The Face of Terrorism: The Lone Wolf

There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. In 2016, there were 3.3 million Muslims, or about 1% of the U.S. population. So just how many do you think are terrorists? Why do 1.8 billion Muslims have to suffer because some terrorists “claim” to practice some perverted interpretation of Islam?

There is now unjustified hate and discrimination towards Muslims.

The sad truth is that most mass shootings are committed by angry white men. And when they do commit these crimes, they’re never truly labeled as “Christians.” Why is it that when a person that is “Muslim” commits a violent act like a shooting, they’re immediately called a terrorist? Though when it comes to a white man who commits the same act or worse, they are “a lone wolf,” “mentally-ill,” or “troubled.”

If a black man were to commit this same act, racists would be exceptionally fast in coming out of the woodworks to call him a “thug,” and everybody would agree. As stated in the online newspaper “The Intercept,” white shooters were “…declared a ‘lone wolf’ before analysts even started their day, not because an exhaustive investigation produced such a conclusion, but because it is the only available conclusion for a white man in America who commits a mass shooting.”

White privilege is blatantly shown after a white shooter commits a mass murder. It’s just that white people are never scrutinized at all or as harshly as a person of color is.

Maybe instead of Trump trying to ban Muslims from six countries (or “radical Islamic terrorists” as he likes to say), we should get harsher gun laws.

After all, what person needs 19 rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition? The irony in all this is that these terrorists are mostly all legal U.S. citizens, and white at that. The deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history was committed by Stephen Paddock, a white man. He executed this act of terrorism with an intricate plan of shooting concert-goers through a hotel window on the 32nd floor. He killed 58 people and injured 546, but this was not classified as an act of terrorism.

Apparently, mental health problems play a part in excusing Paddock’s actions, the same way it did Adam Lanza, Charles Whitman, Devin Kelly, and others. This happens so often that it’s essentially an everyday thing; Americans have become desensitized as the mass shootings roll onto the news channels.

There are clearly some double standards here.

As a country, we silently accept that these things happen. We accept it and do nothing about it. It’s normal. When in reality, it’s the complete opposite of normal. The U.S. holds the record for the most public mass shootings in the world. A man executing a classroom of babies didn’t stir any change. We don’t have a gun problem though, correct? This is a recurrence that we do nothing about and when we hear about the latest shooting, everyone wonders “how could this have happened?”. 51 out of 136 who committed mass shootings between the years of 1982 and 2017 were white men, followed by 15 for black, 7 for Latino, and 3 for Asian, and others. According to statistics, only 5% of mass shootings were committed by Muslims.

Yet people still have the audacity to think that foreigners, Muslims, and people of color are the problem.

Instead of being afraid of someone in a hijab or muslim garb, maybe take another look at that “lone wolf.”