Reacting to Director of Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) in Washington D.C. Dalia Mogahed’s article “This is the Face of a Terrorist” for New York Daily News, this article discusses the role of US media covering terrorism-related attacks and how it shapes stereotypes about Muslims around the world. Why is it that when a terrorist blows himself up, in the name of Islam, people in Egypt don’t describe him as a “Muslim” terrorist? Yet, the very same act and person are highlighted as Islamic and Muslim when it happens in the USA? I’m in disagreement with the many people alleging hypocrisy in the news coverage of the latest American suicide bomber. The criticism goes something like this: if an apparent killer isn’t a Muslim, and his act wasn’t in the name of Islam, then the media won’t refer to the attack as terrorism; the media won’t refer to his faith, his skin color nor his ethnic origin. Critics are upset that the media does not refer to a suspect as white, third generation English and German who grew up Episcopalian or Presbyterian. The media doesn’t name the act…
