Boston Marathon suspected bombers’ ethnicity, religion not primary concern
We all ought to completely forget the Tsarnaev brothers are from Chechnya until they’re linked to a broader terrorist movement, if that ever happens. We all saw it on Twitter, on Instagram or even from their now somewhat-famous Uncle Ruslan: People, especially Muslims, were incredibly weary and afraid the Boston bombers would be Muslim and thus strengthen the dark, generalizing mark that’s been cast on all of the Islamic faith, including non-radicals, who greatly outnumber extremist malcontents.
Indeed, the suspected bombers are Muslim, although instead of being Middle Eastern, perhaps as some would expect, their family is from Chechnya, a federal subject of Russia. Without meaning to insult anyone’s intelligence, it’s unlikely the general populace of the United States knew much of Chechnya before the Tsarnaev brothers came to light. That innocent ignorance is a little problematic because most people’s first instinct was to label the country as a terrorism breeding ground. It’s an unfair judgment for a variety of reasons, most notably because the brothers never lived in Chechnya.
The elder brother, Tamerlan, was born in Kyrgyzstan and moved to the U.S. when he was 16. Dzokhar, the younger, was also born in Kyrgyzstan and moved to the U.S. when he was 9 years old. He became a U.S. citizen in 2012. Despite this, the media still present the brothers as Chechens, which is an unfair and rather inaccurate assessment.
The general ignorance doesn’t stop there. Funnily enough, as soon as pictures of the suspect were released, and we all saw they were white, the fear of a Muslim radical attack briefly subsided and was soon replaced with speculation the pair suffered from mental illness, hated the government or had a haunting domestic life. But such speculation stopped once the suspects were identified as Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose names sound unfamiliar and foreign to most Americans.
Al Jazeera said it best: “Knowing nothing of the Tsarnaevs’ motivates and little about Chechens, the [media] tore into Wikipedia and came back with stereotypes.” It’s a harsh but true sentencing. Journalist Eliza Shapiro wrote that Tamerlan is named after a brutal warlord. What on earth was Shapiro thinking? I’m not here to defend the actions of these alleged bombers, but misinformation in news shouldn’t be tolerated whether it’s as benign as an error in sports reporting or as dramatic and impactful as a story on the latest faces of terrorism.
We can’t expect to look to Chechnya to find answers regarding a domestic crime committed by men who lived in the United States, one of whom was an American citizen. Chechens are not simply minds prime for transformation into radicals, nor are any Muslim immigrants from the former Soviet Union. They’re people, and many of them, including Uncle Ruslan, love our country the same way we do.