Sorry, doesn’t work that way.

Via Philly.com:

Again and again the grainy FBI videos flickered across TV screens Thursday, and the whole nation leaned in to study two nameless young men in backpacks.

But their faces and clothing revealed nothing as they strolled toward the site of the Boston Marathon bombings. The alleged killers looked like two ordinary Americans in baseball caps.

Then, overnight, came their names, news of a high-speed police chase, a fatal gun battle, and clues to their identities. They were immigrants. Ethnically Chechen.

They were Muslim.

“Unfortunately, there’s a double standard in the public’s view when an atrocity like this hits,” said Qasim Rashid, national spokesman for the national Ahmadiyya Muslim community.

“Who asked what religion Adam Lanza was?” asked Rashid, referring to the young man who mowed down 20 schoolchildren and six adults in Newtown, Conn., last year.

“If a non-Muslim commits an act of terrorism, they are thought of as responsible only for themselves. But when a Muslim, the entire Muslim community is brought in.”

“A terrorist is a terrorist. A killer is a killer,” said Quresh Dahodwala, a nuclear physicist who lives in Cherry Hill. “To identify them with their religion is not fair.”

“I am appalled. My heart goes out to all the victims” of the Boston bombings, said Dahodwala, a leader in the South Jersey Muslim community who helped create mosques in Cherry Hill and Voorhees.

“But it is a human tragedy,” he said. The religion of the alleged bombers “cannot be an issue in this whole story.”

HT: Jay via JWF