Huff Post: Vlad Chituc: The New York Post has been receiving serious and justifiable criticism for their reporting on the Boston Marathon. Citing police sources, the paper reported that 12 people had died in the attacks and that a “Saudi national” had been taken into custody. Of course, the death toll was thankfully a (still horrifying) quarter of that, and the police later disconfirmed that the “Saudi national” was a suspect — he was a student tackled by a concerned citizen and taken to the hospital. He was fully cooperative, denied all involvement, and isn’t a suspect. The New Yorker has released an important and harrowing story of the way this young man, barely out of his teens, was treated.
Just as conspiracy-nut Alex Jones was quick to blame the government and the Westboro Baptist Church was quick to blame the gays, many were quick to accept the New York Post‘s shoddy reporting and rumor-mongering — it was easy to believe the perpetrator was a Muslim.
What would have happened, though, if the perpetrator was this 20-year-old Saudi, who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time looking the wrong color and maybe calling out to the name of the wrong-sounding God? What if it was some other Muslim, instead? Why should that even matter?
It seems like the anti-Muslim voices on the far right, like Pamela Geller, and the atheist left, like Sam Harris, act as if moderates, like myself, simply aren’t aware that Muslim terrorism exists. They use extraordinary examples as an excuse to rub in our faces how violent and harmful a religion Islam is.