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British MP murder coverage shows 'terrorist' equals Muslim in the West

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DailyBite
DailyBiteJun 17, 2016 | 21:18

British MP murder coverage shows 'terrorist' equals Muslim in the West

British Labour MP, Jo Cox, was fatally shot and stabbed on June 16 by a "Brexit" fanatic, a white British man named Tommy Mair.

As the whole of United Kingdom, and indeed the rest of the world, particularly the western media, chiefly the New York Times, grieved her untimely death, there was practically no mention of the word "terrorism".

Instead, the political toxicity on either side of the Brexit campaign, its murderous rage taking a toll on Britons' mental health, got all the press.

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Murdered British MP, Jo Cox.

Until, Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, called out the scam.

In a Facebook post, Dabashi made a scathing observation that the western press was not only trying to turn Jo Cox's murder into a classic case of rage by an unstable, psychopathic character, they are also deafeningly mum on possibility of this assassination having any "terrorism"connection.

Dabashi's post, which minces no words, has got over 1,400 likes and 650 shares.

Read it below. 

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Is Jo Cox's killer, Tommy Mair, not a terrorist? Definitely not, according to NYT.

An astounding aspect of the assassination of UK MP Jo Cox is a complete lack of interest on part of the UK and US media in the man who has committed the murder.

I have been reading one news item after another in both UK and the US - as in this NYT piece the assassin is not even named - now. You have to read and read finally to fish out that the assassin is a white man named Tommy Mair, who was heard shouting "Britain First" as he carried out his murder.

Now that is the name [that belongs to a member] of the far right political party in the UK [UKIP].

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Now just imagine for a second if the name of the assassin was not Tommy Mair but "Mohammad Moustafa". He was not a white man but a coloured person. He did not scream "Britain First" but "Allahu Akbar!"

By now the entire BBC apparatus and the New York Times and CNN would have been on red alert, "terrorist experts" would be on their ways to their studios, from President Barack Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would have called press conferences and debated the term "Islamic extremism", and Benjamin Netanyahu would have been on his way to London as a sign of solidarity, declaring how Israelis are also victims of "terrorism", and the Internet would be abuzz with "Je Sui Jo Cox".

May Jo Cox rest in peace. From all I have read, she was a remarkable public servant and a decent human being.

But she has left behind a ghastly racist world in which the UK and US media and politicians have come together so that the very dictionary definition of the word "terrorism" has been exclusively coded to mean "Muslim".

Last updated: June 17, 2016 | 21:18
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