Thursday 5 April 2012

"Asian" or Muslim? How the Media Defends a Religion by Vilifying a Race


As most of us are painfully aware, Western media is inherently Eurocentric and rarely focuses on what happens outside of Europe, United States, Canada and Australia. This is nowhere more apparent than in its coverage of terrorism, or, to put it more specifically, Islamic terrorism.

A case in point would be the horrific March 2012 slaughter of innocent Jews and Muslims by an Islamic terrorist in France. The average person who rarely spends time on the net would think the extremists were in hibernation since the July 2011 mass killings perpetrated by Breivik in Norway. In reality there has literally been thousands of Islamic terrorist attacks in between these two incidents.  Just browse through WikiIslam's collection of news articles on the persecution of non-Muslims, ex-Muslims, homosexuals and women, and ask yourself, "how many of these incidents were covered in the mainstream news?" The answer is, "very few".

In early 2012, I came across an infuriatingly ignorant forum posting which attempted to downplay and defend extremism within Islam by pointing out that the "last big terrorist attack was by Anders Behring Breivik". Apparently the November 2011 attack which left 150 Nigerians dead or the December 2011 attack that left 59 Afghans dead didn't happen.

Even when it comes to Muslim violence within these areas, the media does all it can to not focus on them or to obfuscate the religious nature behind them. In the United Kingdom this has manifested itself through the media labeling of Muslims as "Asians".

A good example of this is the UK media handling of the 2001 "race riots" by "Asians" in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley. In reality, these outbreaks of violence had little to do with race. The government was warned by the head of the Commission for Racial Equality, Gurbux Singh, that more violence was to be expected from "Young Muslims who feel disenfranchised" living among the many "Muslim" hotspots in the UK.

The same thing occurred amid the news of widespread grooming of young white girls by "Asian" men. It was eventually brought to light that these "Asians" were not only targeting white girls, but also young girls from Hindu and Sikh communities. Since these "Asians" of Pakistani heritage are targeting white, Hindu, and Sikh children, and Pakistan is 96 percent Muslim, wouldn't a more accurate description be "Pakistani Muslim men"?

Another good example would be how the UK tabloids reported on the "Asians" who spat on Remembrance Day poppies and the girl who was selling them.  The only "Asians" who are offended by poppies, which they see as a reference to soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., are Muslims, but this is not mentioned in the report. So, again, the use of "Asian" to describe the perpetrators behind these crimes is inaccurate because their race was irrelevant to their motivations.

Unlike in the United States, when people in the United Kingdom refer to "Asians", they mean South Asians specifically from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri lanka. So, not only is this poor journalism, but it is demonizing an entire "race", the majority of whom are not Muslim.

The real-world effects caused by this are disturbing. Maybe it's the beard, but since the revelation of "widespread grooming by Asian men", sometimes you can visibly see young girls quicken their step or cross over to the other side when you're walking by. You can't blame them for doing this. In fact, I advise them to do this. There is absolutely nothing more important than the safety of young children. Unfortunately it's nonetheless humiliating.

Another worrying development is support from a limited number of Hindus and Sikhs for the fascist British National Party (BNP). As I noted in a previous post, yes, they pale in comparison to the extremism found within mainstream Islam, a belief system which (when followed) would execute Hindus and Sikhs (i.e. idolators/pagans) if they refused to convert, but fighting hate with more hate is never the answer.

Time and time again I also read hostile comments left by whites on news stories about "Asians" attacking innocent white people, including women and the elderly. In these comments, they often attack Asians for being backward and in need of deportation. Here's a newsflash for them;  where you are born and what your ethnicity is do not affect your behavior. On the other hand, what you believe in certainly does. Every community has its own issues to deal with, but there is no history of Hindu, Sikh or Christian Asian gangs in the UK systematically going around beating up white people, they are too busy being beaten up, raped or murdered by Muslim "Asians".

Update

A lot has happened since I first wrote this piece. Two of them involve the BBC, so I'll begin with those developments.

Near the end of May 2012, the BBC temporarily abandoned its policy of referring to Muslim rape gangs that target non-Muslim women and children, as "Asian" rape gangs. Instead they called the rapist an “alleged Muslim”. Unfortunately this development was not the result of the BBC's journalistic integrity. They were forced into the move when one of the victims of these religiously motivated sex-crimes turned out to be a teenaged Asian Sikh girl. They could hardly call it a racially motivated crime in this instance, could they?

Also in may, the BBC finally ran a story about groups representing Sikh and Hindu communities complaining about the media use of the term "Asian". As pointed out, the repeated use of the term "Asian" to describe Pakistani Muslims is playing into the hands of far-right racists such as the BNP. This gives them the ammo to scream "Look! See, we're right! All those brown people are the same. They just want to defile your innocent native British children!!!!" (as if only white kids can be "British").

In connection with the reports on the "Asians" who spat on Remembrance Day poppies and the girl who was selling them, the Bradford Telegraph and Argus has just reported that the young poppy sellers are to get minders after the abuse suffered last year. The most interesting aspect of this news story is the fact they now report that the 13-year-old white girl was only one of three teenagers selling remembrance poppies that day. Do you want to know the race/ethnicity of the other two young girls who were also abused? You've probably guessed it already... they appear to have been "Asians". Unsurprisingly this hasn't stopped thick-skulled racists from commenting on that article (e.g. "Skagbagger" and "fabricator666" referring to us as "feral Asian youth").

The Sun reported in May 2012, on the sentencing of a 9-man "Asian" pedophile sex gang. Those sentenced were eight Pakistani men and one Afghan. Can you guess which religion those nine "Asians" belong to? A clue would be the fact that one of the nine men was a Muslim preacher. The sentencing judge even stated quite clearly that the men had preyed on those young girls partly because they were from a different religion. The Sun article mentions this (as do others). But what catchy title do you think they chose to give this news story? It was titled, "77 years for Asian sex beasts...50 more on the loose". Let that sink in for a minute. A mainstream and popular tabloid referring to Asians as "beasts... on the loose" Now imagine if that title had read "Black sex beasts... on the loose", and how long it would have been before they were accused of overt racism in their reporting. Is there any wonder that racists see no problem with referring to us as "feral Asian youth"?

Finally, this is not a new development but more of an 'oversight' on my part. An interesting case dating back to 2009 in Bradford, the same place where the so-called race riots took place, when a Muslim teen stabbed a 51-year-old white non-Muslim male. The sentencing judge said it "seemed to have a racial motive." But the teen explained his motivations plain as day, "Manningham belongs to Muslims. We dont want whites. We rule Bradford. We are going to get you out." The attack was clearly racially and religiously motivated. If anything, there's a chance it was only religiously motivated (to most Muslim Asians, every white is assumed to be a Christian). I highly doubt this old man would have been attacked if he was dressed in recognizably Islamic clothing.