The murder this week of three young Muslim students in the United States at the hands of their white atheist neighbour is yet another instance of the increasing number of hate crimes directed against Muslims. Unlike many hate crimes against Muslims and Arabs, which receive little or no media attention, this triple-murder garnered national and international attention as well as a belated remark (four days after the murder) by US President Barack Obama. However, the media attention did not result from the heinousness of the crimes but because the innocent victims had not a blemish to their names. Hardworking, bright, well-educated with an unshakeable commitment to public service, the murders of Deah, Yusor and Razan could not be ignored.
But this is not to say that the media, police, and even the prosecutor, did not attempt to diminish the gravity of the deaths. Indeed, within hours of the murders, the news media rushed to adopt the police’s version of events that Craig Hicks killed three innocent people, found dead in their apartment with gunshots to the head over a “parking dispute” and labeled it an isolated incident. News media failed to even consider that other motives drove Hicks’s actions, despite the fact that Hicks, an avowed atheist, had a penchant for making anti-religious statements and had persistently harassed the victims prior to the murders.
One need only contrast this murder with the news media’s labeling of acts perpetrated by Muslims. The journalists who later offered “condolences” to the families of these three American Muslim victims are the same journalists who heap praise on Islamophobic films such as American Sniper, rush to declare any Muslim who carries out crimes as “terrorist” or dehumanize Muslims by examining whether Islam mandates the killing of non-Muslims. These journalists examine the perpetrator’s background, provide examples of how devout he is and examine his travel schedule. “Security experts” — most of whom relish in spreading anti-Muslim sentiment – are trotted out to link such actions are linked those of groups abroad, including Al Qaida and Daesh, while Muslims are trotted out to condemn such acts and proclaim that they are not in accordance with Islam. In the case of Hicks, there was no examination of his anti-religious hatred, no one questioned whether his atheist beliefs led to his committing three murders and not a single person was forced to appear to condemn his acts in the name of an entire group. No, for non-Muslims the rules are different. Perpetrators are “deranged,” “unstable” or “misfits” who act on their own, while Muslims are consistently framed as acting in accordance with religious edicts, no matter how religious they are (or are not).
Islamophobia is not merely the killing of Muslims but includes the government policies and laws that view Muslims as suspicious or threatening. This rise in Islamophobia, however, is not occurring in a vacuum but is part of a deliberate effort to perpetuate foreign invasions and occupations on Arab and Muslim soil. One can recall the rhetoric of needing to “bring democracy” to the Middle East or “liberating” the women of Afghanistan in order to justify attacking countries in the Middle East. And, those who resist these invasions — whether physically or ideologically — are quickly labeled “Islamists,” “jihadists” or, most of all, “terrorists.” According to this warped logic, Arabs and Muslims are expected to be happy that foreign armies have invaded their countries, usurped their resources and destroyed their nations, for if they express otherwise then they are accused of being guided by crazed clerics intent on destroying the earth and not by a desire to live freely and with dignity on their own land. In this way, resolvable political problems are transformed into irreconcilable religious ones.
The years of propagating Islamophobia have now finally paid off: Muslims continue to be the target of attacks, the subjects of surveillance and the target of racist legislation. Arab and Muslim countries continue to be invaded. The news media fails to challenge Muslim stereotypes in the media and fails to question the logic and validity of continued military action in Arab and Muslim countries. Worse however, is that these efforts to dehumanise have now made it easier for the world to become desensitized to human suffering — whether in the besieged Gaza Strip, in Syria or elsewhere – and indeed lead to justifying such suffering at the hands of others.
— Diana Buttu is a Ramallah-based analyst, former adviser to Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian negotiators and policy adviser to Al Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.
