Chard De Niord: The media continue to play into the terrorists’ hands

There are millions of Muslims who find the terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere reprehensible and antithetical to Islam.

I heard a French Muslim, who is also a town official, say this morning on NPR that the terrorists who massacred the 10 satirists and 2 policemen day before yesterday were not Muslims in any way but simple criminals for whom he, as a Muslim, felt no compulsion or reason to apologize. He also commented that he felt Charlie Hedbro had every right to exist.

But the media continue to play into the terrorists’ hands by covering mainly atrocities while overlooking the essential human news of the peaceful majority’s outrage at those extremists who misinterpret Jihad in a fundamentalistic way as a so-called holy war against “infidels” rather than as “a revolutionary struggle to seize power for the good of all humanity” (Karen Armstrong paraphrasing the Pakistani politician Abdul Ala Mawdudi).

So when will the sensationalist, money-hungry mainstream press come to their senses and realize that the coverage of ideas, although not as exciting as violence and gore and mayhem and literal-minded martyrdom, is not only newsworthy but the best antidote to the terrorists’ contagious misprision?

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copyright 2015 Chard De Niord