The media, especially the Western media, has its own ways of shielding the religious identity of Muslims when found involved in criminal activities and emphasising the same they happen to do something positive. The world is in shock after A 40-year-old doctor in Michigan, Oumair Aejaz was arrested in the US after being charged with numerous sex crimes, including recording thousands of nude images of women and children over the past six years. A significant section of the media even in this horrifying crime managed to fan stereotypes against Indians and conceal the religious identity of the perpetrator.
In a flagrant display of hypocrisy, a large section of the media across the world emphasises a Muslim person’s religious identity when they do something great or decent, but downplays or obscures the same identity when they engage in criminal activity. While usually, the foreign media calls the accused persons involved in such cases either Asian or South Asian, this time, the emphasis is explicitly on his Indian origins.
Sadly, even the Indian media outlets toed the Western media’s line meant to tarnish India’s image globally and reported Oumair Aejaz as an “Indian doctor”. Interestingly, there can be Muslim doctors’ associations, and their religious identity be highlighted if they do something laudable but the same cannot be done with a Muslim doctor like Oumair Aejaz carries out horrendous crimes.
The headline of the report published by South China Morning Post (SCMP), a Hong Kong-based news outlet owned by the Alibaba Group, reads: “Indian doctor in US took thousands of images of naked adults and children as young as 2”.
The International Business Times, an American online newspaper also chose to call Oumair Aejaz an “Indian doctor”.
Meanwhile, a WION report’s headline reads: “‘13,000 videos in single drive,’ Indian doctor jailed in US for recording nude videos of children, women”.
Similarly, Mint’s headline states: “Indian doctor films naked children and adults in US, arrested; thousands of videos found at his Michigan home”.
IndiaTV reported: “’Disturbing on many levels’: Indian doctor arrested in US for taking pictures of naked adults and children”
Another leading Indian media outlet IndiaToday reported: “Indian doctor in US records thousands of nude videos of kids, women, arrested”.
On the face of it, nothing much might seem problematic here since perpetrator Oumair Aejaz is indeed of Indian origin, however, the emphasis on his Indian connection is the problem. Have a look at how the both Indian and foreign media report incidents wherein the “good Samaritan” happens to be a Muslim.
In 2017, Australian news outlet The Weekly Times reported: “Muslim doctor saves man’s life”.
In 2016, the Times of India reported how a Muslim girl saved her Hindu classmate from kidnappers even as there was no imperative to mention the girl’s Muslim identity but only talk about her act of bravery.
Just a few days back, a Pakistani news publication AajTV, boasted in its report how a “Heroic Muslim” saved people in the London knife attack. However, demonstrating its hypocrisy, the same publication chose to call Oumair Aejaz an “Indian doctor” in its report and not highlight his Muslim identity. Interestingly, the same Pakistani media called javelin throw star Neeraj Chopra’s Tokyo Olympics gold win a “victory of South Asia” but when a Muslim man Oumair Aejaz carries out a horrendous crime in Michigan, they dismiss him as a “Indian doctor”.
In January last year, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), a ‘Human rights’ group, reported about an incident wherein a man named Tipu Sultan saved girl Monali Kaushal’s life as she was drowning in Madhya Pradesh. “Muslim man risks life to save a Hindu girl from drowning in Madhya Pradesh,” CJP reported even as there was no imperative to highlight the saviour’s religious identity.
Another CJP report asserted how a “Muslim woman” saved the lives of many people through post-humous organ donation. The CJP, however, failed to mention that donating organs is prohibited in Islam and only receiving is allowed.
In July last year, Turkish news outlet Anadolu reported how a French Muslim “risked his life” to save people from fire in Romans-sur-Isere in southeastern France.
It must also be recalled how the Indian mainstream media highlighted the Muslim identity of rat miners who rescued 41 workers stranded in the Uttarakhand tunnel last year even as several Hindu rat miners were also involved in the rescue mission. The leftist media selectively highlighted the religious identity of Muslim rescuers making them national heroes while no such emphasis was laid on the religious identity of Hindu rescuers.
Glorify Muslims when something good happens, conceal their religious identity when involved in crimes: The hypocrisy of the global legacy media
Ironically, the very same section of foreign and Indian media that leaves no opportunity to glorify the Muslim identity when something good happens even as that the religiosity has little or nothing to do with the good actions of the people, also indulges in whitewashing the crimes committed by Muslims. A classic case of this is being seen in their coverage of anti-Hindu pogroms in Bangladesh, wherein Hindus are being attacked, killed, raped and their houses and temples vandalised, Hindu officials being forced to resign by Islamists solely out of their hatred for Hindus, yet the media outlets like Al Jazeera, NYT, ABC, etc passed these incidents off as “politically motivated revenge attacks”. Moreover, these hypocrites of top order highlighted the Muslim identity of those forming the farcical “human chains” to ‘protect’ Hindu temples, but failed to ‘verify’ whether the attacks on Hindus were driven by Islamism.
Clearly, the Islamist sympathising media lives in and wants to further their delusion that there are only good Muslims and the rest just bad people even if they kill and rape non-Muslims in the name of their religion and Allah.
When Muslims achieve significant success or make great contributions to society, their Islamic identity is frequently highlighted even if their good actions are unrelated to their faith. This narrative framing aims to dispel negative perceptions and promote the notion of Muslims as integral and constructive members of Western society. However, when it comes to naming Islamic terrorists what they truly are, these same media outlets promote a “terrorism has no religion” lie. Apparently, the media and the left-liberals globally want the world to live in denial of the Islamist threat knocking at their doors.
Media called the UK grooming gangs “Asian” even as they explicitly targeted non-Muslim girls out of their pervert religious extremism
Even with the infamous UK grooming gangs, the mainstream media called them “Asian”, despite the fact that it was their Muslim identity that made them groom non-Muslim girls. For example, take this The Telegraph report’s headline, “Telford scandal: Over 1,000 girls abused and raped by Asian gangs while police looked the other way”. All the perpetrators in this grooming gang were Muslims, mostly of Pakistan descent who singled out non-Muslim, white girls groomed them, sexually abused them multiple times, and threatened to kill them over disclosing their deeds to anyone and yet the media failed to or deliberately covers up the religious and racial motivation behind the crime.
Be it Rotherham, Telford, or Rochdale grooming and sexual exploitation cases, the pattern remained the same, non-Muslim girls including Hindu, Sikh, and White Christian girls being systematically targeted in the United Kingdom by Pakistani Muslims out of their religiously and racially motivated hatred towards non-Muslims. While the pro-Islamist bias is an obvious reason behind downplaying these cases for years or concealing the religious motivation behind the crime, another important reason for the cover-up was the fear of offending the perennially offended Muslim community.
By calling the Muslim groomers “Asian grooming gangs” or by simply their nationality, avoiding the explicit mention of their Muslim identity, the media perpetuates a generalisation unfairly implicating other Asian communities who were the victims of these Muslim grooming gangs, while also avoiding uncomfortable discussions about the specific religious factors involved.
The idea behind laying selective emphasis on the religious identity of Muslims is apparently, intended to create a skewed perception, where the positive aspects or deeds are linked to the religion, but the negative aspects are detached from it. This contributes to the establishment of a one-sided narrative that only those who do good deeds are ‘real Muslims’ while the predators, terrorists etc are not real Muslims even if they quote they carry the Quran in one hand and weapon in another to eliminate non-Muslims as seen in the case of ISIS executing kafirs.
The Muslim grooming gangs in the UK were shielded by the media and pro-Islamist politicians by passing them off as “Asian” or “South Asian grooming gangs”, The Palestinian Islamic terrorist group Hamas’s religiously driven attacks on Jews and Israel are passed off as ‘resistance’, Islamist attackers are labelled as “Bhatke huye naujawan [mislead youths] and grooming Jihad targeting Hindu women in India is outrightly dismissed as ‘hoax’, ‘fiction’, ‘right-wing conspiracy theory’ and whatnot. Currently, the media is obscuring Oumair Aejaz’s Muslim identity and passing him off as an ‘Indian doctor’, had the person happened to be a Hindu, the leftist media outlets would have somehow linked the crime with his religious identity and even to his political leanings. But since a Muslim can’t be bad because of being a Muslim, according to the leftist-Islamist propagandists, Aejaz and other criminals like him are and will be labelled “Asian”, “South Asian”, or “Indian”.
Ironically, Muslims who overtly assert their religiosity in anything and everything do not want the criminals and terrorists carrying out religiously motivated attacks on non-Muslims to be associated with Islam. However, these very people prioritise Islam over the country as was recently said by an Islamist maulana on national television.
“इस्लाम कहता है दीन पहले है देश बाद में”- मौलाना pic.twitter.com/n4so3AESN6
— HinduPost (@hindupost) July 10, 2024
If religion comes before the country for Muslims, shouldn’t the media also report according to this approach and mention “Muslim doctor” instead of “Indian doctor” as in the case of Oumair Aejaz? However, the media decided not to mention the predator’s name in their headlines but only in the body so that the focus remains on how an Indian doctor turned out to be a criminal but not essentially a Muslim doctor.
