MEDIA FAIL: Abject Ignorance About Tsarnaev's Black Muslim Flag - WhoWhatWhy MEDIA FAIL: Abject Ignorance About Tsarnaev's Black Muslim Flag - WhoWhatWhy

Imagine if someone looked at a Christian cross on the wall, and took it to be representative of the cross-burning Ku Klux Klan? That's the logic some reporters are applying to the black Muslim flag found on Boston Bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's wall. They're equating the flag, a common symbol of a Muslim's faith, to a sign of affiliation with al Qaeda.

In a show of abject ignorance,  many reporters covering the Boston Marathon bombing trial described a simple Muslim flag as a “Jihadi flag,” a statement that shows few reporters covering this case know much about Islam or care to inform their readers.

The flag, known as the Black Standard or the Shahada flag, contains the testimony of the Islamic creed, declaring belief in the oneness of God and the acceptance of Mohammed as God’s prophet. To be Muslim, one must accept the Shahada.

shahada

Admittedly, the flag has been co-opted by Muslim radicals and terrorists since the 1990s, but anyone who flies it or displays it is not necessarily—or even mostly—a Jihadi. Many Muslims have denounced the use of the flag by radicals.

As a comparison, the cross was adopted by the Ku Klux Klan during its second reiteration in 1915. Cross burning still occurs to this day and the lighting of these cross are accompanied by Christian prayer and hymns.

WhoWhatWhy bets that none of these reporters would consider someone with a cross on their wall a KKK racist, and would simply report it as a religious icon.

UPDATE:

TsarnaevFlag

After first Tweeting that accused Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was posed in front of a “Jihadi” flag, many in Boston’s media have since contacted experts who explained that the flag merely quoted the Shahada – or “the testimony” and first Tenet of Islam (There is no god but God, Mohammed is the messenger of God.)
But they’re still getting the fundamentals wrong.

In a late story, Boston Herald reporter Laurel Sweet assumed Tsarnaev is merely pointing up to the flag. He’s actually using one upward-pointing index finger to give a symbol of the Tawhid, which reflects the “oneness of Allah.”

The article goes onto say that an expert is on deck to testify about the flag, but one can’t miss the meaning of the prosecution in using this particular image: ISIS has also co-opted this symbol in an attempt to affirm their ideology that demands the destruction of the Western world. Most Muslims merely use the symbol as reflecting their belief that Allah is the one God.

Look for the media to also turn this gesture into one of purely “Jihadi” symbolism without first researching the backstory of its meaning in moderate Islam.

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