It's a form of ideological hand-washing, they don't want to link the killing to their own religion but it's ok to link the other well known religion. Coincident

It's a form of ideological hand-washing, they don't want to link the killing to their own religion but it's ok to link the other well known religion. Coincidentally hand washing refers to the story in St. Matthew’s gospel, when Pontius Pilate ‘washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person’.