‘Mentally unstable,’ ‘Poor teacher’s son’ – how the media whitewashes Islamic terrorists  

On January 10, author and Islamic apologist Khaled Beydoun sent out a tweet that claimed, “Hindutva is terrorism.” Just five days later, he declared, “Terror isn’t exclusive to any single religion or ideology.” After all, his coreligionist Malik Faisal Akram had taken four Jews hostage at a Texas synagogue, and he had to defend his cult.

But why did Beydoun even bother? Did he not have faith in the media? The media has mastered the art of protecting the identity of Islamic terrorists, defending them when their identity is known, and downplaying their crime. I had to read five news articles to learn the name of the man who took the hostages in Texas. Some introduced him as the “hostage taker”; others as a man with a “British accent.” How difficult was it anyway for an informed reader to figure that a terrorist demanding the freedom of an Islamic terrorist has to be one as well?

Now that it has been revealed that Malik Faisal Akram was a 44-year-old British Pakistani citizen who had started to show his jihadist colors from 2001 on and had been banned from Blackburn’s magistrates’ court for repeatedly threatening the staff, a new story is being spun around him. The brother of the dead jihadi informs us that Akram, who had fathered six children, had “mental health issues.” This is an out-of-date format, a template that has been done to death. It evokes laughter, not the sympathy our media is trying to create.

Some four months ago, a huge anti-Hindu pogrom broke out in Bangladesh. Mobs of enraged Muslims were razing Hindu temples, tearing down makeshift religious pavilions put together for Durga Puja celebrations, raiding Hindu houses, and killing Hindu devotees in the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) temple. They argued that the Hindus had insulted the Quran by placing it in front of a Hindu diety’s idol. When ISKCON tried to create awareness about this violence through their official Twitter handle, Twitter, very conveniently, removed the Bangladesh ISKCON Twitter account.

Locals alleged that three women of a Hindu family, including a minor, were gang-raped by Muslim rioters; the child had eventually succumbed to her injuries. A local news channel also acknowledged the incident, but shortly after airing their report, they edited the video, omitting the news about the rape and the death it caused.

After investigations, the police discovered that it was not a Hindu, but a Muslim named Iqbal Hossain who had taken the Quran into the Hindu pavilion, leading to the communal riots. Soon the Internet was awash with reports explaining that Hossain was a mentally challenged vagabond, almost acquitting him of his offense. Do you see a pattern here?

On February 14, 2019, a 21-year-old Kashmiri suicide bomber, Adil Ahmad Dar, who was working for Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad, rammed his explosive-laden car into a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy, killing 40 Indian armed forces personnel. The media got to work instantly. One Muslim journalist reported that Dar was a fan of Indian cricketers, implying he was just like any other Indian boy his age; another media house interviewed Dar’s father, who alleged that his son was radicalized after being stopped by the police on his way home from school some three years ago. Since then, he had been determined to join the jihadis.

Bringing the aging parents of deceased jihad terrorists into the picture is an effective way of garnering sympathy. After Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Muzzafar Wani was taken down by Indian forces, media outlets presented him as an innocent son of a poor schoolteacher who was a victim of extrajudicial killings.

The founder of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, was unarguably one of the biggest terrorists of our times. On the sixth anniversary of his death, an Indian news outlet tried to humanize him by featuring an article describing him as a “loving father” and reiterating the same old “People are not born terrorists… The West knows only the terrorism” baloney. After massive outrage, the site had to reconsider its decision to publish this insensitive piece.

But this did not prevent them from pulling the same stunts again. After the 2020 communal riots in Delhi, pictures of one Shah Rukh Pathan brandishing a gun at a police officer went viral on social media. When the initial attempt to pass him off as a Hindu rioter failed, the media came out with a white paper on the accused murderer, watering down his crime. They painted him as a regular gym enthusiast who loves to wear crisp shirts after blow-drying his gel-smeared hair, and whose mother was waiting for him to return home and enjoy a plate of steaming biryani when he got stuck in the riot. Very convincing!