Let’s stand with all, not just some, terrorized people

“We almost turned it on when terrorists attacked Ankara since Turks are technically Caucasian,” wrote IslamicaNews referring to the popular Facebook feature that allows members to activate a flag overlay to show solidarity with and honour victims. The satirical website, putting words in the mouth of a fake Facebook spokesperson, added: “But then we thought, come on … They’re not like regular white people. Disqualified.”

IslamicaNews is not alone in noticing Western bias in the coverage of terror attacks. Victims are given extensive, sympathetic and prolonged attention when they are primarily white or non-Muslims, while the plight of similar victims in Muslim or developing countries are underplayed or even ignored.

In fact, even prominent world landmarks (including the CN Tower) changed colours for Paris and Belgium, but have never done so for Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Nigeria or Somalia. Moreover, even major Western leaders made public statements of solidarity with Brussels (35 deaths). Though the silence was deafening from many quarters for the terror unleashed the week before in Ivory Coast (22), Turkey (38), Pakistan (15), Nigeria (22), Syria (11) and Egypt (18). It was not any different for the two attacks on March 25 in Iraq (31) and Yemen (26). The Easter attack on March 27 in Lahore (65) got a bit more attention.

So far this year (as of March 27) globally there have been 238 terrorist attacks, of which eight took place in the West (Europe). Only the Brussels attack took more than two lives, while outside the West, 29 had 10 or more deaths, 20 had more than 20 deaths, 13 had more than 50 deaths and three had more than 75 deaths.

Daesh, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Al Shabab and Taliban all have different goals, but they have one thing in common: They have all killed more Muslims than non-Muslims. Though exact figures are hard to muster, based on a 2011 report of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center and the Global Terrorism Database, we can safely conclude that between 80 per cent and 90 per cent of the victims are Muslims.

One of the reasons for the selective mourning may be because non-Western targets may be perceived as one undifferentiated mass where violence is the norm. Why? Are the dead any less dead or their pain any less because they see more violence?

Another more plausible explanation is the ingrained and subconscious racism that exists and our unwillingness to confront the conditioning which has allowed us to view only people like “us” as victims. In the words of Edward Said, it is due to the systemic “otherization” of non-western people that has its roots in the discourse that evolved from the Crusades and Colonization.

The compassion gap is made possible when we put ourselves at the centre of our focus and see “The Other” as outside our group, as somehow fundamentally different, and thus, often, as less human or in need of being civilized.

Western victims and sometimes non-Muslim victims are martyrs while Muslims are not worthy of this honour and are met with silence or even blame for nurturing terror. It places a hierarchy on who is to be grieved and nullifies any assertions that all lives matter.

The most blatant expression of this view was offered in 1996 by then-U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who told 60 Minutes that American policy objectives were worth the sacrifice of half a million Arab children.

Such a mindset makes it easy for a prominent Canadian columnist to write that Arab society is one “where wickedness is bred in the bone,” and have to be taken to the Ontario Press Council to be admonished.

This division of the world plays into the terrorist narrative. Indeed, what is the difference between “us” versus “them” and the dar-ul-harb (abode of war) versus dar-ul-Islam (abode of Islam) world peddled by Daesh and those of its ilk?

We certainly can’t claim the moral high ground if notions of human dignity are attached to identity and how similar they are to us whether in reality or perception.

True humanity necessitates that we stand not only with Paris, America and Brussels, but with all terrorized people.

Faisal Kutty is counsel to KSM Law, an associate professor at Valparaiso University Law School in Indiana and an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. You can follow him @faisalkutty.

Correction - March 29, 2016: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said the Eiffel Tower lit up in the colours of the Pakistani flag following the Easter Sunday bombing in Lahore, Pakistan.