TEHRAN (FNA)- The double-standard approach by media and western governments' approach towards the terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, has raised serious questions across the world.
News that shooting was ongoing in two mosques in New Zealand was met with a flurry of curiosity on social media, and just as quickly saw much of that shut down, with wholesale censorship of the topic and any specifics or videos related to it blocked out of hand.
For instance, Facebook removed or blocked 1.5 million videos related to the rampage in just the first 24 hours. 80% of the videos were blocked at the point of upload, never to be seen by anyone.
That said, the white supremacist, anti-Muslim and ideologically driven attack on mosques have tangential links to social media, and it is obvious that part of the blame should go to the social media which never bother to censor objectionable views against Muslims.
While other attacks of historical import took place in different eras with different context, this is one of the first such attacks that come in the middle of the censorship-happy social media era. During the attack, social media imposed what was almost a total media blackout, and in the aftermath, tried to vindicate their past censorship by keeping a careful lid on anything too revealing. Although this seems to be a justifiable approach to avoid promotion of violence, still some are questioning why does the same rule not apply to those attacks whose perpetrator is a Muslim.
The same happened regarding the way Western governments reacted to the horrible attacks. Except for some condemnations, they did nothing much at all. This must raise questions about how they are going to handle and prevent similar attacks against Muslim communities in the future. They won’t.
The US government is also pushing a position of collective guilt that will only bode ill for Muslims and is completely unlike its reaction from similar terror attacks, say against a Jewish Synagogue last year. That particular incident prompted the White House and its European allies to term it as terrorism attack and condemn it in the strongest terms. But the Christchurch terror attack, which was carried out by a white supremacist or “villain” only got reactions like “we are going to change the gun laws”.
Here again, a gross double-standard stares us squarely in the face, as Western governments exhibit no such restraint when it comes to white supremacists murdering peaceful Muslim worshipers. No doubt, there are double standards and far-right/white supremacist links here. White supremacists tend to attack locally, which makes this one somewhat unusual. The “villain” was obviously out to kill as many Muslims as possible and said he had been planning the attack for two years – and the authorities did nothing to stop him; and still it is hard for them to call him a TERRORIST. The Christchurch incident has been a well-planned and organized TERRORIST ATTACK ON THE MUSLIMS requiring anti-terrorism policies in New Zealand and across the globe.
Naturally, when 50 people peacefully observing their religious practices are killed, some things must change. New Zealand’s government has a fundamental obligation to protect the Muslim community, and if white supremacists as a group are considered a threat after a thorough assessment of the circumstances surrounding this attack has been conducted, then there has to be a sharper focus on such groups under a plan that envisages national policies against anti-Muslim terrorism.
More so, one recent study found that terrorist attacks by Muslim perpetrators receive more media coverage than those by non-Muslim perpetrators, leading Western governments to have an exaggerated sense of that threat.
In Western culture today, terrorist attacks by Muslims are still reflexively seen as the expression of a problem shared by all Muslims worldwide, hence the demands that Muslims everywhere denounce all attacks by individual Muslims anywhere. Terrorist attacks by white supremacists like the one in Christchurch, by contrast, continue to be seen as individual “psychological” puzzles that are begging to be solved with sympathy and care – and gun law reforms.
This feeds the notion that Muslims, who are nearly a quarter of the world’s population, are a unique threat who require their own special set of security measures. To adopt such measures would be to abandon the very principles of equality that Western governments claim they hold dear.
Let’s acknowledge that even when their attempted crimes are similar in scale, Muslims receive longer sentences than their White Supremacist counterparts - partly because they are Muslims and more likely to be charged with having weapons of mass destruction. Now the question is Why the bogus War On Terrorism only applies to attacks by Muslims? Where are the roots of such a worldview? Does it mean that the Western states see Muslims as potential terrorists, or pursuing and promoting Islamophobia sets the stage for their colonial policies?
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