Alwaght- Three American Muslim students have been killed in a shooting incident in the US state of North Carolina. The murders are a consequence of the “Islamophobia project” promoted by US media outlets.
Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, shot dead Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus on Tuesday afternoon.
Police said they were examining whether the murders were religiously motivated, but stressed that initial investigations indicated a dispute between Hicks and his victims over parking spaces led to the killings.
But the father of the two female victims says the killings were motivated by hatred against Muslims.
"This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime," said Mohammad Abu-Salha, the psychiatrist father of the two young Muslim women.
"This man had picked on my daughter and her husband a couple of times before, and he talked with them with his gun in his belt," he added.
He told the local News & Observer newspaper his daughter had voiced concerns about the shooter last week.
"Honest to God, she said, 'He hates us for what we are and how we look,'" said Abu-Salha
People on social media quickly reacted to the shooting, posting pictures of the victims and claiming they had been “murdered execution style.”
“If a Muslim executed 3 Christian students in US, it would get a LOT more media coverage than I'm seeing right now,” one tweet said.
Some citizens urged US President Barack Obama to condemn the incident, comparing the shooting to the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris
Meanwhile, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) condemned the shooting deaths of the Muslim students.
“Based on the brutal nature of this crime, the past anti-religion statements of the alleged perpetrator, the religious attire of two of the victims, and the rising anti-Muslim rhetoric in American society, we urge state and federal law enforcement authorities to quickly address speculation of a possible bias motive in this case,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said.
A recent survey suggests that many Americans believe it is acceptable to ridicule Islam, highlighting the depth of anti-Islamic sentiment and widespread Islamophobia in the United States.
According to the HuffPost/YouGov survey, 46 percent of Americans thought it was acceptable to mock Islam.
American scholar and journalist Dr. Kevin Barrett said the Zionist-controlled media is seeking to “destroy” Islam while promoting hatred against Muslims.
“The Zionist-dominated media here in the United states is helping foment a clash of civilizations against Islam, but which is secretly designed not only to destroy Islam, but also Christianity,” Barrett said.
“I am not terribly surprised about this, because if one follows the mainstream media… in the United States, there has been a constant spin on the Middle East and on Islam, which is designed to provoke these very feelings on the part of most Americans,” said Mark Dankof – a broadcaster and former US Senate candidate.
“So if we look at all of this, it paints a very, very ugly picture of what’s happening, and I think we are going to see more of it,” he noted.
“The average American still has no idea of why we are in the Middle East, and what the Islamic religion... is really all about,” he pointed out.
The victims caused no trouble in their neighborhood, they were actually recently seen providing free dental and food supplies to the poor and homeless, but the relentless demonization of Muslims by the US mainstream media made some US citizens see all Muslims as terrorists.
Such murders previously occurred in the US and it does not seem they will stop, until US changes its policies in media stopping the Islamophobic wave, and also stop legalizing personal weaponry.
