Terror as Foreign Western Media's Portrayal of Islam - Case Study Example

ID No. ‘Terror is Foreign’ Western Medias portrayal of Islam In the wake of the recent massacre in Norway, and the medias wrongful accusations of the role of Muslims in the tragedy, a timely examination of the role that press plays in the expiation of Islam in real world events and popular imagination is further complicated in the European Community by a resurgence in nationalist racism and the promulgation of one theocratic tradition over another. A major complain from the Muslims all over the world is Western media’s falsification, over-generalization, distortion and sensationalization of stories that touch on Islam (Asadulla 195). The main problem is brought about by ignorance or carelessness, prejudice, or because the Western media does not have the ability to separate myth from reality, or probably because they do not understand the social, religious and political dynamics of the Muslim societies (Hafez 19). In his speech in Cairo University in 2009, President Obama spoke favorably of Islam saying that Islam has always been a part of America’s history. He even added that Arab-Americans had fought in American wars, served in the government, stood for civil rights, started businesses, taught at American universities, had excelled in their sports arenas, won Nobel prizes, built their tallest buildings and lit the Olympic torch (FAIR 1). This undeniable facts articulated by the U.S President should be what the Western media focus on, but unfortunately their portrayal of a whole lot of 1.5 billion Muslims is nothing but sickening. This paper intends to shed light on the gross misrepresentations of Arabs and Muslims in the Western media by exposing these biased stereotypical misrepresentations. It will be found that the Western media propagate an inaccurate and unfair image of the collective Arabs and Muslims due to their lack of ethical principles of truth, fairness, objectivity and balance. In addition, this paper will explain why this phenomenon continues and see just in passing what can be its solutions. To begin with, negative stereotyping is the putting of unpleasant labels and characteristics on a group of people based on unfounded allegations while forgetting to account for their individual differences. This is where the Western media is particularly in error. There is a strong inclination in Western mass media to categorize Islam as a fanatic, and violent religion characterized by the chopping off limbs, violation of the rights of women, and representing a strong opposition towards cherished Western ideas and values of freedom, human rights and democracy (Poole 17). Poole observes that there is equation of Islam with politics and association of Islamic politics with extremism and this extremism with terrorism. This linkage results in the interpretation of political violence without taking into consideration its social and political context (23). Following the September 11 attacks, Arabs and Muslims were repeatedly misrepresented in the Western media on an unprecedented scale. It is important to note that the attacks were not the genesis of this phenomenon. As Jack Shaheen has prolifically researched and written, it dates back to the first years of the twentieth century and has progressed with growing intensity (174). Shaheen provides vivid examples of television programs dating back to the 1970s that casts Arabs and Muslims generally in bad light. He lists Hollywood movies and productions such as Dennis the Menace and Charlie’s Angels among others that completely vilify Arabs and Muslims as terrorists. In his seminal work on the image of Arabs and Muslims on Hollywood productions, Shaheen took the task of analyzing approximately 1000 movies with Arab characters which results he published. The conclusions were baffling. Only a dozen displayed positive portrayals, a handful displayed balanced portrayal while the rest presented negative portrayals. In essence, Arab in television stands for hijacking, terrorism, bombings or war. Such similar notions indicate that Hollywood has been feeding the American audience with grossly inaccurate images further aggravating the problem. With 9/11, the situation even worsened. Immediately after the attacks, all guns were loaded against Islam (Facker and Fortner 345). As Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) noted, for most media pundits, vengeance was the subject. The US Former Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagleburger on CNN said that America should take only one option and that is to kill any Muslim in retaliation even if they were not involved in the attack, made a pretty sad and blatant remark. On the same note, on September 12 following the attacks, Steve Dunleavy writing in the New York Post stated that America’s response in the wake of the 9/11 crisis was to take a raft of stern measures. These measures would include including killings, bombardments of their cities and countries, and even poisoning them. “Them” here refers to the innocent Muslim populations in the five continents of the world (FAIR 1). On the same day, columnist Ann Coulter was of the opinion that America should immediately take the warpath and invade Islamic nations, kill their leaders and forcefully convert them to Christianity (FAIR 1). On writing this, she forgot that there were countless Muslim men, women and children who were not responsible for the attack. Regrettable sentiments such as these have been the ones largely fuelling the ever-growing resentment towards Islam now referred to as Islamophobia. Reports indicated that following the attacks, several mosques in England were petrol-bombed by individual buying into the media hysteria at that time. A red paint near a mosque in northern England urged the killing of Muslims in sympathy with the U.S. plight (Ramberg 6). As Hans Gressmann of the University of Hamburg’s Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy pointed out during a meeting of the Global Policy Forum, fully attributing blame of the September attacks on ‘Muslim terrorists’ and stopping there, the media was committing prejudice and stigmatization of a religion, culture, states, peoples and minorities (Belmaker and Phillips 1). Sadly, such trends have continued even in the in the post-9/11 era. During the US war on Iraq, the American media was on the spot for failing to give a voice to those individuals voicing antiwar sentiments. It appears that the American media is keen on having its audience to support the war. A content analysis on CBS newscasts by the Center for Media and Public Affairs revealed only a paltry 10 percent of those interviewed on CBS evening news with Dan Rather were opposed to the war. This showed media’s unwillingness to tolerance anti-war voices. It will therefore be absurd to claim that Western media really stand for the ideals such as democracy, which they strongly encourage (Belmaker and Phillips 1). Recent events continue to paint the same picture. With media reports at first attributing the July 26 bomb attack on Oslo to Islamic fundamentalism, the obsession of the Western media with ‘Islamic terrorism’ has been brought to the fore. It is so strong that even after Anders Behring Breivik had claimed responsibility for the attacks and spoke of the motives behind his actions, some still continues to assert that he was a tool in the hand Muslim Jihadists. As Heiner Bielefeldt, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on religion and freedom of belief, pointed out the immediate association of the Norway appalling attacks with Muslim extremism was a telling show of the embarrassing deep-rooted prejudice residing in the Western media (Belmaker and Phillips 1). CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank made one of the laughable explanations as to why terrorists would target Norway. He said that Norway had been in Al Qaeda crosshairs for a long time (Belmaker and Phillips 1). Another unfounded allegation that the attacks could be linked with the republishing by the Norwegian newspapers of a number of cartoons depicting prophet Mohammed which was first published in the Danish media. This tendency of equating terrorism to Islam, Arabs and Islamic groups no matter what the facts are as we have earlier noted, has been an ongoing trend, which continues to characterize the media. Moreover, as the Oslo bombing case turned out, sharp focus was again, on how the media reported the matter. This was a sharp indictment of their lack of balance, objectivity and fairness in reporting (1). It is important to note that media stereotypes have sought to distract and jeopardize counter-terrorism efforts. As Paul Beran, Director of the Outreach Center at the center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University alluded in a statement that the assumption that Muslim extremists undoubtedly commit any terrorist act is only a seed that brings division. In addition, it is a veil that distracts the understanding of the reasons behind terrorism and terrorist acts (Belmaker and Phillips 1). Because of the negative public sentiments towards Arabs and Muslims by the Western media, plus the strong anti-Muslim/anti-Islamic rhetoric from the political right, Muslims continue to be perceived with a lot of suspicions and animosity. A veil is no longer associated with Muslim women but rather it has become a symbol of Islam. Muslim women identified by the Hijab are vulnerable to hate crimes and even discrimination such as the ban France imposed on the wearing Burqa in public places. Muslim populations in Western countries have repeatedly suffered from workplace harassment, discrimination, and even property seizures. In fact, it is frequently advertised that Muslims are a serious threat to international security and all counter-terrorism efforts targeted largely on Muslim population. Muslims now than ever, are exposed to arbitrary arrest, interrogation, and even confinement on suspicions of terror activities. Without disregard to anti-terrorism efforts, the notion of attributing blame and venting hatred on a collective people goes against the basic principle of logic and ethics and only leaves them as segregated and isolated from the rest (Belmaker and Phillips 2). With news programs always perceived as serious and truthful as a result of the trust that audience have always placed on journalistic work as reflecting the professional ethics of objectivity, fairness and truthfulness, it is true that such media messages have become part of the long-term memory and have formed part of consciousness and ethics of Western society. A poll recently conducted by the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies (1) indicated that two-thirds of those samples had little or no knowledge is Islam. 31% of them said they had an unfavorable view of Islam (1). Pure ignorance and awareness offers some explanation on this stereotyping (Asadulla 197). This unawareness is reinforced by nothing other than media’s inflexible and unprofessional standpoint, which has resulted in the complete misunderstanding of the culture and diversity of 1.5 billion Muslims. It is, therefore, imperative that media personnel should make efforts and investigate in order to understand Muslim and Arab behavior and culture and consequently offer a fair and accurate reporting of them. Moreover, media ownership should not be concentrated in the hands of few individuals (Brym and Lie 538). In concept, media houses including radio, television and print are businesses which highly compete against each other for advertising revenue and profit. There is, therefore, a tendency to offer distorted and biased presentation of events in favor of the policies and interests of their owners, thus compromising balance and fairness. In addition, in order to avoid punitive measures such as withdrawal of government funding or even work permits and business licenses, the print media is somehow gagged to air only some content. A case in point was witnessed on the release of the US secret cables by the whistle blower, Wiki leaks. The response of the American government merely expressed being uncomfortable with diverse opinions and viewpoints; and begs the question as to whether the American media really is free to broadcast the different views and opinions apart from those, which are perceived as acceptable. Therefore, the media cannot claim professional independence as they claim. Allowing diversity in ownership will give more voices to be heard thus breaking the bonds of stereotypes (Brym and Lie 539). Finally, in promoting a fair representation of them, Arabs and Muslims ought to take the lead by condemning all forms of terrorism and be part of the efforts to confront it. Additionally they can also use their own media outlets and the internet to promote a better understanding of their culture and diversity. This will definitely counter the negative image portrayed by the Western media. Works Cited Asadulla, Abubakr. Islam Vs. West: Fact or Fiction?: A Brief Historical, Political, Theological, Philosophical, and Psychological Perspective, Bloomington, IN: iUniverse. 2009. Belmaker, Genevieve Long and Jack Phillips. Media Slammed for Linking Islam to Norway Attacks. 27 July 2010. Web. 20 August 2011. Robert, Brym J. and John Lie. Sociology: Your Compass for a New World. New York: I.B. Tauris. 2002. FAIR . Media March to War. 27 July 2010. Web. 20 August 2011. Facker, P. Mark and Robert S. Fortner. The Handbook of Global Communication and Media Ethics. New York: Wiley-Blackwell. 2011. Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. In U.S., Religious Prejudice Stronger Against Muslims. 21 January 2010. Web. 20 August 2011. Hafez, Kai. Radicalism and Political Reform in the Islamic and Western Worlds. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2010. Ramberg, Ingrid. Islamophobia and Its Consequences on Young People: European Youth Centre, London: Council of Europe, 2004. Shaheen, Jack. Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People. New York: Interlink Publishing Group. 2001. Read More