Journalists protest at arrest of newspaper editors, November 27, 2015. Demotix/ Ozcan Soysal. All rights reserved.In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, all eyes have turned on Muslims once again. Why was it that 130 innocent lives were taken in the name of Islam? The response was nothing we have not already heard. An entire belief system and its adherents could not be held accountable for the atrocities committed by the few, especially when millions of other Muslims felt the same sorrow and condemned religious extremism in every shape and form.
Not all Muslims, however, grieved. In fact, some made the conscious decision not to. The footage from a friendly soccer game between the Turkish and Greek national teams on November 17 left many in shock when it first circulated around the internet. The fans filling up the stadium in Istanbul broke a universal taboo—the moment of silence for the victims of the attacks—by chanting Islamic and nationalist slogans. But why did they choose not to grieve for Paris? And why should we be concerned about it?
Without a doubt, we need to be cautious of generalising about the sentiments of the Turkish public from the example set in the Turkish stadium. We need to be equally cautious, however, not to discard it as an anomaly, for it may not be as isolated an event as one might think.
