The man was a Christian Fundamentalist who hated Muslims.

My condolences of course, to those who have lost their lives. The Youth Camp was pro-Palestine and perhaps this is why they were targeted.

What happened should not have happened, but this opens up discussion about terrorism, the word in itself and how its been manipulated by the West to promote Islamophobia and reserved just for Muslims.

When the attack initially happened, everyone pointed the finger at Muslims, radical Islam and A-Q.

A part of me is relieved that the perpetrator was not Muslim.

You see, the problem is not religion, but people and their extremist beliefs.

Whats interesting is however, that the mainstream media was not calling this man a terrorist. Even the 'liberal' newspaper NY Times initially analysed the attack as being influenced by Muslims. However, when it was revealed that the attacker was in fact a white Christian supremacist, his terrorist title was snatched away to give way to mentally disturbed. It seems as if terrorism and Islam are inherently put together and seen as mutually inclusive. Anything else, not terrorism.

As Maz Hussain put it: "Whether something is "terrorism" is solely a function of who did it" .. or more specifically, solely a function of if a Muslim did it.

This article by Glenn Greenwald is really interesting. A good read about the media's (mis)perception (perhaps intentional) of Muslims even today.

But as TLS pointed out in his recent article: here, perhaps us Muslims aren't all too innocent in this stereotype regarding terrorism.

Ask yourselves, what is the first thing / word / image / etc which comes into your minds when you hear the word terrorism?

Maybe we need to address that amongst ourselves and hopefully the Western media will follow. This might stop the whole self-fulfilling prophecy (recent case not withstanding) that's been going on around terrorism and Muslims.