The accounts of the four Muslim men recently killed in New Mexico led me to a standard declaration in my mind: there go anti-Muslim white supremacists again. Given recent American history of vilifying and killing Muslims, many in the small Albuquerque Muslim community were gripped by fear. Since 9.11 white supremacist terror attacks on Muslims has left them in a state of panic.

The accounts from New Mexico reminded me of the arson murder of a Senegalese family in Denver’s Green Valley Ranch in 2020. Most members of the small Senegalese community of about 2000 are related to each other; the death of a family of five was cause of untold anguish and sorrow. Each Black wanton death in America causes me great anguish and sadness.

As it turns out, the two murder scenarios are different in mode and motive and illustrate how our initial conclusions can be so wrong. The lesson here is — we should keep our gaze on events until their true nature becomes clear. Indeed, patience is a virtue.

The Albuquerque murders it now turns out were not committed by some fire breathing White supremacist. Rather, the killer of the four Muslim men is someone who attended prayer services at the same mosque as his victims. Clearly my conclusion was erroneous.

As much as I wish the subject of my essay was a joyful wonder of man’s kindness to man, it is not. As a society we are gripped in the unrelenting jaws of anger and intolerance. I am left heart sick seeing the internecine Black youth killings and hurt to hear of Blacks dying at the hands of the police.

It is incredible to see TV images of America’s newly minted AR-15 wielding young white nationalists, yelling, “they will not replace us.”

It is this last group that my mind flew to when I heard that a fire had consumed a Muslim Senegalese family. My conclusion was the fire had been set by white supremacists, because of their religion and immigrant status. Because the explication fitted nicely in my prefabricated mental boxes it was a strangely comforting conclusion. I could then expend my mental energy grieving for the children and their parents, imagining them dying in the fire.

I personally harbor a deep fear of fire, having spent four months in a hospital after a fiery traffic accident as a young student in Kenya. I still see my two professors trapped in the car, as it was consumed by the flames. Given my past history, I know the agony and pain of dying in a fire. My anger at and resentment of the unknown arsonists was personal, intimate and unreservedly intense.

The Senegalese family’s home, it turns out, was torched by three White youngsters ages 16 and 15, who set fire to the wrong house. The genesis of their anger was a drug deal gone wrong. Two of them will be tried as adults in a forthcoming trial. That theirs was a puerile mistake, is no solace for the perished Senegalese family, for the African community and for society at large. The ordinary American will never know the courage and determination it took these Senegalese to come here.

It also now seems that the Albuquerque killings did not result from racism. Rather, religion, the saber-toothed beast that devours many human hearts, is to blame. Authorities say that the killer of the four Shia Muslim men is a Sunni Muslim who immigrated to the U.S. a few years ago from Afghanistan. To make the tragedy even more human there’s an inter-sect marriage to blame; details are in the process of being teased out.

The two tragedies have one thing in common: anger born of toxic masculinity. Many a man is unable to stay his hand, to let go of a perceived wrong. My own fault was, my initial conclusions were totally wrong.

My only saving grace is I took time to seek the reason behind these tragedies.

We must think twice before we condemn our neighbors for their perceived trespasses.

Pius Kamau, M.D., general surgery, is president of the Aurora-based Africa America Higher Education Partnerships; co-founder of the Africa Enterprise Group and president of the Consortium of African Diasporas in the U.S.A. He has been a National Public Radio commentator and a blogger, and is author of “The Doctor’s Date with Death.”