Hicham Maged's blog Inquisitive curiosity paves knowledge path

Tragedy and Stereotype

It is always sad when the news tell about killing people who became just numbers in their corresponding reports that explain a story. This is what I felt today, Friday 6th, while reading about the shooting in both Fort Hood and Orlando in the USA. I however pause a little bit at the actions plus reactions in the tragedy of Fort Hood shooting and stereotypes attached to it.

Let me start by placing my condolence for the families of the victims since what happened is a tragedy indeed and nothing else can describe it other than this expression.

However, suddenly the tragedy walks in parallel with stereotypes and Islamophobia awakened as we have been flooded by hatred story-lines and tweets in the form of “attacking versus defending” where media highlighted on the roots of Major Nidal Malik Hasan – the suspect in Fort Hood shooting – versus the defending from Arab and Muslims organizations in USA that denies the link between Arab, Muslims and Terrorism.

Tragedy and Stereotype: Media as Three Wise Monkeys

Mass Media: Three Wise Monkeys

I am not fully surprised for the way majority of mass media-outlets deal when Arabs and (or) Muslims are involved either by focusing on their ethnic, religious and racial background or portraying all of them with terrorism while being blind to see other acts committed by others!

Take a look at the various articles that mentioned the story in the from of the suspect’s religious background, the way that the suspect deal in a Mosque, his failure to have a religious girl to match with him from the mosque to marry which later escalated to the extreme of Jihad in Fort Hood and Palestinian terrorism of the suspect.

C’mon! Needless to mention that media do not usually deal with other crimes as they did in this case but that is not my only reason to feel sick; I mainly feel so because this represents direct and indirect incitations for community members against each others which is a sign of unhealthy actions and mentalities that has nothing to do with coexisting principals, so instead of working on de-stereotyping the image, these media choose going through fixing the common stereotyped images against Arab, Muslims or both, either being American citizens or not!

I understand that in the time of crises like this one, “fair media” call for investigations to know what happened, do not jump for results before they appear and finally call for compensating from the killer according to the law after accusing. This scenario is supposed to move in parallel with supporting the whole community regardless their religious, ethnic, cultural and political background, not in a narrow-minded way like that!

On the other hand, I am always wondering about these “fair media” that ignore other people who are being killed everywhere in the world; although civilians matter, I have neither heard anything about investigating the roots of their non-Arab and non-Muslim murderers nor placing any kind of condolence for their families because they are not that juicy in mass media eyes who act like the three wise monkeys in these cases.

For that that matter, my heart not only goes for victims everywhere regardless their faith or race but also goes for victims who are still alive too and wonders about when people start to educate themselves as I am wondering about the light at the end of the tunnel that seems far by these actions!

Update: In addition to my elaborations, I placed another post that tries to go underneath Fort Hood shooting tragedy by placing an analysis of my own.

Related Quotes and Sayings

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Tags: fort hood shooting, islamophobia
Categories: Critiques
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