QRant: Why Do We Mourn Terror Attacks Selectively?

If terrorism is a global problem, then why is our mourning territorially defined?

Do you remember praying for Dhaka, Baghdad, Kabul, Assam, Kashmir and Mecca? (Photo: The Quint)

In 2015, 3967 terrorist attacks took place in four South Asian countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, accounting for more than 33% of all attacks in the world. These attacks amounted to 6,737 deaths in these four countries only, which make up more than 23% of total deaths.

People pay tribute to the victims of the Paris attack at the Republique place, in Paris. 

2016 has been a bloody year; apart from the attacks on Brussels, Paris, Orlando, and Nice, countless lives were lost and are still being lost in the Middle East, Asia and Africa every day. Yet no one seems to care.

Remember how we all became Charlie Hebdo, Je suis Charlie, after the satirical magazine was attacked by a few extremists? Remember how we collectively “Prayed for Paris, Orlando, Brussels”? 9/11, of course, remains a shorthand for tragedy of unimaginable magnitude, a date that has been irrevocably stamped in cultural memory.

Do you remember praying for Dhaka, Baghdad, Kabul, Assam, Kashmir and Mecca?

That’s where the problem lies – On an ideological level, it’s great that we’re calling terrorism a “global problem”; but are we doing anything to combat the global problem with a holistic outlook?

The relatives of Orlando shooting victims outside Pulse club, and the gunman who shot 49 people dead, Omar Mateen. (Photo: AP/altered by The Quint)

You too are an accomplice in this form of territorial mourning. You too have become immune to attacks on the Middle East, Asia and Africa; they don’t jolt you out of your slumber. When terror strikes the whites, it’s an unfathomable, unforeseen, unbelievable spectacle. WHY? Because they’re more important? Because of our colonial hangover?

Here’s my appeal to the West and to all of you: if we cannot provide equality to men and women when they’re alive, then let’s take death as a leveller and give the dead their due. If White Lives Matter, then Brown lives matter just as much.