What was your reaction to the attack on a synagogue in Manchester yesterday? Most right thinking people, you’d hope, simply recoiled in horror and dread on hearing the news that two Jews had been killed and three seriously injured in a terrorist attack on British soil.
For the ‘The Centre for Media Monitoring’ (CfMM), an offshoot of the Muslim Council of Britain, though, it seems now is the perfect time to examine how the media is covering the attack. Last night, the body’s social media account tweeted out the front page of the Daily Mail, headlined: ‘He was an Islamic terrorist’. The paper pointed out that the attacker, Jihad Al-Shamie, of Syrian descent, had been wearing what appeared to be a suicide vest.
The Mail’s headline though, according to the CfMM, is beyond the pale. ‘A disgraceful front page from the Daily Mail. The action of this terrorist is anti-Islamic!’ it screeched.
The message was retweeted by former first minister of Scotland Humza Yousaf, who added that:
‘This evil terrorist may claim to be have been Muslim but his actions have nothing to do with Islam. A religion that says to kill one innocent person is like killing the whole of humanity.’
Yes Humza, and the early Muslim conquests famously never involved any killing of course…
Laugh now, but given the ongoing campaign to criminalise ‘Islamophobia’, we may all soon be living in a world where it’s an offence to describe a horrific attack like this as ‘Islamic terrorism’…
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