June 2, 2009
By: Robert Spencer
JihadWatch.org
A headline in the Saudi Gazette in May 2009 reads: "Negative coverage of Islam and Muslims in the media is no secret and it's making people averse to Islam"
Once again, it doesn't seem to occur to this writer that "Islamophobia," if any irrational hatred of Muslims actually exists at all, is caused by Islamic jihadists doing evil and justifying it in the name of Islam -- not by "negative coverage."
If Muslims around the world don't want Islam to be perceived as encouraging violence, they should take these five steps:
1. Stop committing violent acts.
2. Stop justifying those violent acts by reference to the Qur'an and Sunnah.
3. Stop saying violent or hateful things in private when they think no non-Muslims are around. For example, the imam Umar Abdul-Jalil, executive director of ministerial services for the New York City Department of Correction, was secretly recorded a few years ago while speaking at an Islamic conference in Arizona. Muslims, he said, invoking Qur'an 48:29, must be "compassionate with each other" and "hard against the kufr [unbelief]." In Britain, Hamid Ali, imam of the mosque frequented by the July 7 bombers, praised the bombers and called their terror attack "good" in a conversation secretly recorded by an undercover journalist. Publicly, he had condemned the attacks. In a mosque in the Czech Republic, a Muslim secretly filmed by a documentary filmmaker says Islamic Shari'a law, including the stoning of adulterers, should be adopted by the Czech Republic. Cleveland imam Fawaz Damra, who has since been deported for failing to disclose his ties to terror groups, signed the Fiqh Council of North America's condemnation of terrorism, despite having declared at an Islamic conference that "terrorism, and terrorism alone, is the path to liberation."
Do such incidents mean that every Muslim who professes to have adopted Western notions of pluralism and the equality of dignity and rights of non-Muslims and Muslims is dissembling? Of course not. But they do mean that non-Muslims are perfectly justified in being suspicious of Muslim protestations of moderation and opposition to terror. Consequently deeds, not just words, are needed. To conclude my five recommendations, genuinely anti-terror Muslims should:
4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.
5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.
"Islamophobia's impact on the world," by Faraz Omar for the Saudi Gazette, May 27 (thanks to Maxwell):
"It just seems now that all we ever get in the media is Muslims and Islam. The working class seems to have been forgotten. (Some) 25 years ago, I didn't know what a Muslim was or that Muslims followed Islam. Now we can't escape hearing about Muslims." - A disgruntled reader commenting on a recent Guardian piece
"NEGATIVE coverage of Islam and Muslims in the media is no secret and it's making people averse to Islam, not to mention the amount of hassles innocent Muslims are facing with authorities in non-Muslim countries. The revelations of how MI5 is blackmailing British Muslims; the case of award-winning Pakistani writer, Mohammed Hanif, being detained for over two hours at New Zealand airport last week; the case of Indian actor Mammootty being grilled for two hours at New York airport earlier this month; and the dramatic arrest and subsequent release of 12 Muslim students in Britain over suspicion of terrorism last month are examples of what is happening everyday around the world.
Further, communities are totally disconnected from the reality and truth about Islam and Muslims. A joint survey by Gallup and Coexist Foundation published in the first week of May 2009 found that European Muslims are more loyal than other citizens to their respective countries. But only a small percentage of non-Muslim citizens trusted Muslim citizens for their loyalty. For example, 76 percent of British Muslims believed in the integrity of the justice system as opposed to 55 percent of the general populace and 82 percent of them said British Muslims were loyal citizens, but only 36 percent of their neighbors believed Muslims were loyal citizens. What a total disconnect!"
And of course, there are no reasons for this mistrust. It is irrational and springs out of nowhere.
"After 9/11, negative reporting of Islam took an unprecedented shift. What were once extreme abusive criticisms by a selected minority of right-wing neoconservatives began to be accepted in the mainstream media. The Pentagon invested heavily in information warfare. The 2003 Pentagon document "Information Operations Roadmap" signed by the then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (declassified in 2006) revealed US military plans for psychological operations, including: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks. (BBC, Jan. 27, 2006) The objectives were clear and the investment was huge. Islamophobia entered every medium of communication, from major media outlets to bloggers, movies to soap operas and popular sports to video games - nothing was spared.
Result? The Guardian reported a UK study in 2007 that "91 percent of articles in national newspapers about Muslims were negative." Research into a week's news coverage found only 4 percent of the 352 articles positive.... "
