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Western media complicit in Jakarta terror attacks: Barrett

Friday, 15 January 2016 7:24 AM [ Last Update: Friday, 15 January 2016 7:25 AM ]

Indonesian servicemen stand guard as police officers collect evidences from the site of blasts and shootings in Jakarta on January 14, 2016. ©AFP

Press TV has interviewed Kevin Barrett, author and political commentator from Madison, and Said Shehata, an expert in Middle Eastern affairs, London, to discuss the terror attacks, claimed by Daesh, which left several people dead and injured in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Barrett believes that the Western media outlets are “absolutely complicit” in what happened in Jakarta, stressing that the media is “what driving all of this to a very great extent because the media in the West is dominated by the hard-line militarist elements of the governments and the Zionist element.”

The analyst says media outlets, particularly those in the US, do not create a hype over numerous shooting attacks that happen in the Western societies, but they take every possible opportunity to “splash blood all over the front page of the newspaper and all over the TV screen” when an incident has to with Takfiri Daesh terrorists, attributing their activities to Islam in an attempt to tarnish its image.

This is while, he adds, linking religion to Daesh is “entirely spurious” as there is not even “one single Islamic scholar in the world that supports” the extremist terror group.

A group of Indonesian students hold placards during a candlelit protest in Surabaya, Eastern Java island on January 14, 2016, to condemn the blasts and gunfire that rocked Jakarta earlier in the day. © AFP

Daesh enjoys the support of Zionists and the Saudi royal family, which “is not religious at all,” Barrett says, adding the Takfiris merely manipulate Islam and use religious rhetoric to attract naive young people and recruit members.

Shehata, for his turn, says the world has failed to adopt proper measures to stop Takfiri terror attacks in different regions as some countries continue supporting such radical terrorist groups for political purposes.

Daesh relies heavily on fear-mongering and uses media to advance this strategy, he argues.

The analyst says killing more and more people and highly publicizing the carnage in media serve as the two main instruments in the hands of Daesh to strike fear into the hearts of people around the globe.

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