Media desperation in the wake of the tragic events that began to unfold in Boston on April 15th (and came to a violent conclusion yesterday) is palpable. Whenever Muslims commit crimes, the gold-standard of yellow journalism is to report on the alleged perpetrators in such a way as to imply that their tenuous relationship to the Islamic community was the cause of their criminality. The possibility that there is a difference between a correlation and cause never occurs to anyone.
The energy and ingenuity invested in order to achieve the desired result is impressive. The claim that many journalists have wished to make was that the Tsarnaev brothers were devout Muslims; but there is very little evidence to support such a claim. Failing that, it has been reported that they were Chechens. Unfortunately, this has not turned out to be true. Consequently, the phrase "ethnic Chechens" has appeared in a variety of news sources. What is the relevance of such ethnicity? If you have to ask, you are clearly not in the know.
My mind keeps going back to an April day six years ago (April 16, 2007, to be precise)--the day when another immigrant, Seung-Hui Cho, an "ethnic Korean" who grew up in a devout Christian household, went on a shooting rampage at his University (Virginia Tech). When he was finished, 32 people were dead and 17 wounded.
Before embarking upon his reign of terror, Cho created a video manifesto in which he compared himself to Jesus and Moses. And yet, in his case, the journalistic establishment was able to distinguish cause from correlation.
Funny how that happens. In the United States of 2013, non-Muslims who commit horrendous crimes are "troubled"; Muslims who commit horrendous crimes are, well, Muslims.
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