I have come up with a way to describe terrorist acts that neither asserts nor implies nor presupposes that they are Islamic. Suppose I'm a reporter informing my audience of what happened in Orlando the other day. I would say the following:
A 29-year-old American citizen of Afghan descent who believed that he was acting in accordance with the will of Allah, as expressed in the Koran, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub early Sunday morning.
Every factual claim in this report is verifiably true, so there can be no question that I have misrepresented anything. Note that I have said nothing about either the truth or the justifiability of the belief in question (viz., that the killer was acting in accordance with the will of Allah). That the man had a certain belief is a fact. Whether that belief is true or justifiable is an evaluation, which should have no place in news reporting. The report leaves it to the audience to come to conclusions regarding these evaluative matters.
It might be said that in singling out only one of the killer's beliefs, I am implying that that belief was the operative belief. Perhaps so, but this problem can be solved by adding as many other beliefs as the reporter knows to be true and which might have been operative, for example, that homosexuals are evil, that homosexuals deserve to die, or that Allah hates homosexuals. In short, the reporter should describe the mindset of the agent as thoroughly as he or she can, without making any claim as to the truth or justifiability of the agent's beliefs, leaving it to the audience to determine which belief or beliefs were operative.
What I object to is a reporter's omission of the killer's belief that he was acting in accordance with the will of Allah, as expressed in the Koran. This is manipulative, and therefore disrespectful to the audience.
