Oborne concludes that in today’s climate the media say things about Islam and Muslims they would never say about other groups. When he replaces the word’ ‘Muslim’ in some recent headlines with ‘Jews’, ‘Blacks’ and ‘Gays’ and shows them to members of the public, they find those headlines deeply offensive.
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At Obama’s old school in Jakarta earlier this year, an establishment scurrilously described as a madrassa” in all the innuendo, a gentle principal showed me the large mosque and small Christian prayer room. He then invoked the words emblazoned on the coat of arms of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country: “Unity in diversity.”
Even Britain, which has afforded Muslims a more welcoming environment, has had some worrying moments. A few years back, a Labor M.P. called for an end to “the tradition of first-cousin marriages” among Pakistanis and other South Asians in Britain. The basis for her suggestion was the claim that Pakistanis in Britain were more likely than the general population to suffer from recessive autosomal genetic disorders. Of course, so are Ashkenazi Jews, but you can hardly imagine an M.P. proposing to limit Jews’ marriage choices for this reason, especially given the historic Nazi allegation of Jewish genetic inferiority.
A Presidential candidate is openly embracing a religious figure who is promoting hate against 8 million Muslims in America and Muslims around the world. Many Muslim groups and organizations have not focused on this issue. If this is unchallenged, McCain’s election will give strength to Parsley and Hagee and impact the domestic policies towards Muslims and the civil liberties of all Americans.
Additionally, if one considers the small number of Muslims who initially spread Islam from Spain and Morocco in the West to India and China in the East, one would realise that they were far too few to force people to become converts of a religion against their will. Additionally, the great empire and civilisation established by the Muslims had great staying power, its citizens were proud to be part of it.
Clearly, the implication is that in the sad, backward country of Iraq, the gender equality Americans enjoy is simply unfathomable. The one-dimensional picture paints Iraq as the distant source of Ameera’s terrible past — and nothing more. When asked, “What was your life in Iraq like?” — a question that couldn’t be more vague — Ameera can’t help but praise the U.S. in comparison. Iraq, she explains, was very different (read: bad).
I must confess I have never quite understood the logic of those like Ms Ruoff who argue that because many Muslim majority countries do not allow the same freedom of religion to people from different faiths that we do in the UK, that we should in turn restrict freedoms for Muslims here until they change. Aren’t we meant to be upholding these freedoms as a matter of principle? Instead of seeking to restrict the freedom of worship, we should surely be proud of it.
In cities all over Britain there reside devout, law abiding, peaceful and (gasp!) integrated Muslims who just happen to have large beards and dark skin. But next time some bigot wants to indulge in a spot of “Paki bashing” who do you think they are going to pick on, the smartly dressed engineering student who actually is a violent jihadi or the bearded fella who looks like he should be one?
Surely we want to know the manifold wrongs that lead to further wrongs. Perhaps not, if we’re set in our ways and at home with our ignorance, but Islamophobia is where many of our future troubles might be seen to begin. We ignore it, and our part in it, at the peril of everything we claim to hold sacred.
The miniscule number of Political Correctness Gone Mad stories that turn out to have a grain of truth in them are almost all influenced by this sort of reporting too. A while ago, a children’s book about pigs wasn’t shortlisted for an award, in part because Muslims wouldn’t like stories about pigs. Of course, that’s rubbish, but why would anyone think Muslims would be offended by stories about piggy characters in the first place? Because of stories like this one. And why would anyone think that a bus driver terminating a journey because he’s been told to and then praying because it’s his break has actually thrown everyone off so he could pray? Because of stories like this one.
“All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.” This comment , frequently heard after the Mumbai bomb blasts implies that terrorism is a Muslim specialty, if not a monopoly. The facts are very different. First, there is nothing new about terrorism. In 1881, anarchists killed the Russian Tsar Alexander II and 21 bystanders. In 1901, anarchists killed US President McKinley as well as King Humbert I of Italy.
According to the article, the “enduring significance” of the hijab is striking. Really? Is it any more “enduring” than the significance of Jesus or the Holy Trinity, the Yarmulke, or karma in Hinduism? Simply put, people will always carry out parts or all of what their religious beliefs dictate. Other people may feel threatened by that, and that’s the politics of it.
The flaws are not hard to spot. This is basically Jihad Watch or Little Green Footballs as a film, and is not intended to try and convince anyone not of that mindset. For a start, only a small minority interpret the verses Wilders cites to justify the acts depicted; the majority of Muslims in the world simply do not behave like this and mainstream scholars reject such interpretations. The context of the verses’ revelation is simply not discussed in this film (there are no words, other than those written on the screen or those spoken by people in the footage). There are shots of demonstrations in London with offensive banners (behead those who insult Islam, etc) and similar shouted slogans, but the fact is that these demonstrations were tiny, organised by a well-known and disliked small group of Muslims, and widely condemned within the community. In the “under the spell” section, the future of various groups such as women, children and gays are speculated on, and in the section on women there are images of girls who have just undergone genital mutilation, which most Muslims do not practise.
Once again, the effect of the headlines was to arouse a knee-jerk response by over-simplifying what was being said. To turn a story like this into a scary headline just about Islam does not seem to serve any one well. It stokes the very fears that damage community cohesion.
Surveying the reception and impact of the report suggests serious concerns around the complicity of certain sections of the media and their willingness to reproduce and perpetuate negative stories around Muslims. One need only compare the almost wholesale acceptance of such reports with the derision that greets any report from a Muslim organisation that talks of Islamophobia or highlights ways that Government structures might better accommodate Muslim needs and rights, for the grating disparity.
