Doesn't this article in today's Gulf News seem overly sympathetic to the Al Qaeda member mentioned? I don't expect grieving parents to be rational about it, so the whole "I'm proud of my son, but I don't think that he was right to kill people" thing doesn't really bother me.
But the whole tone of the article that seems strange. It would be one thing if it were presented as an opinion piece. But in a new report, the reporter should have mentioned exactly what Fawaz was convicted of. There should be some mention of the victim of Fawaz's attack. And isn't describing his brother as "languishing in Guantanamo Bay" using pretty loaded language?
For that matter, why is this even news? Presumably news is something "new", something that you didn't know before. It would only be surprising if Fawaz's parents didn't feel sad that their child was dead.
This blog began as a description of our life in Al Ain, UAE (United Arab Emirates). Brn worked at the UAE University Libraries Deanship for three years and Bss homeschooled our four children, D, B, P, and O. After returning to the the USA for five years, we are living in Abu Dhabi now.
2 comments:
you wrote: "For that matter, why is this even news? Presumably news is something "new", something that you didn't know before. It would only be surprising if Fawaz's parents didn't feel sad that their child was dead."
I think that this is like what the Americans do. If some one was killed or captured they make a whole huge fuss aobut it and it's on the news for days about how this brave soldier died or how he was captured. And then of course there's the teary mother and the oh, so loving father who's holding back tears and the whole neighborhood's out at a ceremony of rememberance or some such thing. And they make it national news and it hits the Headlines. Of course though, when an arab boy dies and his brother is accused of something he didn't do and the whole family is suffering, it's wrong for the gulf times to write about it and calebrate this family's courage in front of loss and poverty. It becomes soemthing redundant, and it is taken to mean that the newspaper is siding with al qaeda. I will tell you this, the Americans are sad that their child or family member was killed and it becomes national news, each and every single time something like that happens, so why is it wrong now for an arab family's grief to become big news? It is also obvious from what the mother and father are saying that they do not support al qaeda because the refer to it as something bad, so how can you think that the newspaper is leaning towards al-qaeda?
According to the linked story, the deceased was killed in a clash with security forces. He was also apparently on the run after a jailbreak. (His father challenges the jailbreak claim).
I don't think jailbreakers who die in shootouts with police are given much sympathy in America, but how would I know.
Although the story seems unusually long for Gulf News, I agree with Anonymous that there's not enough evidence to say Gulf News is sympathising with him, and I also agree with Brn that for us in the Emirates, there's not that much of a news story there.
The father was clearly "lionising" his son, calling him a "martyr".
Forgive me, but it seems to me that anyone who dies a violent death (other than in a road accident) is a "martyr" in this part of the world.
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