Following the tragic terrorist attacks in Oslo, the media started speculating and analysing as usual. After the bombings and before the identity of the attacker was revealed, many experts said it had the fingerprints of Al-Qaeda all over it, they started to guess the motives behind the attack and why the Muslims hate Norway, says Charlie Brooker in this article.
Even after the Identity of the attacker was known, you can still see words that represent a belief that terrorism is only linked to Islam, words like "Christian Jihadi" or "Christian Taliban" have been used in some media and websites even when the attacker is an anti Muslim christian extremist. Moreover, many western media have even avoided the word "terrorist" in their coverage, but instead they used "extremist" or "attacker" as mentioned in his article: When the word terrorism is no used. This doesn't apply to all the western media but to many of it, at least the American media.
When a so-called Muslim commits an act of terrorism, everyone starts discussing Islam and how it includes hatred, they claim, but when a Christian extremist commit the same crime, you don't hear the same argument, do you think that Christians will be searched and scanned at airports like Muslims are, just because they are Muslims? Someone on twitter wrote something meaningful : "Now I know how Muslims felt, after the attacker is being called a (Christian) fundamentalist."
#Blame the Muslims:
Someone on twitter started this hash-tag a few days ago and in hours it was trending!. At first I had no idea who he is, many people where offended by it and thought it was racist but it was obviously sarcastic. Later on we knew who is behind it (in the video below from AlJazeera), here are some examples of the tweets I liked:
You can #blamethemuslims for enlightening ancient Spain with reading, writing, math, & art while the rest of Europe stayed in the darkness. By Annan6.
Any Islamophobes looking for work? The New York Times is hiring, pay is good just have to #BlameTheMuslims at the end of each article. By Hamster41.
Trending topics like #blamethemuslims shows how ignorant our world has become. By
MsPangelina.
I #blamethemuslims for advances in science, mathematics, medicine & chemistry. And for developing these 100's of years before #Christianity. By unknown.
Muslims don’t immigrate to assimilate & integrate—they come to subjugate & dominate in time. #blamethemuslims. By andilinks.
#blamethemuslims was made out of sarcasm, its not ment to be racist! its just showing how silly it is to blame muslims for everything! By Baya_AirBorne.
#blamethemuslims for, you know, inventing Algebra. Blame extremism for the terrorist attacks that kill innocent people. By Lianegraham.
If your father and mother had a fight then u should #blamethemuslims. By KhaledAdel.
#blamethemuslims -- an attempt to show the Media's bias towards Muslims. It wasn't started out of spite or hate. By RuwaydaMustafah.
I'm actually not a big fan of the word "fundamentalist" and may be "extremist", I like to use the word terrorist or criminal when someone commits violence killing and injuring hundreds or thousands of unarmed civilians.
Many people can mix between some right-winged groups or some people with tight or traditional religious views and terrorists. And what I call "extremism" might not look like so to others, different societies have different traditions and cultures, a head scarf or even a Niqab can look like extremism to you but to others, it is very normal and a tradition in many countries, and doesn't always indicate a very religious female! But when it comes to terrorism and killing civilians no matter what the motivation is, no one disagrees that it is, indeed, terrorism.
Update:
Here's another video, from The Colbert Report that discusses the same issue:
