WHY CALL IT
WITHIN a month, the United States was struck by two tragic events. On Oct 1, a man committed the largest mass murder in modern American history, opening fire and gunning down 59. Fast forward to Oct 31, another “lone wolf ” attacker drives down a bike path in New York City, killing 8 people and injuring dozens.
Yet, the response to the two events could not be any more different.
Both acts are deplorable, yet the response to the Las Vegas gunman was far more subdued. There was no mention of “terror” or “terrorism” because the shooter was neither a Muslim nor an immigrant, despite the fact that it is the deadliest mass shooting ever committed by an individual in the US.
Imagine the response if the gunman was a Muslim. The public would have been quick to call it a terrorist attack.
In the case of the New York attack, the killer was inspired by Islamic State propaganda, yet has no actual link to the group.
Such framing of the narrative leads to this irrational fear and tendency to frame Muslims all in one boat, which contributes to Islamophobia.
There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world as of 2015, which is roughly 24 per cent of the global population, according to a Pew Research Centre estimate, and to say that a quarter of the global population has higher terrorist tendencies is a fallacy.
Would tougher immigration policies alleviate such occurrences? Would stricter enforcement of gun laws prevent the loss of life? These are questions that should be looked into.
The thing is, people are not born with terrorist inclinations. The fact is, anyone can be radicalised, regardless of their origins. It could happen over a period of time, and it could take years to manifest itself, such as the case for the suspect in the New York attack, Sayfullo Saipov, who went to the US in 2010 and only conducted the attack seven years later.
There needs to be a more concerted effort to engage in ideological struggles since there is an ideological dimension to IS propaganda.
A contextual reading of Islamic texts prohibits targeting innocent people such as women, children, religious people and others, even during times of war.
In both cases, the heinous crimes were, in the words of US President Donald Trump, committed by “a sick, deranged individual”.
At the end of the day, terror comes in many forms, whatever their motivations may be, but there is no need to frame it as an “Islamic” terror attack, which only adds fuel to the fire, giving legitimacy to the terrorists in thinking that what they do is Islamic, when it is far from that.