Juan Cole on events in Boston and its relevance to civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria

[pampango]

Juan Cole at Informed Comment has written a thoughtful piece comparing sympathetic reactions from the Muslim world to the Boston bombings to the response of Fox News contributor Erik Rush, who sarcastically tweeted of Muslims on Monday: “they’re evil. Let’s kill them all.”

Cole did concede that it was also “easy for jingoists to find Chinese or Arabs on Twitter gloating”.

Cole noted the large numbers of people killed in bombings in Iraq and Syria yesterday, and asks:

Having experienced the shock and grief of the Boston bombings, cannot we in the US empathise more with Iraqi victims and Syrian victims?

From Cole's piece:

There is negative energy implicit in such a violent event, and there is potential positive energy to be had from the way that we respond to it. To fight our contemporary pathologies, the tragedy has to be turned to empathy and universal compassion rather than to anger and racial profiling. Whatever sick mind dreamed up this act did not manifest the essence of any large group of people. Terrorists and supremacists represent only themselves, and always harm their own ethnic or religious group along with everyone else.

The negative energies were palpable. Fox News contributor Erik Rush tweeted, “Everybody do the National Security Ankle Grab! Let’s bring more Saudis in without screening them! C’mon!” When asked if he was already scapegoating Muslims, he replied, ““Yes, they’re evil. Let’s kill them all.” Challenged on that, he replied, “Sarcasm, idiot!” What would happen, I wonder, if someone sarcastically asked on Twitter why, whenever there is a bombing in the US, one of the suspects everyone has to consider is white people? I did, mischievously and with Mr. Rush in mind, and was told repeatedly that it wasn’t right to tar all members of a group with the brush of a few. They were so unselfconscious that they didn’t seem to realize that this was what was being done to Muslims!

Some Syrians and Iraqis pointed out that many more people died from bombings and other violence in their countries on Monday than did Americans, and that they felt slighted because the major news networks in the West (which are actually global media) more or less ignored their carnage but gave wall to wall coverage of Boston. Aljazeera English reported on the Iraq bombings, which killed some 46 in several cities, and were likely intended to disrupt next week’s provincial election.

Over the weekend, Syrian regime fighter jets bombed Syrian cities, killing two dozen people, including non-combatants:

http://www.juancole.com/2013/04/bombings-increase-sympathy.html

[G_j]

1. well said,

"To fight our contemporary pathologies, the tragedy has to be turned to empathy and universal compassion rather than to anger and racial profiling."

[whatchamacallit]

2. K&R

Not popular, but it's true.