Three innocent Muslims were recently tragically shot dead at the Islamic Center of San Diego. Anti-Islamic hate speech was found in the shooters’ car as well as on one of the guns they carried. Police responded by saying they were actively investigating to figure out what led to this attack.
The attack occurred just days after a major anti-Islam and anti-immigration rally in the UK, “Unite the Kingdom”, led by far-right anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League. Tens of thousands gathered amidst chants, speeches and material portraying Muslims and migrants as threats to Britain and the West. This rally exemplifies a broader rise in anti-Muslim rhetoric across Western politics and online spaces. It is clear that the Islamic Center of San Diego, known for supporting Palestinian migrants and refugees, has been targeted during a period in which hostility toward Muslim and migrant communities has become increasingly visible and normalised in public discourse, especially since October 7th 2023.
Given the situation surrounding the shooting in San Diego, any rational individual would come to the reasonable understanding that this is a terrorist attack motivated by Islamophobia and anti-muslim sentiment. Indeed, when police recently uncovered a plan to attack a New York synagogue in the wake of the US war on Iran, it was quickly labelled a ‘terror plot’ by Time Magazine and was immediately attributed by media outlets to an alarming rise in antisemitism, being deplored as an attempted attack on the American Jewish community. So, where is this same decisive media coverage, outrage and condemnation, when it comes to attacks such as the one in San Diego which are aimed at the Muslim community?
If it had been a church or a synagogue that was attacked rather than an Islamic centre, the story would have made strong headlines worldwide condemning an act of hate and terrorism towards an entire religion. Mainstream media would have once again resuscitated its beaten-to-death narrative of Islamic radicalism and produced some ties, no matter how dubious, between the attacker and an Islamic extremist group. Those with eyes to see have watched that story play out many times before.
Unfortunately, because the story of a targeted attack on an Islamic centre does not fit a narrative that is easy for the mainstream media to tell about Muslims, no meaningful headlines or coverage have materialised in this case. Instead, this tragedy has been conveniently cast aside and left to fester. It is now becoming a petri dish for anti-Muslim hate to multiply at a terrifying rate, evidenced by the surge of violent Islamophobic threats flooding social media.
The global Muslim community is once again forced to sit in isolation with its grief in the absence of any meaningful solidarity and condemnation and the refusal to call a spade a spade. Many outlets are diminishing the gravity of this callous attack, failing to draw obvious links to rising anti-Muslim sentiment and refusing to acknowledge the reality of terrorism being committed against the Muslim community. This is highly troubling in a time when Islamophobia is running rampant and deserves just as much media attention as antisemitism is receiving.
Of course, the media alone are not to blame. The ones who abuse power in the name of democracy and freedom are answerable for their own wrongdoings.
These are the hypocritical, corrupt war criminals who call themselves politicians. They pass orders to plunder and decimate Muslim countries in the Middle East under the guise of freedom and justice. They deploy bloodthirsty soldiers who hunt innocent civilians for sport during ‘peacekeeping’ missions that serve no other purpose than to further Western imperialism.
These are the same political elites who speak of democracy and human rights while supporting the kinds of wars that destroyed Iraq and destabilised the Middle East. Think politicians like Bill and Hillary Clinton, who helped advance interventionist foreign policies that enabled mass civilian suffering under the banner of freedom and Western security interests.
These politicians are shoving a narrative of radical Islam down people’s throats. They are telling us that the gratuitous cruelty, destruction and impunity of their political administrations do not amount to terrorism because these actions have been taken to combat who they want us to believe are the true terrorists—Muslims. This is blatant weaponisation of Islamophobia and xenophobia. At our worst, humans are prone to being prejudiced and pathologising those who we see as different to us. We instinctively villainise the ‘other’. Giving people a false reason to justify their baseless hatred of those who are different to them allows politicians to cover their trail of terrorism.
All of this begs the question: why is it so easy for the world to label and caricaturise an entire religion of people as violent, radicalised terrorists, to the point where it is ignored that Muslims are, in fact, common targets of religious intolerance, hate crimes, and terrorism? To put it simply, it is because the West finds it easier to just value Muslim lives less. After all, there is no need to check on your scapegoat before you oh so conveniently send it off to the slaughter.
An entire faith has been vilified and its people mercilessly placed on the chopping block for slaughter just so that the media can tell stories which sell and are easier to swallow, and so that politicians can distract us from the damage they are doing with the power they have been entrusted with. So you tell me, who are the real terrorists here?
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