Why this Muslim is waiting for a white apology march after Finsbury Park attack

"I want to kill Muslims" he said after he killed a Muslim and injured at least 10 others.

After the gut wrenching attack on Westminster Bridge in March, it took the Muslim Council of Britain minutes to release a statement condemning the assault.

After the Manchester suicide bombing hundreds of Muslims felt that they needed to march for peace. Young Muslim men stood on busy street corners giving out free hugs in an attempt to prove to their fellow citizens that there is nothing fundamentally violent about them.

This has become the norm for Muslims.

Muslims need to constantly prove that they are harmless, that they love freedom, that they are not murderers, that they do not approve of killing, that they completely, wholly and fully denounce and reject the unspeakable heinous actions of criminals who happen to call themselves Muslims.

"Not in our name," has become their mantra, a mantra imposed on them because for some reason their personal beliefs automatically classify them as suspects.

Muslims need to constantly prove that they are harmless, that they love freedom, that they are not murders

After Manchester, Piers Morgan urged the Muslim community "to root out any extremists in their midst".

Today, I urge Piers Morgan to do everything he can to root out white extremists in the midst of his community.

He wouldn't need to go far; white hate preachers have easy access to all sorts of platforms. Katie Hopkins recently got fired for suggesting that the West needs to reintroduce Hitler's Final Solution to deal with Muslims.

Inciting violence didn't land her in further trouble so she doubled down with a tweet: "Western men. These are your wives. Your daughters. Your sons. Stand up. Rise up. Demand action. Do not carry on as normal. Cowed."

Two weeks ago, Tommy Robinson - former EDL leader - said the British public should take the problem into their own hands… and clean out this Islamic problem". That they did.

In today's early hours, a 48 year-old white terrorist ran over Muslims leaving a mosque in Finsbury Park with a van - one person was killed and 10 were injured.

Today, I urge Piers Morgan to do everything he can to root out white extremists in the midst of his community

Imagine; white men and women marching for peace in response to this attack, churches and charities headed by white people issuing condolences and countless condemnations, young white men giving out safety hugs in Brent, ordinary white men and women hounded by mainstream media for not condemning Katie Hopkins and Tommy Robinson frequently or strongly enough. 

White people have the luxury of being treated as individuals while everyone else is a group collectively shunned for individual criminal acts.

The mainstream media is the main culprit in creating this image of minorities - Muslims in particular - as faceless groups, while softening the blows of white racially motivated criminality.

This has never been as obvious as it is in the coverage of today's terror attack in Finsbury Park. BBC and Sky News both had headlines declaring that a vehicle had run over people, as though the van drove itself.

The Daily Mail described the terrorist as a "clean shaven white man" barely linking this seemingly average bloke with the vicious crime he had just committed. The Mail Online felt the need to sprinkle their headline with a not-so-subtle reminder that "terrorism" is a thing Muslims do, by referencing to events that took place over two decades ago.

BBC and Sky News both had headlines declaring that a vehicle had run over people, as though the van drove itself

The Telegraph joined in, reassuring their - majority white - readers that the victims attended a mosque that was at one point in history, questionable.  

Such reporting is not uncommon. The victims of the Grenfell Tower endured similar subtle jabs from the mainstream media, innuendos white terrorists never have to endure.

Less than a week ago, The Daily Mail named and shamed a Grenfell survivor claiming that it was his faulty fridge that sparked the inferno. Today, the same outlet blurred the face of the Finsbury Park terrorist, one can only cynically guess why.   

The narrative has already been spun, another white lone wolf. The terrorist wasn't taken to the jail, he was taken to hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Finsbury Park was not a revenge attack, the people leaving that mosque did nothing, they are innocent, because being a Muslim is not a crime.

Gehad Quisay is a history and politics researcher, who graduated from SOAS and Georgetown University. She has also worked as a researcher at a London based think-tank focusing on post-Arab Spring nation building.

Follow her on Twitter: @ghqsy_


Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.