On April 15, 2013, two nail bombs exploded quickly in a brightly sunny afternoon. The Boston Marathon was nearing its end. Two people were killed and over 200 injured, including some who suffered permanent disabilities. The media, before the identities of the bombers were revealed, was filled with joyous hope that they would be the Bible-quoting Christian terrorism of media myth. They were Islamic Jihadis. The same denial continues to prevail as the tenth year anniversary of the attack approaches: nobody in America wants discuss the reasons for the attack.
Media retrospectives rarely discuss the motive of the bombers. The Washington Post came closest on Thursday when it did the common perpetrator-to-victim shift, claiming that bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev “may have felt victimized because he was Muslim.” Also on Thursday, NBC Boston told a heartwarming love story of a firefighter and a woman he aided that day, but remained mum about why the bombing happened. MassLive published an extensive piece on Friday about the lessons learned from the attack. However, it appears that none of these lessons are related to the original reason for the attack. ABC News focused on some of the psychological scars that survivors had, but did not mention what may have motivated someone to do so.
The willful ignorance started the day after the bombings. Charles P. Pierce, in Esquire, was among the first to warn against assuming that the bombings were the result of a terrorist attack (foreign terrorism) and to attempt to link them to patriots. “Obviously, nothing is known yet, but it’s important to remember that today, April 19, is Patriots Day in Massachusetts and celebrates the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The date was also significant to Tim McVeigh because he considered himself to be a waterer for the tree of Liberty and other like.
Peter Bergen also speculated at the time that if “conventional bombs” were used, it could have been “another kind of right-wing extremeists,” rather than Al Qaeda. He reminded the viewers that, “we have also seen other extreme groups attack, right-wing group, such as trying to attack Oregon’s Martin Luther King Parade in 2010.” Most outrageously, David Sirota expressed his hope in Salon that a “white American” would be the bomber. Sirota was granted this wish. The killers, who were Caucasians in fact, were white. The two brothers were from the Caucasus: Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tamerlan’s younger brother, who is a naturalized American.
They became more clear about their motivations shortly after the attack. CNN reported that Dzhokhar, who was wounded and being held in a Boston Hospital, said his brother, who was killed on Friday morning, wanted to defend Islam.
Dzhokhar’s Russian-language page on social media featured a drawing depicting a bomb with the caption “Send a Gift” and links to Islam sites just above. Tamerlan’s YouTube page contained two videos from Sheikh Feiz Muhammad. A report in The Australian published in January 2007 stated that in a video which was brought to the authorities’ attention, the sheikh “urges Muslims” to kill their enemies and praises martyrs in a violent interpretation.
Donald Larking confirmed that Tamerlan said “I am very religious”. Larking said, “Tamerlan was my friend. We talked about everything including politics and religion.” “He was very, religious. He loved the Qur’an and believed it was the only true word. His Italian girlfriend converted to Islam and so did his American wife.
Dzhokhar tsarnaev stated in 2015, “I pray to Allah for mercy on myself, my brother and my family.” As did his brother, he gave all indications of being a devout believer. This piety was the motivation behind the Boston Marathon bombings. Why is it that there’s such a refusal to talk about the motives of the bombers? The reason is that Islamic advocacy groups, including the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations CAIR, have convinced the Leftist media and political establishment in the U.S. that revealing the truth about jihad would lead to dangerous “Islamophobia.”
It is not the case that this is more important than in other contexts. Does the Biden government refrain from talking about its phantom bogeyman “white supremacist terrorist terror” because it might cause harm to innocent white people? No, of course not. The same level of honesty should be applied to real threats as well as imaginary ones. The Boston Marathon bombing will not have taught us any lessons if we don’t.
