Unmournable Bodies: A look At The London Attack And Airstrikes On A Syrian School

On March 22, five people including a police officer were killed, and more than 40 injured in a London attack. The attacker drove a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before crashing it outside parliament and then stabbing one police officer.

On the same day, at least 33 people were killed by US-led coalition forces in an airstrike on a school sheltering displaced people near the Isis-held city of Raqqa.

Coverage of the Syria killings dwarfed in comparison to the London attack. Hamid Dabashi, Iranian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, commented in a Facebook post on the coverage of two equally horrific events.

"What is the point of noting such consistent systemic unwavering fixation with a crime when a Muslim is the perpetrator and casual dismissal of much worse incidents when Muslims are the victims of violence..."

Watching the reports on London and little about Syria reminded me of Teju Cole, a Nigerian-American writer who penned this piece in January 2015 in the aftermath of the attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Cole questions the media coverage that furthers the idea that radical Islamism is only an enemy to Western societies. Social networks like Facebook enable one to change profile images to national flags or avail safety features in the event of attacks, and are mostly a preserve for Western countries. These forms of solidarity are well meaning, but they remind one of Cole's words about "the consensus about mournable bodies". This idea of who's body is worth mourning "often keeps us from paying proper attention to other, ongoing, instances of horrific carnage around the world".

He might have been writing on Charlie Hebdo, but this piece is still very relevant today. Who we choose to mourn or give most coverage says a lot. What solidarity do communities not able to mourn because they have been mourning for years get? A People standing on a ground too cluttered with bombs to hold a body.