BBC’s terror apologia: Humanising Jihadi General Asim Munir, the man whose anti-Hindu rhetoric presaged the Pahalgam massacre

BBC Hindi, in a recent profile of Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Asim Munir, employed a classic media trope often used by Western outlets to sanitise perpetrators of violence—describing him as “the son of a school headmaster.”

While seemingly innocuous, such portrayals are not without motive. They form part of a well-documented pattern of narrative engineering that humanises those orchestrating violence, particularly in Kashmir, while casting the actual victims—often Hindus—as faceless statistics or even aggressors.

The BBC’s article conveniently omits General Munir’s incendiary rhetoric and ideological positioning. In recent months, Munir delivered a blatantly anti-Hindu, jihadist-laced speech in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, where he referred to Kashmir as Pakistan’s “jugular vein”—a term with deep militaristic and Islamist undertones in Pakistan’s strategic doctrine. His speech was laced with veiled threats and overt religious overtones, framing the Kashmir conflict as not merely territorial but theological, reinforcing a narrative that demonises Hindus as occupiers and justifies religiously motivated violence.

This rhetoric did not remain mere bluster. Just days later, the Pahalgam terror attack shocked India and reflected the ideological poison Munir had been spewing. In a chilling act of targeted killing, Islamic terrorists abducted and lined up unarmed Hindu men—unarmed tourists who were in Pahalgam on a vacation with their loved ones—and executed them at point-blank range. According to eyewitness accounts and police reports, the attackers often confirmed their victims’ religious identity, even resorting in some cases to pulling down their pants to identify circumcision status—an unspeakable level of brutality aimed at ensuring they killed only Hindus.

The attack was not random; it was ideological. And it was emboldened by a state apparatus in Pakistan that openly gives moral and material support to jihadist proxies. Munir’s speech served as a dog whistle to these actors, couched in state-sanctioned religious supremacy. Yet BBC Hindi, rather than holding him to account or providing context for his dangerous rhetoric, chose to paint a softer, relatable image—focusing on his father’s profession rather than his own role in fomenting violence.

This pattern of reporting is not new. Western and Western-aligned media platforms have a long history of portraying Islamist terrorists and their backers in humanising tones—highlighting their poetry, family life, or humble beginnings—while treating Hindu victims of jihadist violence as mere collateral. In this distorted narrative economy, victims are anonymised, and aggressors are empathised with.

Such editorial choices are not harmless—they have consequences. They distort public perception, diminish the horror of sectarian violence, and indirectly provide ideological cover to genocidal hate. By failing to name Munir’s hateful rhetoric and its links to real-world massacres like Pahalgam, BBC Hindi is not merely reporting news—it is laundering narratives.

Complicity of western media in empowering jihadist ideologies and dismissing atrocities faced by Hindus

The Western media’s approach to reporting on terror, particularly in South Asia, reveals a persistent and disturbing pattern: a systematic humanization of terror enablers and the simultaneous erasure or minimization of violence against Hindus. This is not incidental—it reflects a deeper editorial bias that privileges geopolitical narratives over factual, ethical journalism.

Consider the recent Pahalgam terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir, where Islamic terrorists abducted and brutally executed unarmed Hindu tourists. These were civilians—fathers, sons, and brothers on holiday with their families—lined up and murdered in cold blood. Eyewitness reports confirm that the attackers verified their victims’ religious identity, often through grotesque means, before executing them. This was not just a terror incident; it was a premeditated, religiously targeted massacre.

Yet, how did leading Western outlets frame this atrocity? The assailants were described blandly as “gunmen,” and the location as “Indian-administered Kashmir” or “Indian-controlled Kashmir,” subtly suggesting a political dispute rather than an act of jihadist terror. The deliberate linguistic framing shifts the focus from the victims and their suffering to a narrative that questions Indian sovereignty and sanitizes Islamist violence as “resistance.”

This narrative manipulation isn’t limited to Kashmir. In Bangladesh, the pattern repeats with chilling regularity—Hindu homes torched, temples vandalized, families lynched—yet Western coverage remains muted, decontextualized, or entirely absent. When atrocities are acknowledged, they are couched in vague language, stripped of the religious and ideological motivations driving them.

The same obfuscation applies to incidents in India’s West Bengal, where targeted violence against Hindus often goes underreported or is distorted through euphemisms and false equivalencies. Western-aligned outlets like BBC Hindi participate in this erasure under the guise of neutrality but reveal their bias through subtle narrative cues.

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