Woolwich Attack: Demonizing Muslims Won't Help
Introduction
The event which turned out to be breaking news took place on 22 May 2013, and it seems that the aftermaths are still filling up some newspapers. On that day, a British Army soldier Drummer Lee Rigby, was killed by two Islamists near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London. At the time of the attack, Rigby was off duty and walking along Wellington Street. Two men who were later identified as Michael Olumide Adebolajo, 28 years old, and Michael Oluwatobi Adebowale, 22 years old, run him down and killed him with their knives and cleavers. They transferred the body onto the road and waited for the police to arrive. They told passers-by that they had killed a soldier to avenge the killing of Muslims by the British military. After few minutes armed police officers arrived and wounded the both men who charged at the police. The political and Muslim leaders from the United Kingdom and from all over the world condemned this attack. The work of security agency MI5 and counterterrorist commands and programs is being discussed. After the large numbers of anti-Muslim attacks were reported across the United Kingdom, articles that are trying to make boundary between those who are responsible for this act and between those who are not still appear in newspapers.
For the purpose of this work, I will be using articles from British newspapers The Guardian, The Huffington Post, from American newspaper The New York Times and an article from a global Islamic website Islamonline. Before engaging these articles into this paper, it is important to understand what the critical discourse analysis actually represents. According to Teun A. Van Dijk, "Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident research, critical
The event which turned out to be breaking news took place on 22 May 2013, and it seems that the aftermaths are still filling up some newspapers. On that day, a British Army soldier Drummer Lee Rigby, was killed by two Islamists near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London. At the time of the attack, Rigby was off duty and walking along Wellington Street. Two men who were later identified as Michael Olumide Adebolajo, 28 years old, and Michael Oluwatobi Adebowale, 22 years old, run him down and killed him with their knives and cleavers. They transferred the body onto the road and waited for the police to arrive. They told passers-by that they had killed a soldier to avenge the killing of Muslims by the British military. After few minutes armed police officers arrived and wounded the both men who charged at the police. The political and Muslim leaders from the United Kingdom and from all over the world condemned this attack. The work of security agency MI5 and counterterrorist commands and programs is being discussed. After the large numbers of anti-Muslim attacks were reported across the United Kingdom, articles that are trying to make boundary between those who are responsible for this act and between those who are not still appear in newspapers.
For the purpose of this work, I will be using articles from British newspapers The Guardian, The Huffington Post, from American newspaper The New York Times and an article from a global Islamic website Islamonline. Before engaging these articles into this paper, it is important to understand what the critical discourse analysis actually represents. According to Teun A. Van Dijk, "Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context. With such dissident research, critical