Two weeks ago, news of the senseless assassination-style shootings of the three Muslim university students in North Carolina made us sick in our hearts. The country that we often idealise as “the land of the free”, seemed like the land of “wild freedom”, where a gun-toting neighbour can murder you because he does not like the way you look, dress, speak, or no wait, just because he disapproves of your use of parking space in the neighbourhood.
It was in the backdrop of this violence that the Obama administration hosted a summit on ‘Countering violent extremism’ week before last, attended by people from all walks of life, including several Muslim community leaders. In one of his speeches at the summit, President Barack Obama praised the American Muslim community, and even reprimanded non-Muslim Americans for creating an atmosphere of hate-mongering, with a reference to the killing of the three practising Muslim students.
However, his ultimate motive was the promulgation of the same agenda as has been the case for the past two decades at least, seeking support of the rest of the world as American governments embark on military interventions in Muslim countries.
According to US government reports, white males have been responsible for 70 per cent of the mass shootings that have taken place in America in the last 30 years. And Craig Stephen Hicks, the man in police custody, for the killing of the three Muslim students is no exception.
Yet, while Obama had much to say about the radicalisation in the Muslim world, the summit saw no speeches about why ‘white men’ like Hicks become radicalised and how they can be stopped. He acknowledged that Muslim Americans “feel they have been unfairly targeted”, but stopped short of commenting on the conditions in the US that foster suspicion and hatred of the Muslim communities. Islamophobia in the US is a stark reality and the summit was an opportune moment for the Obama administration to deal with it head-on.
Mainstream media, for example, choose to show the average American a bigoted picture — a view that demonises and alienates Muslim minorities everywhere in the world. Audiences are taught to equate all Muslims with a small minority of extremists who indulge in terrorist activities. Speakers in the US, such as Richard Dawkins are free to spew spiteful venom against Muslims, Congress members can, and do propose and pass anti-Sharia bills and thousands of primetime news hours are spent vilifying Islam.
There is no such thing as objectivity in the manner that media agencies choose to tell a story and their double standards allow them to pick and choose stories that ensure the propagation of only a particular viewpoint. When the perpetrators of a crime are Muslims, like they were in the Sydney siege, the Boston Marathon, or even before, in the 7/7 or 9/11 attacks, mainstream media, and even many politicians belonging to this “land of wild freedom” take no time to demarcate the world, dividing it into ‘us’ and ‘them’, with their loud headlines and minute-by minute coverage.
However, when the victims are Muslims, or thought to be Muslim, it becomes an isolated case: a deranged or upset man, in this case one with a general disregard for all religions (and neighbours), who found easy prey in the house of three practising young Muslims.
The crux of the North Carolina tragedy is that it was the probable outcome of the daily dose of suspicion and hatred pumped into an average American. Yet, with this mixture of media bias and the global antipathy towards Muslims, there is something else that Muslims now need to think about and come to terms with when they think about migration.
If the US is to prosper as a multi-faith, multi-cultural society, the Obama administration needs to reach out to Muslim Americans and ensure an end to hate crimes against them by Right-wing extremists. This, then, is the extremism that Obama should have focussed on in his speeches during the summit — the extremism that is being cultivated at home.
Rabia Alavi is a Dubai-based writer. You can follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@RabiaAlavi
