Christchurch Attack; The Seed of Hatred is Sown

The New Zealand terrorist attack martyred 50 people and injured 50 in two different mosques in Christchurch with kids as young as three years old to adults as old as 77 years of age. The terrorist entered the mosque at the Friday prayer time on March 15. Victims also include nine Pakistanis from different areas of Pakistan. One of the most prominent Pakistani is “Naeem Rashid” who attempted to stop the attacker but he too became a victim of the gunfire and lost his life in the hospital along with his eldest son “Talha Naeem”, his younger son was injured and is being treated at the hospital. In one of the mosques, the terrorist, Brenton Harrison Tarran, live-streamed the shooting which at first looked like a video game because of the continuous and blind firing. He used two semi-automatic weapons and two shotguns weapons that were legally acquired because he had no criminal record. He had “Category A” firearm license which legitimizes him to obtain any number of sporting rifles and shotguns. Brenton Harrison is an Australian citizen, aged 28 years old, who is held in a “specialist security” separate from other prisoners. He is charged with one count of murder yet and will face more charges as per the officials.

The way international media tried to portray the terrorist attack was a failed attempt to save the terrorist. They were quite reluctant in calling out “White” a terrorist, promoting the concept of white supremacy by giving him the privilege of being white. They also tried to give safeguard to Harrison by calling him mentally disturbed. DailyMirror, a UK based daily tabloid newspaper, called Harrison an “Angelic boy who turned into an evil far right mass killer”, with image of Harrison with his father, according to the newspaper the cause of extremism of Harrison was death of his father which left him disturbed and he entered into the right wing extremism. It is important to unfold the causes and reasons of extremism but one must show what happened rather than collecting sympathies for a person who massacred fifty Muslims including a children of three years of age. The manifesto mentions that he (Brenton Harrison) is taking revenge of the death of Ebba Akerlund, who was killed in a terrorist in Sweden. How could a death of one child give license for the death of another child?  On the other hand if it was a Muslim, the only reason for terrorist activity would be Islam, Quran and Madaris.  But all of these tactics failed because of the proof in the form video and the manifesto presented by him right before shooting based on anti-immigrant and anti-Muslims ideas. As per the manifesto, the cause of Harrison’s radicalization is Candace Owens, who is a pro-Trump political activist.

This attack changed the perception of the world about Muslims because of the fact that how brutally Harrison killed multiple people who were minding their business, practicing their religion and were attacked by the right-wing terrorist. The attack is not a surprise, how could it be? As the terminology and ideology used by the terrorist is similar to what has been talked on by media and politicians. If a president of a country considers that, “Islam hates us”, and that the “people coming out of mosques with hatred and death in their eyes and on their minds”, and liberals and philosophers claim that “We are not at war with terrorism, we are at war with Islam”, how could not people will carry out such attacks? The only cause of Christchurch mosques terrorist attack is the hatred injected by the western media and politicians against Muslims and Islam. Racism and Islamophobia inculcated by governments resulted in the death of fifty innocent Muslims. They might not be directly responsible for motivating the terrorist but they did make up his mind that the reason for all his problems is Islam and Muslims. They have created an image that a Muslims with a beard is a terrorist and any other “White” who kills them is an innocent, they won’t call him a terrorist because it would completely erode their justification for going on War on Terror. They arrested Ahmed Mobeen for making a clock and called him terrorist without any reluctance but when it comes to a non-Muslim white person they can’t call him a terrorist but will try their bet to justify his act. It is time when western media and politicians take a step back and understand that more than half of the world’s problem are because of their hate speeches and not because of Muslims. Their hatred and image making causes problems leading to mass massacre of innocents.