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.
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.
Khaled A Beydoun is an assistant professor of law at the
Barry University Dwayne O Andreas School of Law. Nadia El-Zein Tonova is
director of the National Network of Arab American Communities, and the Take On
Hate Initiative.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and
do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/02/muslim-lives-don-matter-150212052018920.html
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