Muslims Executed - Fox News Spins

[Update at end of post]

Three Muslim students have been found shot dead in their living quarters close to the University of North Carolina. As the BBC reported, “The bodies of Deah Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were discovered on Tuesday, all with gunshots to their heads. A 46-year-old man, Craig Stephen Hicks, is being held on first-degree murder charges”.

So another multiple fatal shooting in a country where thousands die every year from gunshot inflicted wounds, then. But the thought has entered that the media coverage being given to this particular killing is rather lower key than if the perpetrator had been a follower of The Prophet, and one news source infamous for its apparently loaded views on Muslims is already telling anyone that will listen that it was not a hate crime.

Yes, while the Beeb says “Police have said they are trying to determine if attack was hate-motivated. The fact that all three students were Muslims has led to speculation on social media over whether their faith played a role in the shooting”, and MSNBC said “ it is not yet known if the victims’ faith was a factor in the killings”, a third source asserted “Parking dispute, not bias, triggered triple murder, say NC police”.

To no surprise at all, that source was Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse), and Rupe’s Stateside troops lost no time telling “The murder of three North Carolina college students was motivated by an ongoing dispute over a parking space, despite widespread speculation the victims were targeted by an avowed atheist because of their Muslim faith, police said”, also noting “rampant suspicion that the crime was motivated by hate”.

Yes, talk of a hate crime is already been discounted by Fox, as it’s “rampant suspicion”. Nevertheless, as Mohamed Elmasry at al-Jazeera noted “The religious identity of violent perpetrators is only highlighted when they're Muslim”, and Piers Morgan observed “If a Muslim executed 3 Christian students in [the] US, it would get a LOT more media coverage than I’m seeing right now”, not everyone agrees with Fox News.

After all, on one well-known occasion that a Muslim was the perpetrator - the Fort Hood shootings - Fox carried (and still has available) items titled “Muslim Outrage”, “Government Blind to Radical Islam?”, “Terrorism or Madness?”, “Terror Loophole?” and “9/11 Commission Leaders Warn of Homegrown Terror”. The channel wheeled out renowned rent-a-quote Sarah Palin to talk of the “Massive Warning Flags”.

As Mohamed Elmasry asks, “At one point do we begin to hold media organisations at least partly accountable for the anti-Muslim sentiment that is gripping many western nations?” He will know about Fox News and anti-Muslim sentiment: after all, he’s “an assistant professor in the Department of Communications at the University of North Alabama”. And yes, the question has to be put again, why less coverage when Muslims are victims?

That needs answering, not just in the USA, but across the Western world, and soon.

[UPDATE 1900 hours: Piers Morgan has continued to take a cynical fire of those who have tried to pass off this killing as some kind of parking dispute - like Fox News.

"Nobody seriously believes this atheist maniac shot dead 3 Muslim students over a car parking argument, right?" he observed at hearing that news, then elaborating further.

"And let's not call him an 'atheist', actually. Let's call him what he is: a Muslim-murdering American terrorist" concluded the former Daily Mirror editor. This may get him even more Twitter hate than usual, but the idea that someone would execute three people over a parking dispute really is coming it. Still, Fox News, and all that, eh?]