This Woman In Hijab Became A Victim Of The London Attack In The Most Unlikely Manner
Islamophobes circulated her image trying to further their propaganda.
By Sadho Ram — 26 Mar 2017, 03:34 PM
In the aftermath of the attack on the UK Parliament this week, a photograph of a woman in a hijab began to go viral on social media. It was taken by freelance photographer Jamie Lorriman just after the attacker ran an SUV through a crowd on Westminster Bridge.
She was photographed, walking past a group of people attending to an injured person, staring at her phone, apparently being all casual about the horror that was unfolding.
Some commenters decided to interpret the photo as some sort of proof of the "indifference of Muslims" towards westerners and viciously attacked her online.
Anti-Islam websites and far-right war-mongers used the photograph to further their Islamophobic propaganda, like this tweet, which called for ban on Islam.
The photo that was shared on social media showing the woman looking at her phone.
One Twitter user even posted the photo alongside a photo of the Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood performing CPR on a victim with the caption "the main difference between Muslims and Christians"
The main difference between Muslims and Christians.#PrayForLondon #Parliament #Westminster pic.twitter.com/pefnYY090L
— Texas Lone Star (@SouthLoneStar) March 22, 2017
While others tried to defend the woman in hijab against the hate...
@SouthLoneStar you are a complete embarrassing mess of a person. Kindly crawl back to the pond you came out of,
— Dr Vicky Forster (@vickyyyf) March 22, 2017
Stupidity embodied.
@SouthLoneStar you have no idea what is happening in this picture and deciding to make your own context #banracists #banrednecks
— Kelly Blackwell (@kellyjaywallace) March 22, 2017
@SouthLoneStar Stop using another country's hours old tragedy to further your boy howdy U.S. agenda.
— Jenny Trout (@Jenny_Trout) March 22, 2017
It didn't matter to the Islamophobes. Not even the fact that the photographer who shot the photo took to TV to correct the record.
The photographer, Jamie Lorriman, explained to Australia's ABC that his series of shots captured the woman's distress.
"The people who took on that picture are being rather selective. In the other picture in the sequence, she looks truly distraught ... personally, I think she looks distressed in both pictures," he said, adding, "It's wrong it's been misappropriated in that way."
He further elaborated that he would not assume what was going through the woman's mind, and neither should people who were not at the scene.
"To assume she was ignoring someone is impossible to know, the look on the woman's face, she's horrified, she's in the middle of a traumatic situation."
The photographer stressed the same to The Guardian while adding that, "We were all being told to clear the bridge at various stages, so it's not unreasonable to think she'd been told to leave the bridge at some point just like everybody else."
However, to the Islamophobes, none of this mattered
It didn't matter to them that the woman in hijab was not the only person who was photographed walking "casually" past the injured person on the bridge.
So the woman in hijab decided to fight back by speaking out. She approached TellMAMA, a U.K.-based group which monitors anti-Muslim incidents, and asked them to circulate her response:
Speaking further to The Guardian, she said that she is shocked
"To those individuals who have interpreted and commented on what my thoughts were in that horrific and distressful moment, I would like to say not only have I been devastated by witnessing the aftermath of a shocking and numbing terror attack."
"I've also had to deal with the shock of finding my picture plastered all over social media by those who could not look beyond my attire, who draw conclusions based on hate and xenophobia," she told The Guardian, while sending her gratitude to the photographer, Jamie Lorriman, for speaking in her defence.
The woman had said that her feelings at the time were of sadness, fear and concern and this second photograph clearly shows her being visibly distressed as she passes the scene of the attack
And as The Washington Post's Amanda Erickson aptly notes in her piece that "to those who believe Islam is violence, ... this unnamed woman was an easy way to prove something already believed: that all Muslims hate the West and wish Westerners harm"