What they call terrorism--and what they don’t

THE GLARING double standard in the U.S. media and political establishment about what constitutes "terrorism" was on full display after the July 16 shooting at two military facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that led to the deaths of four Marines and a Naval petty officer.

Just hours after 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez opened fire on a military recruitment office and then a Naval reserve center, and was in turn fatally wounded, U.S. Attorney Bill Killian said authorities were treating the case as an "act of domestic terrorism." A senior law enforcement official likewise told the Washington Post, "We will treat this as a terrorism investigation until it can be determined it was not," he said.

All the authorities needed to know to adopt the "this is terrorism until it isn't" approach--in stark contrast to their attitude in other cases--was Abdulazeez's Middle Eastern name and his Muslim faith.

THE SAME media and political establishment that was loathe to call last month's shooting in a Charleston church by white supremacist Dylann Roof "terrorism" couldn't wait to ascribe these motives to Abdulazeez.

But according to members of the mosque where Abdulazeez worshipped, the 24-year-old wasn't known to be in sympathy with hard-line fundamentalists. Authorities admit the naturalized U.S. citizen, who was born in Kuwait but spent much of his life in the U.S., didn't appear to have an online presence suggesting extremist beliefs--though he did, according to the New York Times, "view material connected to Anwar al-Awlaki," the U.S. Muslim cleric assassinated by the Obama administration in Yemen in 2011. According to reports, Abdulazeez wasn't on a terrorism watch list or under investigation before the shootings.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Edward W. Reinhold told reporters late last week, "We have no idea at this point what his motivation was behind the shooting." That seemed to remain the case as authorities continued to sift through Abdulazeez's past writings and Internet history, looking for any clues as to his frame of mind at the time of the killings.

Not exactly evidence of a "domestic terrorist"--who generally openly declare their intentions.

Some in the media pointed to a trip that Abdulazeez made to Jordan last year as a possible "radicalizing" event. Personal writings that are more than a year old, which were turned over to the FBI by Abdulazeez's family, reportedly discuss both suicidal thoughts and "becoming a martyr"--although officials have found no actual evidence yet linking him to any terrorist organization.

The wild media speculation was on display in one New York Times article that, incredibly, implied Abdulazeez's conversion to a hard-line version of Islam could be deduced from family photos that "show the once-clean-cut student recently grew a beard." Other articles referenced a recent blog post in which Abdulazeez commented that "life is short and bitter," and that Muslims should not let "the opportunity to submit to allah...pass you by"--which, of course, could mean almost anything.

The media initially focused on the fact that Abdulazeez's father had once been briefly added to a terrorist "watch list" over an allegation that he had contributed money to an organization with possible ties to the Palestinian group Hamas. But he was later removed from the watch list, like thousands of other people caught up in the post-9/11 witch hunt because they innocently donated to the wrong charity.

Some coverage referenced Abdulazeez's firing from a job at a Tennessee nuclear plant after 10 days in 2013 because he failed a background check. But according to several sources, the firing was the result of a failed drug test, not anything related to terrorism or his political views.

Also undercutting the idea that Abdulazeez was driven by fundamentalist religious beliefs was a report that he had been arrested in April for driving under the influence, and was awaiting trial at the time of his killing spree.

Friends and family told the media that in addition to fighting drug and alcohol addiction, Abdulazeez had been suffering from depression and possibly bipolar disorder--and was facing the prospect of bankruptcy in addition to possible jail time. They suggested that his mental illness and personal problems, not an ideological embrace of terrorism, were the main factor in his violent actions.

WHATEVER NEW information emerges in the coming days, the response to the Tennessee shootings is instructive in showing how politicians and the media alike exploit fears of the "Muslim menace."

After the killings last week, the governors of several states ordered further protection for personnel at military bases and recruiting centers, suggesting--based on zero evidence--that Abdulazeez's actions were connected to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

But who needs evidence? As in other high-profile cases of supposed "domestic terrorism," the response of the political establishment--Republican and Democrat alike--has been long on dramatics and short on facts, all the better to amp up the domestic apparatus related to the "war on terrorism."

In the days after the shootings, several governors stepped up the arming of National Guard troops, with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott saying in one typical statement, "After the recent shooting in Chattanooga, it has become clear that our military personnel must have the ability to defend themselves against these type of attacks on our own soil."

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, meanwhile, closed the state's National Guard recruitment offices and ordered National Guard armories moved. The New York Times reported that "Scott said Florida would streamline the process in which Guard members apply for concealed weapons licenses so that they can legally be armed at work sites." Scott's executive order declared, 'The state will take any and every measure available to secure military personnel against the planned attacks of ISIS."

Beyond the larger question of whether Abdulazeez had any ideological motive is the hypocrisy about how U.S. officials invoke the threat of "terrorism" only when it's convenient for U.S. aims.

The standard definition of "terrorism" is the use of violence against non-combatants--i.e. civilians--in order to inspire fear for the purpose of a larger political or ideological aim. But in reality, in the U.S. today, the term "terrorism" is attached to any attack or threatened attack by a Muslim.

Overseas, where the Obama administration's drone war has indiscriminately killed thousands of civilians as part of the greater "war on terror," such deaths are labeled unavoidable collateral damage--and certainly not "terrorism."

As Glenn Greenwald noted at the Intercept, such shifting definitions are used to obscure the political and material reality of the U.S. "war on terror.":

The U.S. drone program constantly targets individuals regarded as "illegal combatants" and kills them without the slightest regard for where they are or what they are doing at that moment: at their homes, in their sleep, driving in a car with family members, etc. The U.S. often targets people without even knowing their names or identities, based on their behavioral "patterns"; the Obama administration literally re-defined "combatant" to mean "all military-age males in a strike zone."

The "justification" for all this is that these are enemy combatants and they therefore can be legitimately targeted and killed no matter where they are found or what they are doing at the time; one need not wait until they are engaged in combat or on a battlefield...

The U.S. government, its allies and their apologists constantly propagate standards that have no purpose other than to legitimize all of their violence while de-legitimizing all violence by their enemies in the "war" they have declared. Nothing is more central to that effort than the propagandistic invocation of the term "terrorism." We're now at the point where it is "terrorism" when enemies of the U.S. target American military bases and soldiers, but not "terrorism" when the U.S. recklessly engages in violence it knows will kill large numbers of civilians.

REGARDLESS OF whether Abdulazeez's actions were terrorism or not, there is a very real threat that the Muslim community in Tennessee and beyond--already facing the threat of violence--will be targeted further by those on the right who view every Muslim as a potential terrorist.

Republican Judd Matheny, a member of the Tennessee state House, wasted no time in declaring Abdulazeez a "jihadi," and lamenting that state officials had "skirted around the issues of security from terrorism in Tennessee."

He declared in a statement that "we can no longer ignore the security implications hidden in legal immigration issues, federal threats to free speech, refugee resettlement issues, indirect support of the Obama administration's blind eye to burgeoning illegal immigrant traffic, and attempts to pass state laws equalizing rights and state benefits for illegal inhabitants in Tennessee to those of legal inhabitants."

This isn't the first time that Matheny and other Tennessee lawmakers have targeted the Muslim community. In 2011, he helped introduce legislation that would have outlawed Islamic "sharia" law--as if there was ever a threat that the state of Tennessee would have its legal system supplanted.

Describing Tennessee even before Abdulazeez's shootings as a "hotbed of anti-Islam activity," the New York Times noted that one Islamic center was "burned to the ground in 2008, the debris found etched with swastikas and racist graffiti." In the city of Murfreesboro, the site of another planned mosque and community center was repeatedly vandalized and construction equipment set on fire.

State politicians like then-Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey questioned whether Islam is "actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult or whatever you want to call it." Ramsey described the religious beliefs of nearly one-quarter of the planet's population as "a violent political philosophy more than [a] peace-loving religion."

As a gesture of respect to those killed, the mosque that Abdulazeez worshipped at made the decision to cancel its Eid al-Fitr celebration, traditionally held at the end of the month of Ramadan. Unfortunately, some will likely see this as a necessity--as if the Muslim community must issue a public apology for the actions of one Muslim.

But it seems like Muslims are the only group in U.S. society that is required to make such collective apologies. Neither white Southerners nor Christians were made to apologize for Dylann Roof's murderous rampage in a Charleston church.

As Muslims in Tennessee are yet again held responsible for the actions of one disturbed individual, it will be up to those of us committed to justice to challenge the tide of Islamophobia in Tennessee and beyond in the coming weeks and months.