Why Us?
Asfar Basha

Growing up as a practicing Muslim in America makes me question a lot of things not only about my country, but about the world. Vermont didn’t have a sizable Muslim community until a surge in the past 10-15 years with the resulting influx of refugees from Bosnia, Somalia, and Iraq. The main issue I want to address is my belief that the media purposely portrays Muslims as terrorists and extremists because of inconsistencies in the reporting of recent and past events, which lead to associations that induce fear in the public.

As a majority of Americans know, the attacks on September 11, 2001, which were masterminded by Osama bin Laden, led to America’s War on Terror, or what I call, the “War on Bullshit” (adapted from Jon Stewart). Ever since the 9/11 attacks, Muslims have been targeted by many people. I have experienced this when going to the mall or grocery store with my mother, who wears the hijab, a headscarf. We usually get a few looks here and there and a feeling of tension. We usually can see people have a look of insecurity on their faces as well. This is what I like to call, “Muslim hate:

The best place for a Muslim to experience this “hate”, is at the airport. The TSA usually likes to stop people from my family for “random security checks” and frisking. One example is during a recent trip back from New York. At JFK, the TSA stopped my brother, whose name happens to be Mohamed, to look through his carry-on bag.  Another example is a story that my friend, Issa, told me when he was coming back to America after a trip up to Canada. The border patrol looked at his passport and told him to pullover and go into the building. His car was searched completely and he was detained for over six hours. When he said that he needed to pray, the border agent led him and his friend to a cell that was less than nine feet by nine feet where there was an open dirty toilet in front of them. These conditions are completely unacceptable to pray in. When he kindly requested the guard for a more suitable area to pray, he refused to provide Issa one. After many years of this, we have gotten used to this and sometimes even joke about it. Whenever we meet with our Muslim friends and family, we like to mock the TSA agents and make jokes of how they treat Muslims. But the main source of these feelings is not from the attacks, but from the media.

The main topic of many political discussions nowadays seems to be gun control and the recent shootings all around America that have happened in various settings. Along with me are many Muslims that notice a certain pattern that occurs in terms of the aftermath of shootings all around the world. It seems evident that every time a shooting or attack takes place, the media always rushes to see if the shooter was a Muslim. In the case that the shooter is Muslim, the media immediately labels the shooter as a terrorist and that his actions were an act of terror on the behalf of Islam. In the case that the shooter is not Muslim, the media immediately labels them as “mentally ill” or that they had issues with drug which is what triggered their intentions of shooting and killing innocent people. It never seems to be that the Muslims who cause shootings are even considered mentally ill, they are immediately given the terrorist role. To better understand this, it is best if we look at some examples.

Unfortunately, there have been many shootings and attacks that have taken place around the world. The first shooting I will talk about is the Charlie Hebdo attacks that occurred in Paris in January of 2015. In this attack, two Muslim men used powerful guns to attack the offices of Charlie Hebdo which is a newspaper company that made fun of Prophet Muhammad who is one of the most sacred people in the religion of Islam. The media jumped to the “terror” label. Some headlines include, “A timeline of the Charlie Hebdo terror attack” (CNN) and “Terrorists Strike Charlie Hebdo…” (NY Times). The second shooting we will discuss is the Copenhagen shooting where a “Draw Muhammad” contest was taking place. Here, one man opened fire killing one civilian and wounding five police officers. For this attack, the headlines were, “Terror Attacks by a Native Son Rock Denmark” (NY Times) and “Denmark: Funeral held for Copenhagen terror attack victim”.

Along with the previously stated attacks have been some very fatal and tragic shootings that have occurred in the United States. Some of the most horrific include the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the Chapel Hill shooting, and the Virginia Tech shooting. In the Sandy Hook shooting, a 20-year-old named Adam Lanza, went into an elementary school with powerful weapons including an automatic weapon, and killed 26 people including 20 children. After searching through three pages of articles, there weren’t any headlines that mentioned the word “terror”. Interesting. The next shooting I would like to bring up is one that affects me greatly because the victims and I have quite a few things in common. The victims, Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were all Muslims. Deah was studying medicine which I plan to study as well. In this shooting, Craig Hicks shot and killed Deah, Yusor, and Razan over a conflict about parking spaces at their apartment. Most people believe, however, that it is a hate crime. One of the headlines that resulted from this shooting was, “Man charged with killing 3 Muslims can face death penalty”(CBS). The final shooting I will talk about is the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S history. This also deeply affects me as one of the 32 victims was a man that is from the same part of India that I am from. On April 16, 2007 at around 7:15 am, Seung-Hui Cho walked into the Virginia Tech campus where he started a shooting rampage. As a result, he killed 33 people (including himself) and injured 17 others. When looking through pages of articles about Cho, the only thing they say is that he suffered from mental illness. This is sort of strange because it’s the same exact thing that the media was saying about Adam Lanza and Craig Hicks, our previous two shooters.

As you may see, there is a pretty clear pattern. The media seems to like to not associate religion with any non-Muslim shooters that are suspects of mass shootings or other attacks. Rather, they seem to like to say that they have health issues which triggered their actions. This is what I also observed in the 2012 Aurora shooting (Colorado Theater), the 2011 Tucson shooting, the Umpqua Community College shooting and other shootings where the shooter wasn’t Muslim. On the contrary, whenever the suspect of the attack or shooting is a Muslim, the media seems to love to associate the person with Islam and label them as a terrorist to give this idea to people that Islam is all about terrorism. So it makes me wonder why the media never investigates the Muslim criminals to see if they have any mental issues. Quite frankly, a normal person wouldn’t just want to kill many people for no reason. It takes some underlying health condition or manipulation to cause a person to commit such an act.

In all, I believe that there is an incredible inconsistency in the media reporting of actions done by Muslims and non-Muslims. It seems somewhat clear that the media is trying to portray Muslims as terrorists and extremists and cover-up the non-Muslim criminals by saying they have some sort of health issue that caused their behavior. Now I stand with only one question, why us?