Double standards: Islamic terrorism vs. white terrorism

The word terrorism means many different things to many different people but more often than not, it is defined as the unlawful use of violence, intimidation, and coercion to fulfill political aims. Notably, the word terrorism is free from reference to the word Muslim. It is also free from words referring to Christianity, Judaism, or any other religious group.

Although the word terrorism is not exclusive to any group of people, it is too often associated solely with the religion of Islam. This public perception is largely a result of the way the media chooses to report on events of terrorism, and the large discrepancy between coverage of brown terrorism versus that of white terrorism.

The media are essentially the watchdogs of society; their job is to report the facts and keep the public aware of everyday occurrences, as well as the uncommon and striking ones that happen on a local and international scale. There is a significant amount of pressure placed on the media to accurately report on events since the way they choose to cover an event ultimately plays a large role in shaping public attitude towards that event.

Oftentimes, the media commits the offense of employing double standards for similar events. These double standards create the public perception that a brown man who commits an act of terror is a “radical Islamic terrorist,” while a Caucasian man who commits the same treacherous act is simply “mentally unstable” or a “lone wolf attacker.”

Terrorism is an extreme threat; however, it is absurd to associate the words “Muslim” and “terrorist.” Rather than assuming Muslim people are the only ones capable of inflicting world-wide terror, the threat of terrorism needs to be addressed with an educational and fact-based outlook. Considering that only 2 per cent of terrorist attacks across all of Europe are undertaken by Muslims, and according to the FBI, 94 per cent of all terrorist attacks in America are perpetuated by non-Muslims, we need to question why we choose to associate these words in the first place.

Every time an act of terror or mass shooting takes place, it is too easy to simply assume that the suspect is Muslim. This assumption, however, is not because the suspect is more likely to be Muslim than he or she is to be Christian, Jewish, or Atheist, but it is assumed that the suspect will be Muslim because of the often over amplified media coverage allocated to acts of terror performed by Muslims.

Take the Quebec-mosque shooting for example and the way the media chose to cover it. The headlines from multiple reliable news outlets read something along these lines: “‘Lone wolf’ student Alexandre Bissonnette suspected of killing six at Quebec City mosque.” Alexandre Bissonnette committed an act of terrorism, but

Alexandre Bissonnette is a Caucasian male and, simply put, does not fit the description the media has outlined as a terrorist and therefore was abstained from being labeled as one. Instead he was called a lone wolf and framed by the media as someone so mentally unstable that he was worth public pity.

In a similar scenario, the Chapel Hill shooting—which led to the deaths of three Muslims — was carried out by Craig Stephen Hicks, a Caucasian male. The media coverage of this event, however, was not allocated nearly the same amount of coverage that it would have been if the shooter were Muslim and the victims Caucasian.

Hicks, 46, committed a hate-crime against the religion of Islam by killing three innocent people, but still, his unlawful act of violence was not reported as a terrorist attack. Instead, Fox News and many other news outlets presented the attack as a parking dispute that got a little out of hand.

An event like this should have been all over the 24-hour news cycle but the media was incredibly slow to report on it and when it was reported, it was quickly brushed aside to make room for headlines deemed more newsworthy.

Is this a result of a public demand for more coverage of strictly Islamic terrorism and ignoring acts of terror that don’t directly affect their predominantly white communities? Or is it the fault of the media who create that public perception in the first place?

When the media create double standards on serious world issues such as terrorism it divides us as a global community and serves as a sad reminder that racism and Islamophobia negatively affect a journalist’s ability to do their job in an unbiased manner. The media must remain blind to the color of someone’s skin, they need to be impartial to an individual’s set of beliefs, but most importantly, they need to be braver when reporting on issues of terrorism, especially when the terrorist doesn’t coincide with their predisposed definition of what it means to be a terrorist.

The views presented in this article do not represent the views of Journalists for Human Rights

#news #islamophobia #terrorism #whiteprivilege