We must end the terror double standards | Moustafa Bayoumi

The White House is pushing a position of collective guilt that is completely unlike its reaction from just weeks ago after the Las Vegas shooting

The horrible terrorist attack in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday has so far left us with little useful information regarding the rampage and its perpetrator. But that hasn’t stopped either the media or our politicians from indulging in rank speculation and collective guilt mongering.

Here’s what we know so far. We know that eight innocent people – including five from Argentina and one from Belgium – were tragically killed. We know that Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect in the attack, is a 29-year-old man who came to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010, before Isis existed. We know that the attacker mowed down his victims using a rented van. And we know that after leaving the vehicle the suspect is reported to have yelled the words “Allahu Akbar” before being shot by a police officer.

As of this writing, that’s essentially all we know for certain, at least regarding the key operating details of this attack. And yet, that hasn’t stopped the New York Times from reporting that the suspect had been “on the radar” of the authorities.

But that phrase is so vague that it’s worthless, which is precisely the problem. The New York Times report continues by saying that a recent terrorism investigation “resulted in charges against five men from Uzbekistan and one from Kazakhstan of providing material support to Isis. Several of the men have pleaded guilty,” but then explains that it was “unclear whether Mr. Saipov was connected with that investigation”.

Would the New York Times have reported that in the weeks before Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock killed 59 people, another American man, Spencer Hight, shot and killed eight people in Plano, Texas, and then inform us that it was “unclear” if Paddock was “connected with that investigation”? Of course not. But without describing what “on the radar” means, the Times story fuels groundless speculation and furthers immigrant fear mongering, this time hitting immigrants from Central Asia.

The White House is also pushing a position of collective guilt that will only bode ill for Muslims and foreigners and is completely unlike its reaction from just weeks ago. The Las Vegas shooting prompted the White House spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, to say that since “there is an ongoing law enforcement investigation” then “it would be premature for us to discuss policy when we don’t know all of the facts.”

And yet, here again, a gross double-standard stares us squarely in the face, as Donald Trump exhibits no such restraint when it comes to this attack. “I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already Extreme Vetting Program,” the president tweeted last night. He is now also targeting the Diversity Visa Lottery, a system established in 1990 with the laudable goal of expanding the pool of immigrants that are admitted into the country.

In their rush to connect this attack to international terrorism, journalists and politicians are missing a key fact. It takes no special training to run people over with a vehicle. You don’t need to be a dangerous foreigner to buy fake weapons like a paint gun or a pellet gun. Anyone can shout “Allahu Akbar”. It’s easy to say you claim allegiance to Isis.

In fact, claiming allegiance to Isis is one way to take whatever violence you want to perpetrate and amplify its effects enormously. Everyone knows that attacks by Muslims, especially foreign-born Muslims, receive drastically more attention than (the more prevalent) attacks carried out by non-Muslims.

One recent study found that terrorist attacks by Muslim perpetrators receive, on average, 449% more media coverage than those by non-Muslim perpetrators, “leading Americans to have an exaggerated sense of that threat”, according to the study’s authors.

In American culture today, terrorist attacks by Muslims are still reflexively seen as the expression of a problem shared by all Muslims worldwide, hence the kneejerk demands that Muslims everywhere denounce all attacks by individual Muslims anywhere. Terrorist attacks by white Americans, by contrast, continue to be seen as individual psychological puzzles that are begging to be solved with sympathy and care.

This logic is as dangerous as it is misguided, since it feeds the notion that Muslims, who are nearly a quarter of the world’s population, are a unique threat who require their own special set of security measures. To adopt such measures would be to abandon the very principles of equality that our society is supposed to hold dear.

Let’s acknowledge that moments like these are when both politicians and extremists find a situation to exploit for their own purposes. For all we know, yesterday’s terrorist attack was the sole action of a mentally unstable individual. We can reasonably adjust our policies to meet the situation, but we must first wait for the facts, before we lose our collective mind.