TORONTO, 17 September — Millions of viewers around the world watched in horror as two hijacked commercial jets crashed into and brought down the World Trade Center in New York. Commentators were completely confused by the footage they received just after 9 a.m. Reports of hijacked planes were coming in and two other aircraft crashed into the Pentagon and outside Pittsburgh. The world press was at a loss for words. All it had were images. Images of destruction. News writers groped for explanations and reached for anything they could call a reason.
The devastation began at about 8:45 a.m. when most newspapers had already been printed and distributed. And so the broadcast media moved in to cover the story. First the facts came in. The north tower of the World Trade Center was hit first. Then a second plane crashed into the south tower. Subsequent explosions and fires toppled the twin towers. Video footage focused on the complete chaos in the streets below. People stared skywards in disbelief, breaking into runs as smoke and debris came rushing at them when 110 floors collapsed onto the concrete below. Things were being reported and then a few minutes later being denied. A lot of useless information was filtering through to anxious viewers who wanted to know what was happening. Experts started spouting numbers. Fifty thousand people work in the twin towers; 24,000 at the Pentagon. Estimates of injuries were kept in check. Ten thousand rescue workers were deployed to seek survivors in the New York rubble.
Then there was no more information. At least no new information. So the journalists started producing theories. You can’t exactly switch away from the scene of a story with such far-reaching consequences and say, “and now we return to Gilligan’s Island...” or in the case of radio, “our regular traffic program.” People were completely confused. Their minds were full of the “who, what, when, why, where.” They needed answers. They wanted somewhere to direct their anger. And broadcast media, be it online, radio or television, doesn’t have 10 hours to produce a well-written newspaper report.
The atmosphere was sober as people gathered on street corners, in TV lounges and in restaurants to listen for any bit of news. The pressure to investigate the issue and the fact that you can’t leave the air waves silent when millions are hanging on your every word drove the international press to desperate measures. And so the media started drawing on so-called “experts.” Professors, Middle East specialists and senators came forward to talk about the likelihood of Muslim fundamentalists. One US official went as far as to say, “this has Bin Ladin’s stamp all over it.”
CNN was initially cautious about blaming Arab terrorists after their coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing where Arabs were first singled out as the guilty. When Timothy McVeigh was arrested for the act, the American media suffered a serious setback. The BBC, however, made no bones about who they thought was responsible for the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Osama Bin Ladin’s face was posted on their online edition soon after the attacks. All news services began to think about what the CIA was making, i.e. “He is the only one with the motivation to do this.” Expert after expert appeared on our television screens to say that a suicide attack requires great faith in one’s cause. It was an ideologically motivated act. The Toronto Sun screamed, “Bastards!” in its headlines the next day, and the daily newspaper in Miami carried, on their front page, not a picture of the towers collapsing imploding but the image of Bin Ladin.
The public was demanding that their leaders put a face to the enemy and so the leaders obliged. Without sufficient evidence they pinned the blame on Bin Ladin and the 45-second video clip of people rejoicing in the name of Palestine and Islam cemented the idea. The 20 people in that video, however, are no more representative of Muslims — or even of Palestinians — than Madonna is of an average American. Just because one member of a group is an extremist does not mean that all members are.
US President George W. Bush has sounded a note of caution, urging people not to resort to hate crimes in the light of recent reports of Muslim terrorists behind the catastrophe. New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani went so far as to promise extra protection for Arabs, Muslims and their institutions. Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman is urging people to remember that Toronto treasures its multicultural lifestyle. Jean Chretien, the Canadian prime minister, urged tolerance, saying he wanted “to emphasize we are in a struggle against terrorism and not against any one community or faith.”
And yet, the backlash against Muslims has begun. In Australia, a bus carrying Muslim schoolchildren was stoned. In Montreal, a mosque was set on fire. Muslims were harassed in Texas. The Jami Masjid in Toronto received threatening phone calls. Muslim women in hijab were the subjects of racial slurs on the public transport system in Toronto. And this is just the beginning unless we stem the sickening surge of anti-Muslim sentiment at the very start.
