Why no one cares about the anti Muslim attacks?
The deafening silence from David Cameron and his front bench compounded by the appalling media coverage on the recent terrorist attacks against Muslims should come as no surprise — it is the result of a wider malaise in our society that has been building for a long time.
I’m sure at one point in our lives nearly all of us have crossed paths with a bully. Bullies come in all shapes and sizes but there are a few characteristics that all of them have in common. Primary amongst these is that they all inspire to cause terror in the heart of their victims. Another less understood but common feature is that no one comes to the defence of a bully. When the school bully one day for some reason does not turn up to school, no one really cares. Everyone shrugs their shoulders and life carries on.
Consistently for as long as I can remember the main stream media has been portraying Muslims as bullies. A continuous stream of media output has been screaming out how Muslims are the enemy within. Think back to the last time Muslims were mentioned in the media and you’ll be hard pushed to disagree. Daily headlines, radio bulletins and TV news tickers, in some cases explicitly and in others implicitly have been portraying Muslims nothing short of a group of people who want to terrorise your average peace loving citizen.
“Muslims plot to behead soldiers in the UK”, “Muslims tell us how to run our schools”, Muslim this and Muslims that. After digesting such crass output what is the unprejudiced reader going to take home about Muslims?
The consequences of such portrayal are inevitable. When the bully gets attacked, or gets hit by a car, or is the victim of a criminal event, no one really cares. Like our Prime Minister and other parts of the media everyone stays quite. Why should anyone stick up for a bully? Worst still, deep down there is relief. Let those Muslims get a taste of their own medicine. Let them suffer like we are.
Unsurprisingly, this depiction runs in the face of Muslims being on the receiving end of pretty much every terrorist atrocity and western intervention in the world. More Muslims have died in the war on terror than any other demographic, and that is as a result of attacks from both sides. Nearly half of all Mosques in the UK have been attacked.
Yet because of the activities of a minority we are continued to be portrayed as the bully on the high street. Even the word minority is an over-statement. The term is usually reserved for ratios such as the proportion of Black Afro-Caribbean in the UK at 2%. Terrorists convicted from the Muslim community do not even make up 0.005%. That is a minuscule proportion for which the overwhelming majority is paying the price.
The silence on the anti-Muslim bomb attacks and murder compared to the widespread condemnation of such attacks on any other religious community are a direct result of a broader issue in the media where Muslims are consistently painted in a bad light. Muslims despite being the victims are depicted as the bullies, and if this onslaught against Muslims goes unchallenged, one has to ask what trajectory does this put us on for the future?
This article first appeared on the MPACUK website but has been edited since
