ISLAM AND WESTERN WORLD : BIASED NEWS, PREJUDICE AND IGNORANCE

 This means that all Muslims are fundamentalists if they believe in their own religion’s fundamentals. Although the media is uncomfortable with religious groups, it focuses heavily on “Islamic fundamentalism”. A majority of the media’s reports that talk about Islamic fundamentalism usually describes most Muslims as extremists. This shows how the media is ignorant, because Islam specifically prohibits any forms of extremism.

 The Prophet Muhammad PBUH said, “Those persons who go to extremes (in practicing their religion) were cursed (by God)”. The media most often portrays Muslim “fundamentalists” prostrating themselves before God in prayer. For example, in the October 4 issue of Time, Muslim soldiers were shown performing prayers with guns. The caption on the bottom of the picture said, “Guns and prayer go together in the fundamentalist battle”. The part that the reporters omitted or failed to state was that the Muslim soldiers were praying on a battlefield in Afghanistan.

 Common sense of the situation meant that the soldiers had to remain armed at all times in case of an ambush at any time. This is a clear example of the media’s biased and inaccurate reporting.

With regard to the soldiers, another great misconception that exists is the truth about Jihad or “holy war” in Islam. The ideas of war and violence have become related to the Islamic religion from the media. Jihad is so often apparent in the news because the media thinks it is Islam’s justification for war and violence.

 Al Quran (Muslim Holy Book) says “Fight for the sake of Allah those that fight against you, but do not attack them first. Allah (God) does not love aggression”.

Jihad literally means “The struggle in the path of God”, or “holy war”. However, the Western media often abuses the meaning of jihad by referring to it as a holy war where Muslims unreasonably kill non-believers. But the fact is, is that jihad can mean a numbers of things that a Muslim does for the sake of God.

 Rarely has the Western media used this kind of a definition in their reports. The way the media represents jihad is wrong. The media often takes the word “jihad” out of context to propagate negative views on Islam. The association of Islam and violence is a common misconception that the general Western public has developed about Islam.

An example of this kind of misconception is that the Western media and some historians often say that Islam was a religion spread by the sword, meaning that Muslims went from one end of the world to the other forcing people to either convert or die. Islam spread by people learning about it and some by holy wars, but they did not force people to convert or die. Since majorities of the American public only get their information about Islam through the media, they believe this wrong idea.

The media’s reports about Arab or “Islamic” events, such as the Gulf War, are often misunderstood. The media usually fails to give background information about these Islamic events that it reports on. The media infrequently distinguishes between the religion Islam and the political affairs that occur in most Islamic countries. For instance, what Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, did in the Gulf War was not Islamic and totally wrong (to attack other people for no reason).

 But the media still makes reports about Islam and how Islam is made of war-crazed people. For example, to help put things into perspective, Hitler was a person of the Christian faith. This does not mean that all of his actions were consistent with the Christian beliefs. Likewise, Saddam Hussein is of the Islamic faith, but all of his actions do not necessarily represent Islam. So you can see that the media’s reports about “war-crazed Muslims” are incorrect. The notion of associating of Islam and Muslims with the terms Arabs and Middle East are in fact misleading. Arabs only account for 18% of the Muslim population across the world.

 The Profit-oriented Creation of False Images

Aside from the fact that the media misrepresents Islam because of ignorance, the media is also a profit-seeking organization which often seeks to create a false image of reality. Islam is often news of an unpleasant sort for the general public of the United States. Islam has often been presented as a menace or a threat to the West. These negative images do not correspond to Islam, but are the belief of certain sectors of a particular society. These prominent sectors can propagate negative images of Islam, which sometimes influences people’s views on Islam.

 The Western media actually poorly represents Islam. Most of these problems of poor representations come from poor language translations, the absence of developed news agencies with international networks and native reporters, and biased reporting by many Western reporters. Some biased reports come from negative images that have happened in the Muslim world in the past like the hijacking of airplanes by Palestinians, the occupation of the United States Embassy by students in Tehran, the fact that there are no democratic governments in most Islamic countries, and the Gulf War.

 For most of these events, the media has misinterpreted and misrepresented them. The media sometimes unintentionally blows things out of proportion, sometimes because of biased feelings toward Muslims. However, many positive developments in the Muslims world rarely go noticed. Some inaccurate representations of Islam are often due to the media’s incorrect representations of Islamic countries, such as jihad, or Islam women’s rights.

 Waseem Sajjad, former Chairman of the Senate of Pakistan explains the situation of Islam and the media: The Islamic world is poorly represented in the West in terms of press and media coverage. Not only are there just handfuls of news agencies in Muslim countries; there is the concern over the number of inexperienced reporters. Many reporters don’t understand the local cultures nor speak the language, leaving them with access to only those English or French speaking Westernized elites.

 Thus their representation is often a biased account of the political and social events from the point of view of the ruling minority in Muslim countries. A negative image of Islam is becoming more inherent in the Western culture from inaccurate media coverage. The media helps to make an image of Islam to unsuspecting audiences. The Western public often is misinformed about Muslims through the images on television, motion picture screens, magazines, radios, and comic strips in newspapers, which promote strong messages among their audiences.

 Western reporters often say that Muslims are terrorists. This becomes a common image to the general person that all Muslims are terrorists. Edward Said’s book, Covering Islam, talks about how the media and experts determine how we see the rest of the world. He says that: The term Islam as it is used today seems to mean one simple thing, but in fact is part fiction, part ideological label, part minimal designation of a religion called Islam.

Today Islam is peculiarly traumatic news in the West. During the past few years, especially since events in Iran caught European and American attention so strongly, the media have therefore covered Islam: they have portrayed it, characterized it, analyzed it, given instant courses on it, and consequently they have made it known. But this coverage is misleadingly full, and a great deal in this energetic coverage is based on far from objective material.