Beheadings are Not Terrorism for Al Jazeera

The beautiful city of Nice, France was the scene of horrible violence on October 29, 2020 as three people were stabbed to death in a church. The attacker was said to have shouted “Allahu Akbhar” as he stabbed church-goers and hacked the head off of a woman.

The media took very different approaches to reporting the incident:

CNN: “Multiple casualties in Nice ‘terrorist attack,’ local mayor says

New York Times: “Deadly Knife Attack in France Appears to Be Terrorism, Officials Say”

BBC News: “Nice attack: Mayor says deadly stabbing points to terrorism”

CNBC: “Three dead and several wounded after a terror attack in Nice, France”

But Qatari-owned Al Jazeera, would not use the word ‘terrorism’ in its headline. In the article, it would not report that the mayor of Nice said that the assailant “repeated endlessly ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is greatest) when he was being treated at the scene.”

French forensics officers arrive at the site of a knife attack in Nice. Photograph: Valéry Hache/AFP/Getty

The attack comes less than two weeks after a French teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded after showing his class caricatures of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad in a discussion on free speech. After that event, Al Jazeera pulished a piece titled “After teacher’s killing, French Muslims fear rising Islamophobia,” an interesting inversion of victims. The article stated “Muslims fear Paty’s tragic death is already being weaponised to advance a government policy they worry conflates Islam with ‘terrorism’.“

Al Jazeera is doing its part in fighting ‘Islamophobia’ by making sure that beheadings are not called ‘terrorism’ and the phrase ‘Allahu Akbar’ is not used in its reporting.