Media should re-evaluate coverage of UNC shooting
Three Muslim college students were shot in the head by Craig Hicks last Tuesday near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and yet mainstream media quickly wrote the shooting off as the actions of a crazed individual, instead of recognizing it as a race-based hate crime. News outlets circulated the tried-and-true role of mental health in shootings and an interview with the shooter’s wife during which she spouted her husband’s belief that “everyone is equal” — a sentiment notably absent from his social media posts that ridiculed religion. Only public outrage after police reported the motive of the shooting to be over a parking ticket led media sources to even fully cover the story, let alone reveal the religious hatred from which it stems.
The media’s immediate response reveals an inherent double standard in the way religious violence is treated in this country. Headlines regarding the Chapel Hill shooting read “Chapel Hill shooting: When is a crime a ‘hate crime’?” and “Were UNC shootings a hate crime or parking dispute?” It’s almost laughable the way media has tiptoed around admitting the Chapel Hill shooting was a hate crime.
Another term conspicuously missing from reports on the Chapel Hill shooting is the “terrorism.” Not a single major U.S. news outlet described the act as one of terrorism in its headline — the only mention of the label came in quotation marks to describe Saudi Arabia’s declaration of the act as one of terrorism. This incident has arguably met the three criteria for terrorism (“an act that takes place in the United States, that’s dangerous to human life, and is intended to intimidate civilians or affect government policy by ‘mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping’”). CNN asserts that the legal absence of the terrorism label allowed authorities to more easily pursue the death penalty, but the blatant absence of the label reflects the desire to frame the incident as an isolated act rather than an act of extremism.
The public, unfortunately, is not exempt from the same indifference to Chapel Hill. Where was the social media movement equivalent to “Je Suis Charlie” or #BlackLivesMatter to mourn the losses of students Razan Abu-Salha, Yusor Abu-Salha and Deah Barakat in North Carolina? Though of course the Chapel Hill shooting has a different context than those of Charlie Hebdo or Michael Brown, the lack of a public response of the same magnitude reveals a deep-seated Islamophobia. It is disappointing that we are all too eager to stand in solidarity and outrage over the Islamic extremist shooting at Charlie Hebdo and stay silent when extremists shoot Muslims.
Of course, it is easy to criticize the public for staying silent without recognizing why they do so. Religious hate in this country has so often been painted with Islam behind the gun, not in front of it. Since Islamic extremism has endangered American lives, it is much more convenient to unilaterally view Islam as evil. Thus, this view underlies the subtext of racially charged conversations. Oklahoma Rep. John Bennett illustrated the prevalence of such a view when he referred to Islam as “not even a religion.”
Thus, given America’s history with Islamic extremism, Islamophobia is easy, comfortable and pervasive. These attributes, however, do not make this religious hatred any less revolting. American Islamophobia rests upon layers of hypocrisy; a country that so readily worships the respect of the freedom of religion ignores Islam, and prejudice of Islam prejudices our own Muslim Americans, three of whom paid the ultimate price of Islamophobia with their lives last week.
The shooting at Chapel Hill has arguably had its share in the limelight, soon to be replaced by another shooting in Copenhagen, Denmark, in which an Islamic extremist claimed two European lives. And as the cycle of violence continues between Islamic and Eurocentric cultures, the argument among those outraged by violence continues, and begs the question, which shootings should the public care about, and why? People will inevitably argue that it is unfair for us to mourn the loss at Chapel Hill but ignore the Copenhagen incident. Blood has been spilled on all sides for centuries, and the public has run out of places to point fingers.
Race and religion-based violence continues to tear this country apart. It is important to realize that all lives matter, but this statement requires the condition that we understand the cultural, racial and political frameworks in which violence occurs. The biggest challenge that religious and racial violence faces is a supposedly colorblind society that refuses to understand the greater implications; it is important to understand that Michael Brown was not shot just because he was skulking around, just as the Chapel Hill victims were not shot because of a parking ticket. Extremism lies on all sides, and every racial and religious shooting carries the historical and political baggage of the cultural relationships that have persisted for centuries.