Why Muslim
Lives Don't Matter
In Chapel Hill shootings, Muslim
identity eclipsed the three
victims' American-ness.
By Nadia El-Zein Tonova And
Nadia El-Zein Tonova
February 13, 2015 "ICH"
- "Al
Jazeera"
- Irrespective of what rallying
cries, signs or adapted hashtags
proclaim, Muslim lives in
America don't matter. The
aftermath of the murder of the
three American students in
Chapel Hill, and the broader
context that spurred it,
reconfirms this brutal truth.
The three victims -
Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor
Mohammad, 21, and her sister
Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19,
were killed at approximately
5:11pm on Tuesday. The identity
of the killer, Craig Stephen
Hicks, 46, was revealed roughly
seven hours later.
Despite the
release of these facts, and
probative evidence that the
executions were likely a hate
crime, national media outlets
remained silent. History affirms
that a reversal of racial and
religious identities - an Arab
and Muslim culprit and white
victims - would have spurred
immediate media attention, on a
national and global scale.
However, given that Barakat and
the Abu-Salha sisters were Arab
and Muslim, the media lagged to
cover the story.
In addition to
media devaluation of Muslim
lives, state-sponsored
government policies targeting
Muslim Americans affirm the
conflation of Muslim identity
with a terrorist threat.
Institutional policy, in the
form of state surveillance,
profiling and counter-radicalisations
programming, tie Muslim identity
to suspicion and subversion,
which emboldens the hate-fuelled
violence inflicted by private
citizens, like Hicks.
Between media
misrepresentation and neglect,
and systematic state
surveillance and suppression of
Muslims, the facts in the US
lead to the undeniable
conclusion that Muslim lives
don't matter.
'Muslim villains'
It is perhaps
fantasy to expect the same
outlets that repeatedly
misrepresent Muslims to pivot
swiftly and rush to cover their
victimhood. The Charlie Hebdo
attack in early January, and the
string of crises involving
Muslim culprits before it,
affirms the assessment that "Muslim
lives are only newsworthy
when they are behind a gun. Not
in front of it."
However, the
"three victims were American
citizens" sympathisers cried.
Or, "upward-bound students with
bright futures, and pristine
records". Two of them, Deah and
Yusor, were newlyweds, only four
weeks separated from their
wedding. A life together, with
kids and a white picket fence,
was in their horizon.
Neither
citizenship nor conventional
measures of American
achievements insulated the
victims from hate. They were
Muslims. That marker mattered
most. Muslim identity trumped,
and very likely for Hicks,
eclipsed the three victims'
American-ness.
Their religion
mattered most for US media
outlets as well, who
lagged to cover the story.
CNN, Fox News,
and MSNBC finally released
stories of the murders Wednesday
morning: More than 12 hours
after the three young adults'
lives were taken leaving Muslims
to wonder: If the victims were
white and non-Muslims, and the
culprit Muslim, would mainstream
media outlets be so slow to
respond and report?
No. Muslims
lives only matter when they're
villains. Not victims. This is
reaffirmed by news story after
news story, and distorted
accounts that tab "parking
disputes" instead of hate as the
primary motives of murder.
When
state policy drives
micro-violence
State-run
programming targeting Muslims
marks members of that
demographic as presumptively
suspicious. NSA surveillance and
counter-extremism programming,
PATRIOT and Suspicious Activity
Reporting strategies, are shaped
within government walls. But
these policies also shape
stereotypes and spur violence
far beyond them.
This
comprehensive programming, which
is both synchronised and
expanding, is built upon
age-old perceptions of Muslims as
"enemy combatants", "national
security risks", and "unassimilable".
Past laws that
restricted the naturalisation of
Muslims were built upon racist
and Orientalist tropes. However,
state policies that profile and
persecute today are still based
on these very baselines.
In addition to
enabling discriminatory state
tactics, anti-Muslim laws and
programming sanction widely held
stereotypes of Muslims as
violent and unruly, threatening
and anti-American. By endorsing
these stereotypes, this network
of anti-Muslim laws and
programming embolden private
citizens, like Hicks, to take
justice into their own hands.
It would be a
misnomer to single out
anti-Muslim laws and policies as
spurring Islamophobic and
anti-Arab culture. Rather, it
pronounces this already existing
psychosis, which is magnified by
slanted news coverage and
cinematic misrepresentations,
illustrated vividly in films
such as American Sniper.
However, these
laws and programmes are not the
products of a Hollywood studio.
Nor are they delivered by a CNN
or Fox News anchor. They are
shaped and enacted by statesman
within the hollowed halls of
government. Affixing per se
vilification of "Muslim
Americans" with the state seal
of approval that stirs
Islamophobia on the ground, and
spurs unspeakable violence atop
it.
From the
vantage point of the state,
Muslims lives matter when they
are subjects of surveillance, or
targets of counter-extremism;
not direct, or indirect, victims
of these policies.
Taking
on hate
Media lags and
state laws vividly reveal that
Muslims lives don't matter.
However, Muslim Americans cannot
afford to stand idly by.
The Campaign
to TAKE ON HATE, led by the National
Network for Arab American
Communities, a project of ACCESS,
has been working with
communities across the country
to organise prayer vigils, lead
educational workshops, and
organise within the very
communities where Arab and
Muslim Americans are at greatest
risk.
From
California to New York, Michigan
to Florida, citizens are coming
together with their local
communities to not only mourn
the lives tragically lost on
Tuesday, but to
coordinate plans to counter
government profiling, private
discrimination and violence, and
their nefarious intersection.
If halls of
American power echo, time and
again, that Muslim lives don't
matter, the strongest rebuttal
must come from Muslim Americans
themselves. A rebuttal that goes
beyond rallying cries, signs and
hashtags. And proclaimed through
sustained action, and en mass
mobilisation against halls of
power that systematically strip
Muslims lives of value.
© 2015 Al-Jazeera