OPINION: Are Western media outlets suffering from Islamophobia?

The news that there are serious allegations of sexual harassment against Harvey Weinstein, the well-known Hollywood film director, has hit the headlines. The news that Rohingya Muslims are being slaughtered in Myanmar also regularly makes headlines.

The link between these items is that not a single news item has mentioned either Harvey Weinstein’s religion or the religion of those murdering Rohingya Muslims. If we go back a few years to when the IRA was murdering people in Northern Ireland or mainland Britain, we never saw headlines which stated that Roman Catholics were murdering Protestants. In 1945, atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no one said that Christians had murdered hundreds of thousands of non-Christians using a Judaeo-Christian bomb. Israel’s atomic bomb is not a Jewish bomb, India’s atomic bomb is not a Hindu bomb, but Pakistan’s atomic bomb is a ‘Muslim bomb’.

Does this not show that the media in the West suffer from Islamophobia? If this is not the case, then perhaps someone can explain to Muslims why mention of their religion is relevant to the crime a Muslim commits, but the mention of any non-Muslim’s religion is not relevant to the crime he or she commits.

Does this not show that the media in the West suffer from Islamophobia? If this is not the case, then perhaps someone can explain to Muslims why mention of their religion is relevant to the crime a Muslim commits, but the mention of any non-Muslim’s religion is not relevant to the crime he or she commits.