News

Three young Muslims students; Deah Barakat, his wife, Yusor Mohammad, and her sister, Razan, were executed by a militant, gun-toting anti-theist in Chapel Hill, N.C., on the 10th February 2015, and yet no one from the Western media dared suggest that it was an act of terrorism.
On Twitter, however, the face of the killer, Craig Hicks, was tweeted by "Bipartisan Report" with the caption "the face of American terror" on a photo-edited version of Time Magazine's cover page feature of the Burmese monk Wirahu from the July 1st 2013 edition. This has been re-tweeted 534 times so far, and yet the real Time Magazine only carried the story of the killing as a minor news item on its website as of 13th February. Other mainstream media outlets also carried the news, but they lagged far behind the Muslim social media, and covered the story from the angle of the victims and their families, when the real story was elsewhere.

Comment

Muslims around the world responded vigorously on social media that the killings were anti-Islamic hate and should be described as terrorism. In the face of this, The Guardian Newspaper's second story on the night after the murders was titled: "Family of North Carolina shooting victims denounce killings as 'hate crime'", and similar coverage occurred in the Washington Post and other mainstream newspapers along with comments from Chapel Hill police that the crime seemed to be motivated by a dispute about parking, and the wife of Craig Hicks, as well as a neighbor, that Hick's anger was not racially motivated. The Guardian, however, also quoted US District Attorney Ripley Rand saying that the killings are "not part of a targeted campaign against Muslims in North Carolina... This appears at this point to have been an isolated incident". The FBI did not show any interest in the case until 2 days later and opened a parallel investigation with the local police to consider only the possibility of an indirect link with a hate-crime.

With the lack of American legal and political support for a hate-crime link, and no mention even of terrorism, the media response was muted. The Guardian's report was similar in style to others in that it's consideration of the killer's motives occurred from behind the screen of the families of the victims. Only after reporting their claims that their loved ones were killed because they were Muslims, did the media feel safe to list the various Facebook pages of the killer attacking religious belief and balance the views of the Muslim families and the Muslim community with opposing voices. In many ways, the reporting was very different to that when the roles have been reversed and Muslims are the perpetrators instead of the victims.

The Facebook posts of Craig Hicks show that he was in love with weapons and hated religious people, while the victims told friends and family before their death that Hicks was bullying and intimidating them because of their visible practice of Islam, which would be enough to condemn a Muslim as a terrorist if the roles were reversed. By way of parody, it should be noted that Hicks posted pictures of his gun and quotes from the fundamentalist ‘sheikh' Richard Dawkins, who said once that "I regard Islam as one of the great evils in the world". The logic is that Hicks expressed a love of violence, a hatred for religion and admiration for an anti-theistic preacher who targeted Islam. Richard Dawkins tweeted about Islam after the Charlie Hebdo massacre that, "No, all religions are NOT equally violent. Some have never been violent, some gave it up centuries ago. One religion conspicuously didn't."

In the Chapel Hill massacre the onus of proof has been placed on the shoulders of the Muslim families, while when the roles have been reversed, the initial assumption is that Muslims are guilty of terrorism until proven otherwise. No one in the media asks Jews for their view on whether being murdered by a self-professed anti-Semite is an act of terrorism; it is assumed until proven otherwise.

Extra attention has been placed upon the goodness and attractiveness of the murdered Muslims as young and well-liked and respected members of their community, but when Jews were killed in a Paris shop last month the media did not pay much attention to the victims. It was enough that they were killed by a Muslim to be worthy of sympathy. Why, therefore should it be necessary for Muslim victims to be such extraordinarily good people to be newsworthy? Isn't there a form of discrimination here? We know so much now about the victims, but what about Hicks - where are his friends, colleagues from work and former school acquaintances? The media has not yet demonstrated any interest in finding out what they have to say.

The reason that America is looking the other way on homegrown American terror is that it is disturbing to look in the mirror and see that it is not necessary to find motives for terrorism in internet chat rooms and posts, because virulent hatred of Islam has become so mainstream that Muslims endure daily unfair pressure to prove their humanity. It is movies like ‘American Sniper', and the fanatical ‘Je Suis Charlie Hebdo' propaganda and support for attacking the sanctities of what Muslims hold dear that have inflamed hatred against Muslims and promoted radicalization of Americans. The darker side of ‘Je Suis Charlie Hebdo' is ‘Je Suis Craig Hicks', and if ever there was a conveyor belt to terrorism, it has become so mainstream in America that the media cannot see the wood for the trees.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by
Dr. Abdullah Robin