Associating D.C. sniper with al-Qaeda justifies racism, generates unfounded alarm
By Daily Bruin Staff
Oct. 20, 2002 9:00 p.m.
Amid false leads and a rising death toll, residents, police and
newscasters in the nation’s capital struggle to make sense of the
recent rash of sniper killings.
Is it a group of killers or someone acting alone? Is there a
political motive or a twisted thirst for blood? Are the murders
linked to terrorism or are they random acts of violence?
The final question deserves our attention. For over a year,
Americans have been bombarded with warnings about terrorism,
periodically calming down only to be shaken once more by orange
alerts and new Osama bin Laden videotapes. The media’s
portrayal of the Middle East as a hotbed of terrorism galvanizes a
nation’s fear into sustained and fervent support for an open-ended
war.
The link between terrorism and the Middle East has been
developed to such an extent that when someone not from the Middle
East runs around inciting terror by shooting innocent people, the
media refrains from calling it terrorism. As one headline in the
Washington Times declares, “Terrorism seen unlikely as motive
of shooting.” In other words, it might be a white guy and
that’s not who we like to call terrorists. The police don’t
even know who the killer is, but apparently the Times knows the
perpetrator’s motives well enough to make such a
statement.
Yet the prospect of a sniper not from the Middle East fails to
shift the source of fear away from that part of the world. The
Washington Times coupled coverage of the shootings with the
headline, “As many as 5,000 al-Qaeda members may be operating
inside the United States.”
The stereotype is exacerbated by the FBI’s investigation of
links between al-Qaeda and the sniper, whereby the prisoners held
at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba are being interrogated about the
Washington murders. It’s absurd to think the 600 men who have
been isolated and imprisoned for months (without due process or any
substantial allegations) will have details on such a current case.
And in a recent column, William Safire suggests in the New York
Times that “even if, as expected, the relentless rampage
turns out to have been the work of two crazies, the example will
not be forgotten in the cells of al-Qaeda.”
By immediately associating the sniper with al-Qaeda, such
accounts project American anger and confusion onto a Middle Eastern
“other,” a tactic that succeeds in tapping into latent
racism and grief. Readers may end up angrier at the imagined
prospect of al-Qaeda operatives taking notes for their own
terrorist schemes than they are at the actual sniper.
Such outrageous connections are not lost on the general public.
One witness to a recent killing professed, “I saw the sniper,
he was short, Mid-East looking.” Another witness described
him as “Hispanic or Middle Eastern.”
As people in Washington deal with the very real threat of random
violence, we in the Middle Eastern community watch the news
coverage with another fear. If the sniper does end up being from
our region of the world, it might trigger an additional wave of
violent backlash and justification for racism, not to mention
illogical but effective rationalization for an unjust war on Iraq.
And if the shooter ends up being a homegrown assassin of the
McVeigh variety, no doubt he will be dubbed a madman or a sick
serial killer, not a terrorist. Such a label is reserved for those
Middle Easterners or Muslims whose demonization serves very
specific purposes.
Domestic evils are conveniently connected to a “land of
evil” in order to maintain a good self-image. We are okay as
long as “they” are more evil than we are. Such a
psychological state thwarts critical thinking about the complex
roots of violence. It strengthens the superficial analysis of
terrorists and murderers as inherently fanatical and prevents the
type of deep societal analysis necessary to avert similar attacks
in the future.
If the ultimate goal is to work on ending all forms of terrorism
so the next generation can focus on peace and unity instead of hate
and divisiveness, then we must resist attempts to exploit one type
of violence in justification of another.
