The little moment at the end of this relatively calm interview on CNN international says a lot about the anchors who have just spent the last 6minutes berating a French Muslim leader because he wouldn't take responsibility for the Paris attacks. "Y'know, I'm yet to hear the, y'know, condemnation from the Muslim community," said John Vause, who co-anchors CNN Newsroom with Isha Sesay.
If Vause is "yet to hear" the condemnation, it's because he isn't listening. Hundreds of Muslim organisations from France and around the world have come out in condemnation of the attacks in Paris, which killed 129 people and injured many more. Yet according to Vause and Sesay, people like their interview Yasser Louati, a representative for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, aren't doing enough.
"Why is it that no one within the Muslim community there in France knew what these guys were up to?” Vause asks. "Because it seems to me that this was a pretty big plan. Surely someone beyond the seven guys who’ve been killed over the last 48 hours would have to have known something and that was probably within the Muslim community but yet no one said anything."
Louati must be excused for not being flabbergasted by a question that effectively seems to suggest that the entire Muslim community in France gets together to discuss everything that everyone else is doing. A YouTube commenterhad the appropriate response to this question.
Louati, however, tries to be much more reasonable in his response to the astounding question. "We cannot justify ourselves for the actions of someone who just claims to be Muslim. Our secret services knew about these guys and, again, just like during the January attacks, it turns out they were all on a black list somewhere somehow on a desk. So right now we can’t take responsibility for anything," he said.
Vause and Sesay simply can't seem to understand that crimes of this sort are not exactly discussed out in the open and, just like any other crimes, are a matter for law and order to handle. The next time an American shooter goes berserk in a public place, will the same anchors call a representative for American society and ask why no one said anything about it?
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