This is in response to the column “Tragedy in Boston and disparity in death” by Aijaz Zaka Syed. The author’s take on the Boston incident of terror is balanced and broad based. Those, who think the writer may be condoning acts of terror, seem to have missed his point, completely.
No right-minded person would celebrate the loss of innocent lives. To a Muslim believing in the timeless veracity of the Qur’anic edicts, the loss of even one innocent life is tantamount to the murder of all human race.
But, as the author has amply dilated on, the Boston bombings — and the resultant loss of three lives — has been blown out of all proportion in the Western media. Looking for Muslim culprits and eager to pin the blame on them, CNN, for instance, was talking of the FBI looking for “Brown faces or black” behind, what it called the “massacre” in Boston. Rushing to judgment and hang the blame round a Muslim neck has become the staple to the Western media since 9/11.
However, sober analysts and letter writers to newspaper editors in the Canadian press — which I can vouch for because I monitor it daily — are now taking serious issue with this proclivity to paint the Western world as a “victim” of “Islamic terror” and absolve leaders of the Western world of any responsibility for open warfare against countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan with the use of the most modern weapon of terror, the dreaded drone. This debate is basically focused on “us-against-them” syndrome afflicting the Western media and political leaders’ psyche.
As for the Chechen brothers alleged to be the perpetrators in Boston, the evidence, so far, is only circumstantial. How would their guilt be proved is a riddle at this point, with the older brother dead and the younger unable to speak because of a bullet lodged in his throat.
What it means is ample food for thought for the writer to chew on until he’s ready to write his next piece on the subject. - Karamat, By e-mail
Tragedy in Boston
