It Took Just Hours After the Malaysian Plane Disappeared for Suggestions Muslims Were to Blame to Spill Out

Writing for Alternet, Zaid Jilani nails the ubiquitous racism that prevails throughout the white corporate media and in many of the social networks. Those media are the first to rail against "racism" when it's useful for their political agendas but have no problem spewing by inference their hatred toward their favorite people to hate. When I began watching the first few minutes of CNN's TV coverage of the tragedy of the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner I sat wondering how long it would take to pin it on "Muslim terrorists." Well, they didn't disappoint - the bludgeoning soon came. First the news came that there were two stolen passports involved. Then it was an Iranian who sold them and not long after came the "news" that there were 2 Iranians on board with media racism woven in throughout by inference and power of suggestion. But if investigations show all their suggestions to be found wanting, no problem - racism will have already been re-seeded in fertile minds.

CNN could just as well have reminded their viewers of those who are well-known for stealing passports in multiple countries for use in summary executions of Muslim leaders, no? - or perhaps even reminders of the 1988 US missile attack on Iran Air Flight 655 (IR655) that murdered 290 innocent civilians from six nations including 66 children, all but 38 of the victims, Iranians or of the many false-flag bombings, blamed on Muslims in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Africa.

But if CNN's wild conjecture and speculation was appropriate (sic) for coverage of the Malaysian airliner, why not also consider the timing of the disappearance of the airliner: a time when CNN's celebration of the Ukrainian coup was turned into an embarrassing US/EU nightmare of President Putin sending the troops to defend Russians in Crimea; a time when Muslims and Islam are under attack throughout the west for their ethnicity and religion; a time when China-bashing is at an all-time high and a period of continued sanctions and military threats against Iran for its non-existent nuclear weapons development.

When suddenly, CNN studio frenetics were left to rave hysterically and helplessly on behalf of their paymasters about Russian troops arriving in Crimea, CNN's wall-to-wall propaganda about the glorious US/EU overthrow of a democratically-elected government in Ukraine was replaced with nearly 24 hour coverage of the search for the Malaysian airliner, replete with interviews of "aviation experts," an opinion by a retired commercial airline pilot in Arizona, maps, aircraft schematics, China's (not Malaysia's) history of airline crashes, speculation about bombs, hijacking, how Rolls Royce engines so efficiently send constant streaming data to the RR hub in England, shamelessly punctuated with video clips of weeping relatives in Beijing. When that isn't enough to supplant coverage of Russia in Ukraine, there is the insufferable Amanpour with her strident attacks, branded as "interviews" and the live televised Pistorius murder trial in South Africa. What are we suggesting by pointing at these co-incidental "world news stories?" Nothing. We are not the "Axis of Conjecture."

- Les Blough, Editor
Axis of Logic

March 12, 2014
Alternet
It Took Just Hours After the Malaysian Plane Disappeared for Suggestions Muslims Were to Blame to Spill Out
By Zaid Jilani

The world continues to search for Malaysian Airways Flight 370, the Boeing 777 jet which mysteriously disappeared last Saturday. As international governments continue to investigate, a small cottage industry of Islamophobes has appeared, grasping at tenuous information to spuriously claim that Muslim terrorists must be responsible for the disappearance of the airplane.

Far-right writer Theodore Shoebat, son of former extremist-turned-right-wing-lecture-circuit-extraordinaire Walid Shoebat wrote that the “airplane was coming from Malaysia, which is a Muslim country, into China. Malaysian Muslims have a generally collective animosity toward non-Muslim Chinese people. Out of 227 passengers, 152 were from China. Let us see the conclusion as to who did this evil and wicked act. That this was due to Islamic terrorism, cannot be canceled out.”

The United Kingdom's Mirror Online claimed that “Islamic militants in China...could be linked to missing Malaysia Airlines flight”; the only bit of evidence the Mirror had to link China's Uighur ethnic group to the attack was the fact that “two passengers appeared to have been traveling on stolen passports” – and that's without even knowing if the men were in any way tied to Islamic militancy in China.

While stolen passports are a fairly common phenomena in international travel, it wasn't long before they became the nexus of Islamophobic theories particularly once it was revealed that the two passengers carrying them were Iranian.The Daily Beast's Eli Lake openly mused on Twitter that Iran was responsible for the attack before backing off and asking readers to forgive him because “it's an obvious tragedy and we should wait till all the facts come in.”

Waiting for the facts is the opposite of what conservative media kingpin Rupert Murdoch did. He tweeted on Sunday: “777crash confirms jihadists turning to make trouble for China. Chance for US to make common cause, befriend China while Russia bullies.”

Unfortunately, this scapegoating attitude shown by right wing commentators is not new. Case in point: the false branding of a Saudi national after the Boston Marathon bombings, who received death threats for days. And recall that just hours after the horrifying bombing by a white supremacist in Norway, think tank scholars at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and American Enterprise Institute were blaming Muslims, as was the Wall Street Journal editorial board and the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin.

Although this Blame Muslims First attitude has spiked following the 9/11 attacks, it actually predates those. Following the Oklahoma City attack in 1995, the news media reported that two “Middle Eastern” men were sought for questioning; a Jordanian American man from Oklahoma was stopped in London and questioned. Commentators piled on. “It has every single earmark of the Islamic car-bombers of the Middle East ,” wrote columnist Georgia Anne Geyer. In due course, we'll learn which particular faction the terrorists identified with—Hamas? Hezbollah? the Islamic Jihad?—and whether or not the perpetrators leveled specific demands,” intoned the New York Post. Syndicated columnist Mike Royko was perhaps the worst, writing that he would “no objection if we picked out a country that is a likely suspect and bombed some oil fields, refineries, bridges, highways, industrial complexes. . . . If it happens to be the wrong country, well, too bad, but it's likely it did something to deserve it anyway.”

“It was as if we were accomplices to what happened in Oklahoma City, while all we wanted to do was unite with other Americans in the healing process,” said the Muslim Public Affairs Council's Salam Al-Marayati at the time. A mosque in Indianopolis was shot at, and the Islamic Center of Southern California logged at least a dozen death threats.

Although we have yet to know the truth about what happened to Flight 370, Interpol has ruled that it was unlikely that terrorists were involved. While right-wing commentators continue to engage in the same scapegoating they did in the past, they may find a less and less receptive audience.

Source: Alternet