21-Sep-13: Once again, Islamist massacre of innocents gets transformed by agenda-driven parts of news industry

http://www.artcaffe.co.ke/

Terrorists, perhaps Somali Islamists, have wreaked havoc this evening in Nairobi.

While some reports describe the cowardly attack of heavily armed jihadists (at least one of them a female) on relaxed patrons as an assault on an upscale shopping center, it's increasingly clear (11:00 pm Israel time) that the target was in fact a specific business, Artcaffe Coffee and Bakery, said to be "owned by local Israelis". Hostages are still being held by the jihadists as we write this. AP quotes the Kenyan president saying there are now said to be 39 killed, 150 injured.

Past experience suggests that as the hours and days go on and various post-attack investigations take place, news media channels and with them public opinion, will 'forget' one of the more horrifying of the various dreadful aspects of this cold-blooded massacre:

"'All Muslims leave... we only want to kill non-Muslims': Gunmen massacre at least 30 in Kenyan shopping mall after releasing anyone who could prove they were Islamic by reciting a prayer"... Gunmen who opened fire at a shopping centre killing at least 25 and injuring dozens more today let muslims go free if they could prove they were Islamic. Witnesses caught up in the attack at Westlands Shopping Centre, in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, said anyone who could recite a muslim prayer to their captors was allowed to leave unscathed. But the attackers turned their guns on anyone who could not prove their Islamic credentials." [Daily Mail UK, lead story at this hour]

Daily Mail UK

It's a deeply disturbing motif when you think about it: armed attackers who select unarmed non-combatant non-Moslem civilians for the purpose of executing them.

It's fairly clear that this is Islamist terrorism yet again. Right?

Not so right if you're an editor at the BBC, where their front page report ["Somalia Al-Shabab claims Nairobi Westgate Kenya attack"] manages - not for the first time - to entirely avoid using the word "terror", even though the vast majority of post-elementary school readers and viewers of the BBC's products understands that the story is all about terrorism. Even the far-left Guardian UK knows better:

Witnesses said the men, brandishing AK-47s, told Muslims to leave and shot those they believed were non-Muslims."We are treating this as a terrorist attack," said the police chief Benson Kibue [Guardian]

But for BBC management's delicate sensibilities, this Nairobi massacre is "...a deadly attack", "in response to Kenya's presence in Somalia". As truth in reporting goes, we'd place it at about the same despicable moral level as the terrorists' own Twitter account, which refers to the cold-blooded murders as the "Westgate spectacle".

Perhaps one of the key take-aways for non-Moslems is that it may save your life if you can commit to memory the name Aminah Bint Wahb. As the UK Telegraph reports, several witnesses say they were told by the killers to say the prophet's mother's name, and were saved if they knew it.