Mourning Charlie Kirk’s Death and Not a Genocide Is Not Hypocrisy

When Charlie Kirk was fatally shot at a university event in Utah, media coverage erupted immediately. Politicians, pundits, and social media personalities lined up to mourn his life, framing his death as a national tragedy. At the same time, tens of thousands of Palestinians lay dead in Gaza — civilians, families, children — largely invisible to Western publics.

This is not hypocrisy. It is the Western system functioning exactly as it was designed: a hierarchy of human value embedded in political, legal, and cultural institutions, determining whose lives are grievable and whose are ignored. The United Kingdom reflects this same logic, from media coverage of domestic tragedies to colonial legacies abroad.

The System, Not the Slogan

The United States and the UK were founded on ideals of liberty, equality, and justice — yet these ideals were never universal. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “all men are created equal,” while enslaving hundreds; the British Empire proclaimed freedom while subjugating entire continents. These contradictions are structural, not accidental. From the start, Western liberal orders enshrined the humanity of some while denying it to others.

Chief Justice Roger Taney’s Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling, Indigenous dispossession in North America, and Britain’s colonial wars all reveal this hierarchy of human worth. Frederick Douglass captured the enduring logic in 1852: “This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.” Empathy and grief have always been rationed according to race, nationality, and political proximity.

Contemporary Echoes

This hierarchy persists today. Edward Said wrote in The Question of Palestine: “The Palestinians are a people in history and in geography, yet in American and European eyes, their lives are negotiable abstractions.” Decades later, that remains true. Palestinian deaths are largely reduced to statistics, while Western domestic tragedies dominate headlines.

Angela Davis observes: “The U.S. has a selective memory — it mourns its own, it vilifies its victims abroad.” Coverage of Gaza bombings is framed as a security issue, while shootings in the U.S. or the UK receive exhaustive coverage.

Movements like Fathers for Justice, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo reflect this same structural logic. They emerge because Western societies proclaim universal rights and justice, yet systematically fail to deliver them. Each movement is a response to the contradictions embedded in the foundations of Western civilization — a demand for fairness and recognition where the system has historically rationed it.

Charlie Kirk and the Consistency of the System

Charlie Kirk’s death is consistent with this pattern. He was white, American, politically prominent — fully within the circle of lives the system deems grievable. Palestinians, in contrast, remain largely invisible, their suffering marginalized or abstracted.

From Jefferson to the present, the Western system has enshrined selective humanity. Liberty, equality, and justice were designed for some, not all. Grief and empathy are rationed according to structural hierarchies of identity, nationality, and political relevance.

The Continuity of Contradiction

The mourning over Charlie Kirk is not hypocrisy. It is the continuation of a centuries-long pattern embedded in Western political and cultural systems. From slavery and colonialism to drone strikes and foreign interventions, the system ranks lives and determines whose deaths merit recognition.

Charlie Kirk’s death did not expose inconsistency. It revealed an enduring truth: Western selective grief is not accidental — it is the system working exactly as it always has.

A Call to a New System

This reality demands reflection. From its birth, the West has carried contradictions that echo across law, governance, and culture. Humanity cannot achieve justice while accepting systems that ration empathy, rights, and dignity.

We need a system consistent with reality — one where every human life has equal value, regardless of color, creed, or political convenience. The Islamic system offers such a vision: a society grounded in rational belief and justice, where governance, laws, and culture uphold the inherent worth of all people.

As Western powers reach moral and structural limits, Muslims must rise as standard-bearers of a new dawn — a new beginning and a new civilization. A civilization where the value of life is based on life itself, not identity, nationality, or strategic interest. Humanity deserves a system that honors truth and justice — one that treats all lives as equally sacred.