Many social media outlets have interpreted an image of a veiled girl as an act of indifference to the victims of the terrorist attack that took place recently in Britain. This interpretation embodies the reality of the growing crisis in the relationship between Islam and the West.
The story is that the girl was walking pass people who were helping one of the victims of the terrorist attack in London and a picture of her was shot while speaking on her mobile phone. Tens of thousands used this image as an opportunity to attack Islam and Muslims, charging them with the worse accusations.
This image is a model that explains much of what is going on between Islam and the West. Subsequent images of the girl were posted in which she expressed her shock about what happened and that she was talking on the phone because she was afraid of what was happening around; however, the intended effect behind the publication and promotion of her picture in the social media was already out there.
The majority of social media users have disastrously reduced Islam and Muslims to an image of a single person. It is unreasonable to make such conclusions about the religion of about 1.6 billion persons based on the appeared reaction of a single person. This is a kind of stupidity, recklessness and schemed intentions. This in fact shows how much Muslims are being watched and targeted. The photograph shows people who appear to be indifferent as well even more than the girl, because they were watching what is happening around them. They were not interacting with the shocking scene.
The propaganda targeting Islam and Muslims is actually extremely dangerous to the security of Western societies and the right-wing politicians should consider the consequences of their ideas, which are no less dangerous than those of ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations. The marginalization and rejection of the other can harm the legacy of Western coexistence that has been maintained since the wars of the dark ages that lasted for several centuries and caused the death of millions of people.
The photographer who took it, Jamie Lorriman, said that the picture shows the girl was shocked after the attack. The photographer appeared several times on different media outlets to clarify the truth of what happened, thus playing the role of a skilled firefighter to manage the controversy that arose in the social media. He said that she looked clearly terrified and certainly in a state of shock and that she was not the only person walking there and it seems that she wanted to get off the bridge as soon as possible. He said he took three images where the woman can been seen and he think she looked sad in all of them.
Accusing a whole religion of lack of compassion and intolerance through a narrow interpretation of an image reflects the kind of emotions some narrow minds in the West have built up vis-à-vis Muslims. No wonder Islamophobic movements are growing in several European countries while there is not much done by communities to curb their impact.
Some have linked the perpetrator of the London attack to Saudi Arabia just because he had lived there for a year or two, ten years ago. They forget that the terrorist is also a UK citizen who was born there and lived most of his life in the British society.
Islam has been linked to bad practices not only in the West, but also in Arab and Muslim countries. The issue has to do with coexistence and tolerance more than it has to do with geography. I am not accusing the West of being hostile to Islam and Muslims, but we have to admit that Islamophobia is growing there, the same way extremism and terrorism emerged in the Muslim world – they are two faces of the same coin that can only buy us religious conflicts and wars.
The UK cannot remain a model of coexistence and pluralism if the finger is always pointed at the about 5 million Muslims who live there.
The photographer did good intervening to explain what the picture really shows; however, in other regions and countries there are dozens of such snapshots that might eventually accumulate to produce a social disaster.
