For Diversity, NY Times To Attribute Muslim Terrorism To Other Religions

If atheist suicide bombers are underrepresented in stories of terrorism, we cannot escape the question of whether that stems from biased coverage of conflict zones.

New York, November 23 – Worried that the perpetrators of terrorist acts in recent years have been disproportionately Muslim, the editorial board of The New York Times decided today to correct the consequent popular perception that terrorists are more likely to be Muslim by assigning a different religion to some of the attackers.

Ongoing wars or insurgencies in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Nigeria, Mali, Afghanistan, Yemen, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Somalia, and elsewhere have seen thousands of terrorist attacks by Muslims, far outstripping such acts by members of other faiths, or of no faith at all. To forestall the notion that in order to be a terrorist one must follow Islam, the editorial board at the Times devised a quota system under which no more than one third of attacks on civilians in a given week may be attributed to Muslims. The remainder will be assigned a random religious ideology, including Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto, Jainist, Animist, Wiccan, Jehovah’s Witness, Quaker, Roma, Jewish, and other denominations the board deemed under-represented in the perpetration of terrorism.

“As a news organization first and foremost we have a responsibility to bring our readers the most pertinent factual information,” said Executive Editor Dean Baquet. “But as an institution suffused with liberal Western values, we must also do our part for social responsibility, and that involves combating the perception that certain people just can’t be terrorists. While heretofore we avoided that problem by not using the term ‘terrorist’ because of its baggage, from now on the Times will tackle this issue head-on. Gone are the days when a youngster reading about suicide bombers in Beirut thinks that he will never be able to follow suit simply because he wasn’t raised Sunni Muslim.”

In some cases, said Baquet, the paper will address the inequality by not mentioning the religion or ethnicity of the terrorists, but he acknowledged that given the power of precedent, too many readers would still jump to the conclusion that the perpetrators were Muslim – in all likelihood correctly, but in an automatic way that could only be described as disturbing. “If we as a society are going to change the perception of terrorists as primarily Islamist, we’re going to have to do more than avoid mentioning it directly, and tolerate all the winking and nudging that would prompt,” he explained. “We need to re-engineer people’s attitudes on this issue, and as one of the country’s most influential publications, we’re in the best position to do so.”

“Why not a Buddhist terrorist, indeed?” he wondered. “If atheist suicide bombers are underrepresented in stories of terrorism, we cannot escape the question of whether that stems from biased coverage of conflict zones. If we value diversity as an institution and as a society, this is clearly the right step at this time.”