We have to show “respect” for mass murderers, you see — if they’re Muslims.
“Harris-Perry: New York Times Wrong to Show Malik in Hijab Because It Suggests ‘This is What Terrorism Looks Like,’” by David Rutz, Washington Free Beacon, December 7, 2015:
The New York Times, despite a front-page editorial advocating for gun control, still failed to live up to the left-wing sensibilities of MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry Saturday because it had a picture of San Bernardino shooter and devout Muslim Tafsheen Malik wearing her hijab.
Now, Harris-Perry complained in the clip first flagged by NewsBusters, the newspaper was problematic for suggesting “this is what terrorism looks like.”
Malik pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist organization the same day she and husband Syed Farook killed 14 people. The New York Timesreported Malik was “visibly devout” with her use of the hijab and face-covering niqab. It is unclear how any other picture of Malik could have been circulated. As NewsBusters suggested, was the newspaper expected to photoshop the hijab off her?
Arab-American activist Linda Sarsour claimed Saturday on Harris-Perry’s eponymous show that the media’s rhetoric about the massacre shifted when it turned out the perpetrators were Islamic.
“All of a sudden we find out they’re Muslim. Bam, gun violence is out of the question,” she said. “We start talking about terrorism. And I’m extremely disturbed. I mean, I looked at the New York Times cover today. There, you have a whole op-ed on gun control. Great. Right next to it is pictures from the apartment of things that I have in my house.”
“Yes!” Harris-Perry said.
“These are things that all Muslims have in their house,” Sarsour said. “There’s nothing about that that tells you a story about what terrorism looks like. So you’re telling me that when my friends who are not Muslim come into my home and see a Koran on see frames on the wall with a scripture from my religion, is that supposed to tell you something?…”
Uh, yeah.
“Photo of San Bernardino shooter without burqa causes controversy,” by Susana Guerrero, SFGate.com, December 6, 2015:
Al-Jazeera producer Hashem Said is being criticized after tweeting that ABC News should have respected San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik by not sharing photos of her without a burqa, the Gateway Pundit writes.
One individual responded to Said’s comment by posting a picture of Malik after she was shot and killed by law enforcers. Malik is shown lying on her back on pavement as one arm covers her face. The individual who posted the photo wrote “Here is a picture of her without her face.”
Said has since retracted the tweet and apologized for his remark on Twitter. He also issued several tweets clarifying that he didn’t mean to offend anyone by his comment, and he explained that what he meant to say is that the image ABC used could be offensive to Malik’s family.
ABC News was the first to reveal an image of Malik. Malik typically donned a burka but the image they used reveals her face….
AFDI’s Geller Fellow Nonie Darwish explains all this: “The Sad Reasons for the Delay in Publishing Photos of Tashfeen Malik,” by Nonie Darwish, PamelaGeller.com, December 6, 2015:
Most Americans are wondering why the photo of the female Muslim terrorist of the recent San Bernardino attack, Tashfeen Malik, was for several days after the attack withheld without explanation by the authorities. Some guessed that it is for the sake of preserving the integrity of the investigation. That is the only logical explanation to most Americans. But I am afraid there are other reasons that only people with deep knowledge of the Islamic culture understand why Malik’s photo was not immediately published.
After the San Bernardino massacre by a Muslim married couple who left their new born baby orphaned for the sake of killing Americans, President Obama still refused to call the well-planned slaughter of Americans “terrorism,” let alone “Islamic” terrorism.
Obama does not even care about appearances when it comes to Islam and protecting Muslim sensitivities. It is not just Americans who are left wondering why Obama appears more concerned about the reputation of Islam than the reputation of America. But many around the world, including Muslims in the Middle East, are wondering about Obama’s loyalties and priorities.
Like her boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, instead of meeting families of the San Bernardino terror victims, met with a group of Muslims in Washington DC. She told them that her “greatest fear” was retaliatory violence against members of the Muslim community. That meant that her priority was to prevent a backlash against Muslims before protecting the American people.
Having been born and raised in a Muslim culture, I have little doubt that the Muslim leaders Lynch met with asked her not to show the photo of the Muslim female terrorist. Their explanation for keeping the photo away from the public eye was probably because they claimed that showing a photo of a veiled Muslim terrorist who was also a new immigrant would inflame Americans against veiled Muslim women.
Another reason the Obama administration found good reason to keep the public from seeing her photo initially is because the veiled Muslim female terrorist who killed 14 Americans and injured 21 would have a negative impact on Obama’s plan to bring in hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees to America.
There is also another reason probably not spoken, and that is that observant Muslims do not like their women’s photos exhibited in public, even if the woman in question is a mass murdering terrorist. The Muslims who met with Lynch still expected Americans to respect their traditions of not showing Muslim women’s photos publicly.
The Islamic culture is a “pride and shame”-based culture, and Obama fully understands how important it is for Muslims to not be embarrassed. Obama and Lynch’s desire to please their Muslim friends and to prevent a backlash is more important to them than telling Americans the full story of jihad activity. In Obama’s world, Islam must be protected at any cost, even at the cost of keeping the American people uninformed.
Thousands and even millions of Muslims are not ashamed to openly sympathize with ISIS, but at the same time, they are too proud to accept the consequences of the shame associated with Islamic terrorism. The so-called moderate Muslim leaders who met Lynch were helping, aiding and abetting the Islamic game of eating their cake and having it too. It is a well-known convoluted feature of Islamic cultural logic, to preserve their pride and hide their shame, and Obama is helping them do just that.
Even though Muslims claim that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism, they still identify with and want to protect the image of a Muslim veiled woman who committed terrorism in the name of the Islamic State. And that is why the photo of the Muslim terrorist, Tashfeen Malik, were too precious to Muslim leaders to be posted on newspapers and TV screens for several days, until the public made it impossible for them to continue to withhold them. It was all about protecting the image of Islam and Muslims: we are told that the female terrorist does not represent Islam and has nothing to do with it.
The American people need to wake up and smell the jihad, even though their leader is keeping them away from knowing the sad truth.
AFDI Geller Fellow Nonie Darwish is the author “The Devil We Don’t Know” and president of “Former Muslims United,” a program of the American Freedom Defense Initiative.