This is a couple days old, but I recently saw this headline:
Boston Marathon Bombing Fallout: Bangladeshi Man Beaten In Bronx For Being An ‘Arab’
Putting aside the obvious stupidity of a stunt like this as well as the equally obvious "not all Arabs/Muslims are terrorists" argument, I can't help but notice the racist undercurrent in all the "anti-Islam" backlash.
Let's be perfectly honest here: in the minds of most Americans, when we think "terrorist," the person that comes to mind isn't necessarily an Arab or a Muslim. Terrorists are equated with "brown-skinned" people, for the lack of a better term. (I think that the Boston Marathon terrorists are light-skinned Russian Muslims is not going to much change this presumption.) This is corroborated by tidbits such as this one from the article:
People from South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, are sometimes targeted for violence and abuse by people who mistake them for Arabs whenever news of terror attacks emerge in the media.
This is the incredibly ignorant thought process of attackers such as these: brown skin --> Arab --> Muslim --> terrorist
Let's break this down:
A) Not all brown-skinned people are Arab.
B) Not all Arabs are Muslim. In fact, a notable percentage (average range is about 3% to 10% depending on region) are Christian.
C) Not all Muslims are brown-skinned. I've met Muslims from Turkey who are light-skinned with blonde hair and black Muslims from South Africa and Mozambique. It's not as though Islam is only practiced in the Middle East.
D) Not all Muslims are terrorists.
So thank you to all the idiots who attack brown-skinned people for being "Arab Muslim terrorists" when none of those three words actually describe them. You're doing a great service to our country!!
EDIT: Also, I just realized the media has a tendency to refer to public shootings as mere acts of "gun violence," but bombings are ALWAYS referred to as acts of terrorism. And I just googled it and got this: "Call the Colorado shootings what they were: terrorism"
To suggest otherwise and insist that acts of terrorism must be premised on an established ideology or discernible beliefs would be to place subjective motivation above objective action. It would be to posit, in effect, that the "terrorism" definition applies without question to those who claim some allegiance to radical Islam, regardless of their psychological condition, whereas all others get the benefit of the doubt. This double-standard is unfair to Muslims and lets everyone else off the hook, to our own peril.
The media's cautiousness in calling acts of gun violence terrorism undoubtedly also has to do with the gun control issue. Oh, the US media.
