On Tuesday, three young Muslim Americans were killed in a shooting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The victims were 23-year old Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad, 21 and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19.
I first heard the news on Wednesday where the shooting would have happened around 10pm in the UK on Tuesday. Something isn’t right. I was not the only one to realize that the mainstream media slowly picked up the news.
Was it because in this case the Muslims were the victims instead of behind the guns? Why this does not get the same media attention when crime was committed against Muslims?
In contrast with Charlie Hebdo case where in which the world leaders gathered to march in protest with international coverage from left, right and center. The world mourns with solidarity of #jesuischarlie.
While on the other hand, the news on the Chapel Hill shooting took hours for mainstream media coverage and very little was heard on the television or the social media at first. Why the double standards?
Media is a crucial role in shaping public’s perceptions, opinions and to an extent, their principle and worldview. In ‘Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media’, co-written by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, it is argued that the mass media of the United States “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion”.
Other academic studies suggest that Muslims are often portrayed in western media as violent, backwards fundamentalist and threats to western civilization. Muslims and Islam are rarely mentioned in a positive way. In fact, Muslims were frequently depicted as homogenized body that lacks diversity and prone to conflict. This connotes that “Islam is the problem” while the Muslim voices are systematically ignored. The hypocrisy should stop. A Muslim’s life is no less valuable than other human being’s life.
It is indeed heartbreaking to see such innocent lives being taken out of ignorance. Deah Shaddy Barakat who was a second-year student in the School of Dentistry at the University of North Carolina was at the same time a social activist who had helped raise thousands of dollars for dental care for victims of the Syrian crisis. An exemplary figure who served his community and fellow Muslims.
Fatin Nadhirah Jamalolail
