoken North Carolina atheist of three of his Muslim neighbors is shining a light on particular, deep tensions between two tiny American groups: Muslims and atheists.

Police in Chapel Hill Wednesday said they are only at the start of their probe into Craig Hicks life and what led up to Tuesday night, when he allegedly shot and killed husband and wifeDeah Barakat, 23, and Yusor Mohammad, 21, and Mohammads sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha. They said initial reports indicated that there was a dispute about parking but that their investigation continues.

Police arrested Hicks, 46, and charged him with the shootings. Hicks turned himself in without incident to theChatham County Sheriffs Office in nearby Pittsboro, Chatham County Sgt. Kevin Carey said Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the father of the two women said one of his daughters had mentioned Hicks before and felt he was anti-Muslim. A week ago, he said, she told her family she had a hateful neighbor.

Honest to God, she said, He hates us for what we are and how we look,Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, who has a psychiatry practice near Chapel Hill, told The News Observer.

Later on Wednesday, Hickss wife insisted that the shooting was only due to parking arguments and not to any bigotry. I can say with my absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion or victims faith, but in fact was related to the long-standing parking disputes that my husband had with the neighbors. Karen Hicks said during a news conference.

But reports that an outspoken atheist most of Hicks many Facebook posts railed against religion had attacked a family who were visibly Muslim(the women wore headscarves) tapped immediately into a conversation that has been going on since Sept. 11 about why several of atheisms biggest figures havesingled out Islam for criticism.

Among them are biologist and writer Richard Dawkins and neuroscientistSam Harris, who have bothtriggered controversy with their comments about Islam.

For example, after the Paris attacks on magazine Charlie Hebdo, Dawkins tweeted that all religions are NOT equally violent. Some have never been violent, some gave it up centuries ago. One religion conspicuously didnt.

In an essay around the time of the controversy about a proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero, Harris wrote that At this point in human history, Islam simply is different from other faiths, and that terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban arent veering from the basic faith. If they are extremists who have deformed an ancient faith into a death cult, they havent deformed it by much. When one reads the Koran and thehadith, and consults the opinions of Muslim jurists over the centuries, one discovers that killing apostates, treating women like livestock, and waging jihadnot merely as an inner, spiritual struggle but as holy war against infidelsare practices that are central to the faith.

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Chapel Hill killings shine light on particular tensions between Islam and atheism