White men commit the majority of American terror attacks - Yet we still blame Muslim people

On October 1st, 2017 at approximately 10:08 pm, a man committed the biggest mass-shooting in American history. He murdered around 60 people (numbers are still going up) and injured over 500 innocent bystanders, who were enjoying their time on the famous Las Vegas strip. A crowd of over 22,000 concert-goers across the street at a music festival from the Mandalay Bay hotel, which the perpetrator was staying at, were in a manic frenzy as they heard gunfire coming from the man’s hotel room. Once the police identified the source of the bullets, they entered his room on the 32d floor, where he was found dead due to suicide. [1]

The perpetrator, named Stephen Paddock, was a 64-year-old, Nevada native, Caucasian man. He has been described as a lone wolf who was in Las Vegas simply to have fun and gamble. His family was surprised and in shock, as Paddock always appeared as a very non-violent and docile person. The attack was claimed by Islamic terror group ISIS, although Las Vegas P.D. do not suspect a connection.

The way which Paddock has been and will be treated by the media and the general public will without a doubt different to how the public viewed Omar Mateen, the Orlando mass murderer at Pulse nightclub, or Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the brothers who planted bombs at the 2013 Boston marathon. This is only because Stephen Paddock was a white, American man.

We live in a society today which criminalizes Muslim people and pins them all as terrorists. Infamous Islamic terror groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS have unfortunately put a damper on how the average person views a Muslim person. The truth is that the majority are kind, sane, and normal people, and it is a very small percentage of Muslims that are radical and practice terrorism. But, the media rarely, if ever, feed us positive information on what good things are going on in the Islamic religion.

The places as to which we receive our information such as news networks, social media and journalism are constantly stuffing us with news on the worst imaginable things done by Muslim people. Not a day goes by that we don’t hear about how many people ISIS are holding in hostage, or where they planted their latest bomb. Because of this, we now think of Islam as a group of uncivilized, radical criminals. And even despite the fact that most acts of terrorism are committed by non-Muslims in America, we still deem them all as the bad guys.

Research shows that only 2.5% of terror attacks in America from 1970-2012 were committed by people following the Islamic religion. Muslim people, believe it or not, are the main victims of terrorism worldwide. The highest amount of terrorism in the U.S. is committed by far-right terrorism, usually being white men, often Christian. [2]

Think of some of the most infamous American shootings, such as Columbine, Sandy Hook and the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre incident. All three were done by right-winged white males, aged 17-29. It is interesting to see how certain people treat a criminal who is of a different race compared to one which is Caucasian. In instances where a white person has committed a mass shooting per example, they are more than often called “murderer” or “manslaughterer” instead of “terrorist”. The media portrays them as “mentally ill”, intoxicated, or sometimes even “just a kid who didn’t know any better”.

There is always an excuse for why a white person committed an act of terror, but anyone else from any other race is immediately labeled a terrorist. No one felt remorse for Salman Ramadan Abedi, the mass-shooter at the Manchester Arena, yet Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine school shooters, have a fan-base of teenage girls online who romanticize and praise them.

The biggest mass-shooting in American history just happened, by a completely mundane white guy. Americans fear Muslim people like no other, and specifically voted in their president because of his strong opposition towards them. They think that blacklisting a certain religion (or race) from their country will diminish terrorism, but they have no idea that their own people are the ones they should be afraid of.

Any act of terrorism is truly sickening, but favoring a certain perpetrator due to their religion, race, sexuality or gender is unacceptable in 2017. This incident should be a wake-up call for anyone of any demographic to realize that terrorism comes from everyone. We can not focus on who the person was that committed the crime, as what they did is all that should matter. It is utterly unfair to accuse and discriminate against innocent people because of what a radical in their religion or race has done. Just because you’re a white Christian does not mean you support the Ku Klux Klan, just because you’re a Black person does not mean you’re a thug, and just because you’re Muslim does not make you terrorist.

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[1] https://www.lvmpd.com/en-us/Press%20Releases/PO%20235%2010-02-17.pdf
[2] https://www.globalresearch.ca/non-muslims-carried-out-more-than-90-of-all-terrorist-attacks-in-america/5333619