Chuck Todd schooled again on accurate reporting on Muslims
Today Chuck Todd used a Wall Street Journal oped by ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali to launch an indirect attack on Muslims albeit with much civility. She wrote the following.
If we take the position that we are dealing with a handful of murderous thugs with no connection to what they so vocally claim, then we are not answering them. We have to acknowledge that today’s Islamists are driven by a political ideology, an ideology embedded in the foundational texts of Islam. We can no longer pretend that it is possible to divorce actions from the ideals that inspire them.
Chuck Todd asked Arsalan Iftikhar to comment about Ali’s oped based on the loaded snippet above. Arsalan Iftikhar was ready for that type of question. After all, the media is infected with those that have picked up the mantra of the Right Wing to continue an effective demonizing of Muslims.
“I would say that she is being too reductive in her reasoning,” Arsalan Iftikhar said. “And I think that it is important to keep in mind that when you are dealing with the second largest religion in the entire world of 1.7 billion people, you know there is no minority demographic group today in Western societies that is placed with more collective guilt than Muslims. And I think that it is important that we do not have this double standard in terms of calling out terrorism. I think terrorism today has been co-opted to only apply when Brown Muslim men commit acts of mass murder and when White Christian people like Anders Breivik in Norway kill 77 teenagers and try to bomb the prime minister of Norway’s office, we didn’t ask Norway’s Christian leaders to come out on national TV and condemn. So I think it is a little reductive in her conflation.”
That could not be said any better. Unmentioned in the program was that while we were hyperventilating about the terrorist attacks in France, we had a domestic terrorist attack against an NAACP office in Colorado Springs that garnered little coverage. Where is the angst about the lone Right Wing wolf terrorist attacks that have killed hundreds of Americans in America that have nothing to do with Muslims?
This is the type of conflation that occurs with the manner in which crime is described when related to minorities. The media is generally at the ready to point out that Black on Black crime is at 90% but never let it be knows that White on White crime has similar percentages. In effect people generally kill those they are closer to. This failed type of reporting fail to inform that FBI data on criminality while valid when stating that the records show higher crimes for minorities, fail to inform how subjective policing affects that data. While White teenagers are summarily sent home or given a tap for petty crimes, minorities are actually codified for FBI counting as they enter the justice system.
Bad reporting give good Americans bad data. Good Americans form opinions on bad data which distorts reality most of the times and sometimes creates a new reality.