African and Middle Eastern Student Group questions media focus on Paris

Senior Hodan Dubad instantly knew people would blame Muslims for the recent ISIS attacks when she saw mentions of both the attack on Paris and Muslims on Twitter.

“ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. They just use that religion as their excuse to do what they do,” Dubad said. “They don’t represent Islam at all.”

Dubad, a member of the African and Middle Eastern Student Group, said she wondered why the attack on Paris received more attention than other attacks. She said she thought people should think about all of the places.

Another member of the group, Salma Mohamed, said she agreed ISIS gives Islam a bad name. She said she was shocked to hear about the attacks.

“It makes me mad how they claim my religion and say that it’s in the Quran that you can kill anybody,” Mohamed said.

She said the media promotes the idea Muslims carried out the attacks, and thinks people need to learn the truth about her religion before drawing unfair conclusions.

“In class we talked about how the attacks happened and what they were. One of my classmates said something offensive and I explained my religion to them to correct them,” Mohamed said. “They need to ask someone Muslim and see from their point of view instead of making assumptions.”

Mohamed said getting news from unbiased sources helps tell the truth about what happened. She said she learned about the attacks from the news but also saw it all over social media.

“The media is focusing on certain countries. I think it’s horrible that they’re just focusing on Paris just because it’s Paris and not on other countries,” Mohamed said. “It makes it seem like they don’t care about the other countries.”

She said it frustrated her how these attacks promoted Islamophobia, which leads to attacks on Muslims and mosques.

Senior group member Sharon Moranga said the more people hear about attacks committed by ISIS, the quicker they will resort to blaming all Muslims.

“I feel like people are quick to blame it on Muslims. Not all Muslims are terrorists, just like not all white people are racists,” Moranga said. “There’s going to be bad people in certain groups and you can’t take one action from one group and base it on everybody else.”

Moranga said blame falls on Muslims when sources feature terrorists as Muslims, instead of just as terrorists. Muslims don’t carry out all attacks, but when they do, sources emphasize the fact that the attackers are Muslim, she said.

Dubad said Islam means peace, but ISIS doesn’t follow this. She said they don’t even follow the same practices as other Muslims.

“They’re using the name of Islam and the religion to do the things that they do. If they say ‘I’m doing this for God, for Allah’ people are going to think that everybody’s like that in the religion, but it’s only a few people,” Dubad said. “They pray in a different direction than we pray, and they kill Muslims themselves. If they’re blowing up mosques, then are they really representing Islam.”

She said despite the negative portrayal of her religion, she makes an effort to represent herself and her religion in a positive manner to show not all Muslims are like those in ISIS.

Adviser Chris Weaver said he questioned why people changed their Facebook profile picture to the French flag.

“There’s people who change their picture and don’t even know what happened, and meanwhile there are millions of people fleeing Syria. Where’s the flags for that,” Weaver said. “I don’t think people were more surprised that it happened in Paris; I think people cared more that it happened in Paris.”

He said he thought the news was tragic but was not surprised, as attacks like this occur all the time all over the world.

Moranga said she thinks people should care about the attacks all across the world because one life is not more important than another.

“I feel like it’s unfortunate that people don’t know about the other things that happened,” Moranga said. “There were so many other things that also happened that day and they just shed light on the Paris attack and didn’t really shed light on anything else.”

She said people show more support toward Paris because ISIS attacked white people and not people of color.

Weaver said he thinks a racist narrative exists in media, perpetuated by people who don’t believe it’s an issue.

“Our white media outlets feel the need to cover Paris more than they do Kenya, more than they do other places,” he said. “People don’t think it’s a problem. They don’t want to acknowledge it. Unfortunately, what that means in America is that white people don’t want to acknowledge it.”

Weaver said the media constantly portrays people of color in a negative light and rarely covers stories about positive young people of color. He said this is the reason Americans care more about Paris than other places that were attacked.

“What’s so important about Paris that isn’t important about Syrian refugees or isn’t important about Beirut or Lebanon or any of those places where tragic stuff is happening every day instead of just one day,” he said.