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What If Loughner Was Arab Or Muslim?
The Saturday massacre in Arizona which killed six people, including a 9-year-old girl, and devastatingly injured and scarred for life, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, when Jared Loughner, 22, nebulously and abruptly opened fire into the crowd, saddened me a great deal probably more than the average Joe (not Joe the plumber).
As an American Arab Muslim, I am horrified with this senseless crime committed by a person who resorted to violence against other humans because of the pernicious ‘Palinization’ of the political rhetoric and mudslinging that provided a deus ex machina for such hatred. I am doubly shocked because, up to this writing on a snowy inclement weather Tuesday evening, I am still waiting for the kinder gentler mainstream media (not to Arab Americans, of course) to summon its courage and use the ready label it reserved only for Arabs and Muslims—terrorist, on Jared Loughner. I hate to even imagine for a second what would have happened if Loughner was, God forbid, an Arab or Muslim!
From the first moment of the inception of the human abattoir allegedly committed by Loughner, the media committed the usually prodigious bias offense of its own with a complete sangfroid. News outlets and networks were struggling to describe the rampage with diluted and restrained descriptions so that they do not offend Loughner or any possible like-minded audience or readers. This courtesy, unfortunately, they never accorded or extended to Arabs and Muslims. The media called the Arizona carnage, a “tragedy”, an “event”, a “heinous event”, and an “incident”, etc., but never felt necessary to address it as “terrorism”. It did not occur to the US media to label it a massacre—or even a crime for crying out loud. As far as the person responsible for this pillage, the media response was equally off-putting. The perpetrator who caused this mayhem and bloodshed was still being called “suspect” or “accused” despite the fact of charging him in court with 5 counts of murder, attempted murder, and murder involving a member of Congress. Loughner gets to enjoy the due process of the law: innocent until proven guilty. However, it’s really a lugubrious and sad status of affairs when it comes to Arabs and Muslims. They are guilty until further notice!
The media has, time and again, been caught red-handed while demonstrating its one-sidedness and selectiveness when reporting crimes involving Arabs and Muslims. It’s a drive by reporting. You can’t help but think about the double standards when you find out that the word “terrorist” never crossed the reporters’ mind and psyche because the media frenzy and hullabaloo only apply to those species that we don’t understand why they hate us. If loose cannon criminal of Arab or Muslim descend commits a cretinous crime, the whole Arab race and Muslim religion become primary suspects and the media accuses, tries, and convicts him or her before he or she even appears in court.
I wonder why the Vatican Pope did not shed one tear over those innocent Christian lives that were lost in Arizona, just as he has done when terrorists struck in Alexandria, Egypt, killing innocent Coptic Christians? As soon as the Alexandria New Year’s Day Church bombing occurred, the Pope called upon world leaders to protect the Christians in Egypt—obviating that country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. What about the Christian Roman Orthodox in Palestine who are facing genocide due to the Israeli occupation and colonization? What about the most scared Muslim and Christian places of worship that Israel has been desecrating through its apocryphal irredentism, land piracy, and settlement building.
Is there anyone out there who is still looking to gain the hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims? This is where it all starts–by eradicating all forms of discrimination and stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims in the Western media for the sake of pursuing more objectivity and fair treatment.
Khalil Rammal