Mainstream media continues to whitewash terrorists, Zakir Musa is now ‘fashionable young boy’ who loved ‘cigarettes and sports bikes’

Zakir Musa, slain terrorist, image courtesy: India.com

Zakir Musa, the jihadi terrorist head of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind was killed by the security forces on 23 May. Musa’s terrorist organisation was supported by Al-Qaeda and he was being hunted by security forces for a long time.

However, Indian mainstream media and some so-called ‘secular-liberals’ never fail to mourn the slain terrorists and are often seen whitewashing their crimes, even giving them the ‘hero’ or martyr status.

https://twitter.com/news18dotcom/status/1133938675832590337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
News 18 has published a report on the slain terrorist Musa, sharing mundane information about him as if he was a rock star or movie actor. The report by News 18 attempts to highlight information like how Musa’s father Abdul Rasheed Bhat, an engineer by profession, had received a packet containing an iPhone, iPod, and three debit cards in 2013. Zakir Musa’s decision to become an armed terrorist has been represented in the report as a father’s sorrow of his son ‘sacrificing’ luxury.

The report goes on to quote the terrorist’s friends saying how Musa loved hair gels, expensive deodorants, new clothes and shoes.

The report also attempts to find the ‘trigger’ that ‘made’ the so-called “Young boy who loved sports bikes and cigarettes” join terrorists. In Musa’s case, the report says it was probably because of the incident when he was ‘slapped by a policeman’ and falsely accused of stone pelting.

This comes after videos surfaced on social media where Zakir Musa’s father is seen hailing the terrorists and claiming that they are fighting for ‘Allah’. The videos also show Musa’s father calling for ‘unity’ among all jihadis.

Earlier, Pratik Sinha, the founder of Alt News had attempted to whitewash the terrorist as a ‘separatist’.

Such excuses were drawn by Indian mainstream media and several journalists too to whitewash the crimes of Burhan Wani and the Pulwama attacker. The attempts to humanise dreaded terrorists and enemies of humanity as stylish, fashionable young men and ‘revolutionaries’ is something that is done by Pakistan to peddle their agenda in Kashmir too.

Zakir Musa was from a wealthy family. He was a student of civil engineering in a college in Punjab. The fact that he chose to be a terrorist despite all of it only punctures the false narratives of unemployment and poverty being the cause of Islamist radicalism.

Be it the Pulwama attacker or Zakir Musa, they had made it abundantly clear in their statements that it is the Islamic caliphate they want and not ‘Kashmir’s separation. While the Pulwama attacker had said that he wants to kill the ‘cow piss drinkers’, Musa had stated that he wants to rid India of Hindus. Media and so-called ‘seculars’ attempting to find ’causes and triggers’ behind such genocidal ideologies are only misleading the masses away from the real issues.

OpIndia Staff: Staff reporter at OpIndia