ISLAM AND WESTERN WORLD : BIASED NEWS, PREJUDICE AND IGNORANCE

In many instances Islam has licensed not only patent inaccuracy, but also expressions of unrestrained ethnocentrism, cultural, and even racial hatred, deep yet paradoxically free-floating hostility. As well as creating inaccurate images about Islam, the Western media usually identifies Islam in Muslim conflicts. The media hardly points other religions out in their conflicts. For example, the news would say, “five Israelis may have been shot, but they were shot by five Muslims”, instead of saying “Five Israelis were shot by five Palestinians”.

The media often reverses this action when a conflict is against Muslims, for example the news would usually say “Bosnians are being killed by Serbians”, but instead rarely says, “Muslims are being killed by Christians”. In addition to the media’s inaccurate representations about Islamic conflicts, human rights of women in Islam, such as women veiling and women authority are big topics that Western media often confuses and misinterprets. The media often represents Islam as a male dominant religion where Muslim men have complete authority over all groups of people.

Prophet Muhammad PBUH – one the greatest reformers for women

The media often says that Islam discriminates against women, and that women have no power or authority. However, it is ironic of what the media represents, that the Prophet Muhammad PBUH was one the greatest reformers for women. In fact, Islam is the only religion that formally teaches women’s rights and finds ways to protect them. When Islam is practiced correctly, it becomes the best example of a fair society.

As Islam came around, traditional pre-Islamic roles of women were replaced by new Islamic roles that women followed. Islam allowed women to have the right to be educated and the right to participate in political, economical, and social activities in their community. This created upward mobility in their communities. Women were given the right to inherit property and take charge of their possessions. While most of these rights are denied to Muslim women today as a result of cultural tradition, one should not associate this with Islam, because they do not correlate with it.

Islamic women wearing veils is another commonly misunderstood concept in the West. Westerners often think that this is a harsh custom that Islam requires of women. Westerners often say these women have no freedom or dignity for wearing these veils. But in fact, these veils actuality help protect women and help them remain in chastity. In Islamic societies there are very few rape cases and AIDS victims as opposed to the Western societies, were there are thousands of rape cases and AIDS infected victims a year. God will do anything He wants to her in this world and the after.

Islamic women are indeed supposed to be granted these rights, but the media often fails to inform its audiences about this fact. The media also fails to report that most of the Islamic countries have a high illiteracy rate. This means that it is “virtually impossible for many Muslim women to challenge cultural male authority when the women themselves do not know the difference between village customs and actual Islamic law”.

The Western media would be able to better represent women’s issues in Islamic countries if they identified how and why governments have limited women’s rights that are guaranteed to them by the Quran (Muslim Holy Book). Most so-called Islamic countries such as Syria are corrupt (according to Islam) in their religion and should be addressed in the media’s reports. But instead “the media falsely portrays Muslim women as victims of a harsh and suppressive religion”.  With regard to Islamic women’s rights, Islam is also a hot topic of Western governments. Western powers do not usually easily tolerate Islamic movements or governments.

One main reason is that in an Islamic government, in contrast to Western governments, there is no separation of church and state. Judith Miller states in her book Challenge of Radical Islam, “that anyone who believes in universal human rights, democratic governments, political tolerance, and peace between the Arabs and the Israelis cannot be complacent about the growing strength of Islamic militant movements in most Middle Eastern countries”. Miller says that the Western governments should oppose these kind of Islamic movements. This statement shows one Western’s views about how the West opposes Islamic movements.

The West False and Misleading Ideas about Islam

Observers often say that the goal of Islamic fundamentalism is to wage a holy war against the West. These observers believe the idea that Islamic leaders only wanting the redress legitimate political grievances is totally nonsense. They think that even if Israel or any other opposing regime in the Middle East would disappear, “the appetite of the Islamic fundamentalists would only have been whetted”. These ideas are false and also misleading. The Western media often portrays Islam as a “militant Islam” or a “fundamental Islam” threat to the West.

Edward Said states that: For the general public in America and Europe today, Islam is “news” of a particularly unpleasant sort. The media, the government, the geopolitical strategists, and although they are marginal to the culture at large – the academic experts on Islam are all in concert: Islam is a threat to Western civilization. Now this is by no means the same as saying that only derogatory or racist caricatures of Islam are to be found in the West…What I am saying is that negative images of Islam are very much more prevalent than any others, and that such images correspond, not to what Islam “is”…but to what prominent sectors of a particular society take it to be: Those sectors have the power and the will to propagate that particular image of Islam, and this image therefore becomes more prevalent, more present, than all others.

John L. Esposito’s book, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality, states the question, is Islam a threat to the West? He tells us that the answer lies in the West’s views. He says that if the Western powers continue to defend the unjust status of the Middle East in the name of an illusory or fleeting stability, Islam will be a threat. “But if the Western powers begin to appreciate the legitimacy of grievances in the Middle East, the West and Islamic movements will get along peacefully”.

With the Western media’s spotlight and some Western governmental attitudes, the West is a place where Islam is a name of negativity. The Western media has contributed a great deal to this negative image of Islam. The media often misrepresents and inaccurately explains Islam and its manifestations. Sometimes the media seems to be biased against Islam. When the media distorts the image of Islam, the general public tends to believe it, because the media is a major source of information that the public gets about Islam. This ignorance that the West accumulates from the media leads them into making stereotypes about Islam and associating all Muslims and Arabs together.

The West often times views Islam as “fundamental” “extremist” or “discriminatory”, but all of these terms have be manipulated, purposely because of biased feelings and accidentally because of ignorance, by the media to present a negative image about Islam.

Islam is actually a fair religion that most often does not correspond to the media’s reports. As Islam grows more and more in the West, Westerners will eventually learn the truth about Islam and find out that these negative stereotypes are incorrect.  Islam will become one of the biggest religions in the United States. As more people follow Islam, the media will start to learn about it, understand it, and report about it in positive ways. As long as the Westerners are educated about Islam, they will probably learn to accept it as well. (HSH)