Colchester Murder of Muslim Woman – Media and Political Complicity to a Holocaust in the Making

The saddening and tragic death of a Muslim woman, 31 year old Nahid Almanea in Colchester, Essex, who was beaten and then stabbed 16 times to death “allegedly” as a result of her Islamic attire, raises some serious questions and highlights the massive discrimination the Muslim minority faces.  The Saudi authorities as well as all other Arab countries from which Muslim students travel to the UK to study and contribute millions to the British economy as a result, should be warned about the threat the Muslim minority faces in Britain.

Were this a murder by a suspected Muslim of a non-Muslim white-woman, the entirety of the media spectrum would have given 24 hour coverage of the terrible act.  Muslim names with speculation of “Islamism” and “extremism” possibly influencing the suspects would have been “alleged”.  Discussions and debates would have ensued treating allegations as facts and “broader” debates would have been triggered within 48 hours of the death culminating into a boiling pot of questions surrounding integration, and the “Muslim problem”. The right-wing Daily Fail digesting media would have been raving and ranting in the comments attacking Islam, Muslims and dragging completely disconnected topics like Iran and Saudi Arabia into it, as if their governments represent the bastions of model Islamic governance.

In this case of the murder of the Muslim woman, we saw minimal coverage on news broadcasts, next to no discussions on far-right/neocon extremism which could have influenced the perpetrator of this potential terrorist attack, and definitely no discussions around inclusiveness of white supremacists who have vitriolic hatred for anything brown and covered or brown and bearded.  Instead we saw incredibly reserved, highly circumspect comments in articles such as the Daily Fail:

 “they should find out the facts first”

“surely this is speculation…”

Indeed.

It would be great if the same level of nuanced analysis was extended to Muslims who are constantly smeared in the media.

On the 18^th of June, the day on which the murder was first reported, watching BBC News 24’s evening programme “The papers”, which shows the following days paper headlines, I noted down the topics they discussed. Of the several papers (approximately 10 in total) only two reported the murder on the front page and only one (the Metro) reported it as a headline. Contrast this with the murder of Lee Rigby, where Muslims were on the front pages, but as perpetrators of a crime and the victim was depicted on every front page of the papers.  In fact, Sky News sought to portray their Facebook image with a depiction of fighters with guns!

Report of murder linked to foreign fighters

And yes, Gilligan the hype-whore did not have a piece exposing the racist, white, Trojan Horses fuelling this violence.

With about 4 more papers for the presenters to go through, I expected the one paper which actually did have the murder of the Muslim woman as a headline to be touched upon – lo and behold the programme ended without the news item even being discussed.  The Daily Fail instead chose to spin the entire incident and paint in the colour of terrorism, headlining calls by ISIS fighters to conduct revenge attacks.  Of course, they ignored the fact that ISIS was trained by the US. Even more shockingly, veteran Quilliamite Ed Husain sought to blame the victim of the death in using reasoning reminiscent of those who blame rape victims for dressing “provocatively”:

As of writing this piece, not a single politician has issued his disgust at this “allegedly” ideologically-driven attack.  No Cobra meetings being chaired by David Cameron for the Muslim woman. No “muscular liberalism” being flexed on the white folk of Britain to combat religious prejudicial extremism which leads to violent extremism. Muslim blood is too cheap for such activity.

If there ever was an acute demonstration of minority discrimination through the marginalising treatment of Muslims by the media and politicians, this is it.

This is not only the murdering of a Muslim woman and a violation of her honour. If the motivation of the assailant was religious clothing, then this is an attack on the Muslim minority.  This is the endpoint of the propaganda perpetuated by the likes of Andrew Gilligan, the Daily Fail, Sun and all the other papers read by bigoted GCSE failures.  It is the endpoint of the concerted effort on the part of the neoconservatives such as Douglas Murray and his Henry Jackson Society, Michael Gove and William Shawcross, with their links to far-right extremists and provision of narrative-support for extremists and terrorists such as Anders Breivik, Michael Piggin and Ian Forman, who have architected and fuelled a climate of fear and hatred against the Muslim minority.  This is the beginning of a holocaust in-the-making.