Parking space terrorism: Time for action after killing of three US Muslims

To add insult to injury, the Chapel Hill police reacted mere hours after the terrorist act saying that an "ongoing dispute over parking may have led to a triple shooting." The media embraced the statement with little questioning. That was clearly Hicks' statement to the police, which was adopted as fact. The term terrorism was completely absent from mainstream media discourse.

Obama finally reacted to the heinous crime, but only after being urged on by a visibly moved Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "As political leaders, we have responsibilities for the murders committed in the countries where we are in charge. We have to show our stance. If you stay silent when faced with an incident like this, and don't make a statement, the world will stay silent towards you," Erdogan said.

Obama, belatedly issued a shot statement, vague and uncommitted.

The media's insistence on the parking dispute story has become the dominant narrative. The tastelessness and insensitivity reached new heights when a US Inside Edition TV show produced a report on how to "safely" find a parking spot while avoiding dispute.

"Finding a parking space can be one of the things that pushes people over the edge, but there is always a way to find a spot at the mall," said the show host Deborah Norville. Behind her, on a large screen, the three murdered Muslims. She didn't even bother to mention their names, or list their contributions to their community. Their charity work alone was more than all the good that Hicks and his gun-touting "atheists" types can ever do for their community in a lifetime.

If the murderer was a Muslim or a black man, Norville's report would have had a different title: "How do you spot a terrorist?" maybe, or "What to do about gang violence in my neighborhood?" perhaps.

But if the victims are Muslims, which could be millions of Iraqis, thousands of Palestinians, or three Muslim students in North Carolina, the discourse shifts away from generalizations, politics or any context that may in fact help us understand the issue better.

So Hicks, we are told, killed the students "execution style" because of a dispute over parking spaces.

The same way that Chris Kyle -- "The American Sniper" -- made 164 confirmed "kills," killing "savages" because that's what national heroes do.

And US wars and sanctions on Iraq killed, starved and wounded millions to bring democracy to the Arabs.

This selectively insane logic will persist however, because there are millions of unrepentant politicians, extremist media pundits and well-armed men and women who refuse to see the recklessness of their "logic."

They will continue to feed violence -- which unlike what Hicks is led to believe -- didn't start on 11 September 2001 -- and spit out the most dangerous of militant phenomena: al-Qaeda, IS and all the rest.

It is time for Muslims to demand that Obama issue more than a statement, but call the United States government and hate-filled media to account. These outrageous double standards must end, before more innocent lives are taken.