Dealing with Distortions in Media

This paper examines the nature of current media campaign aiming at the distortion of the image of Islam, identifies several tactics used by the detractors of Islam and its symbols, and proposes an appropriate response for dealing with the challenge posed by the global media. It is a contention that the media campaign against Islam is politically motivated, is led by powerful quarters in the Western society, who see in Islam a potential global power and civilizational alternative capable of challenging Western hegemony. Examining several examples from the global media, we have argued that the campaign to distort the Image of Islam endeavors to equate Islam with imposition and aggression, while justifying imposition and aggression against Muslims. In conclusion, a few measures have been proposed for dealing with the challenge of global media.

Our attempt to understand the root causes of recent attacks on Islam and the efforts to distort its image must begin by examining the relationship between Islam and emerging realities on the ground. For, as we will endeavor to demonstrate, it is not by coincidence that the campaign against Islam receives its encouragement from certain powerful quarters in Western society, the center and stronghold of the global order of today. The campaign against Islam is a conscious and deliberate effort by the established global media to discredit a universal belief system which has been presenting itself as a civilizational alternative to Western secularism, and to undermine a historical movement whose inspiring messages has touched the hearts of people across political boundaries and cultures.

The recent Western interest in Islam dates back to the mid-seventies, when an increasing segment of Muslim society began to pursue with an enhanced activism the ideal of establishing a truly Islamic society and state. The powerful resurgence of Islamic ideas and practices was felt at all levels of society, including the educated and well-to-do, and took various forms, including intellectual and political.

This development came as a surprise to many Western scholars and policy makers, who had declared about a decade earlier the triumph of Western liberalism and the demise of Islam in the Muslim world. For instance, Daniel Lerner, made the following assessment of the place of Islam in the Middle Eastern society in his well-known work, The Passing of Traditional Society:

Whether from East or West, modernization poses the same basic challenge — the infusion of “a rationalist and positivist spirit” against which scholars seem agreed, “Islam is absolutely defenseless.” The phasing and modality of the process have changed, however, in the past decade. Where Europeanization once penetrated only the upper level of Middle East society, affecting mainly leisure-class fashions, modernization today diffuses among a wider population and touches public institutions as well as private aspirations with its disquieting “positivist spirit.”[i]

By late eighties, the Western perception of Islam took a drastically different form. With the spread of Islamic reassertiveness eastward and westward, within and beyond the Muslim society — a phenomenon often referred to as Islamic resurgence — many eminent scholars in the West began to view Islam not as a dying creed of purely historical significance, but as a formidable force, which was potential threat to the global hegemony of the West. In his widely read and well-known book, The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama has the following to say about Islam:

It is true that Islam constitutes a systematic and coherent ideology, just like liberalism and communism, with its own code of morality and doctrine of political and social justice. The appeal of Islam is potentially universal, reaching out to all men as men, and not just to members of a particular ethnic or national group. And Islam has indeed defeated liberal democracy in many parts of the Islamic world, posing a grave threat to liberal practices even in countries where it has not achieved political power directly. The end of the cold war in Europe was followed immediately by a challenge to the west from Iraq, in which Islam was arguably a factor.[ii]

While Fukuyama moves quickly in the next paragraph to dismiss the relevance of [slam on the ground that it “has virtually no appeal outside those areas that were culturally Islamic to begin with,” the fact remains that Islam is perceived by the author as a threat to western global ambitions, as it is capable of providing a “coherent ideology”, and as it is “potentially universal, reaching out to all men as men.”

The above sentiments are expressed by Zbrgniew Brzezinski, an American statesman and foreign policy strategist. In Out of Control, a book published recently after the demise of the Soviet Union, Brezezinski sounds more alarming, as he warns against an Islamic expansion to Central Asia, taking advantage, as he puts it, of the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet empire:

Since nature abhors vacuum, it is already evident that outside powers, particularly the neighboring Islamic states, are likely to try to fill the geopolitical void created in Central Asia by the collapse of the Russian imperial sway. Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan have already been jockeying in order to extend their influence, while the more distant Saudi Arabia has been financing a major effort to revitalize the region’s Moslem cultural and religious heritage. Islam is thus pushing northward, reversing the geopolitical momentum of the last two centuries.[iii]

While Brezenzinski does not dismiss the capacity of Islam to effect socio-political transformation of global proportions, he rightly points out to the current limitations of contemporary Islamic reassertiveness, reflected in the absence of a concrete model for translating Islamic ideals into social reality.

Evidently, the open attack on Islam represents a reactionary response by powerful groups in the west against an Islamic resurgence that has been deemed threatening to the global order. The vicious attack on Islam and its symbols runs on two fronts: In foreign policy, Western leaders have already concluded that Islamic forces in the Muslim world must be curtailed at any cost. Therefore, in countries where Islamic groups have succeeded in gaining political influence in state policy, Western powers have adopted the strategy of encirclement, which aims at isolating regimes with strong Islamic orientation. However, when Islamic groups have gained significant popular support but no actual political power, the West has condoned, even encouraged, secular regimes to adopt repressive measures to prevent further growth in popularity and influence.

On the mass media front, the attack assumes even more vicious form, as Western media seems bent upon equating the highly tolerant and humane worldview of Islam with religious fanaticism, and to reduce the widely diverse approaches and concerns of Islamic groups into a monolith of religious violence. What is more disturbing, however, is that while Western media strongly condemns what is wrongly portrayed as the attempt of the Islamic groups to impose their ideas on others and their aggressive posture towards their detractors, it takes great pains to justify the attempt of a small secular elite to impose its arbitrary will on their people, and the ruthless use of force to achieve its goals which are not shared by the broad masses of people.

But before we turn to examine some of the tactics underlining the above strategy of Western media, it is important to point out the reciprocal relationship between media — reporting and foreign policy making. The significance of the actions undertaken by media reporters and foreign policy actors lies in the fact that they reinforce one another, leading to constant and continuous escalation in the confrontation between Islam and the West. That is, by supporting military dictators in the Muslim world, the Western policy-makers create conditions conducive to political radicalism, as the suppressive measures of the state push certain Islamist groups to violence. On the other hand, by concentrating on radical groups, and presenting them as the representatives par excellence of contemporary Islamic resurgence, media reporters reinforce the fears of policy— makers and encourage them to stick to their hardline.

The distortion of the image of Islam and Muslims by the global media takes a variety of forms. Occasionally, distortion results from reporters’ ignorance of Islam, and their tendency to extrapolate from their particular experiences of religion and religious groups in Western society to Islam and Muslim groups. Very often, however, the distortions represent a deliberate effort by certain news agencies and reporters who, out of malice and ill-will, use several tactics to discredit Islam and defame Muslims. Four specific tactics to which recourse is generally made need to be pointed out:

Western media reports are replete with distorted views about Islam. However, a few examples should suffice to demonstrate this point.

In a news feature published in its September 15, 1990 issue, under the title “Arab Christians Exodus”, The Economist endeavored, albeit in a very subtle manner, to link what it referred to as “Christian exodus” to the dominance of Islam in the Arab world. The opening paragraph put the issue in the following dramatic terms: “In fact, Christianity is dying in the land of its birth. Christians are leaving Palestine and Lebanon in such numbers that local churches fear for their future. In all the Arab lands, it seems, only Egypt’s Christian community is thriving.”

But rather than attributing Christian “exodus” to deteriorating economic and security conditions caused by the Zionist and Maronite excesses in Palestine and Lebanon respectively, the article points its blaming finger to Islam, citing the alleged Muslim “revenge on all Christians” following the defeat of the Crusaders, and alludes to the immigration of many Christians to Europe and the Americas, following the colonial powers’ withdrawal from Muslim lands.

What the article fails to point out, however, is that Christian communities continued to thrive in Muslim societies, before, during, and after the Crusades, even after the brutal “ethnic cleansing” of the Muslims of Spain by the Christian Goths. Neither does the article state that many of the immigrants who left with the colonial powers were Muslim collaborators who feared retribution for supporting the invading forces.

In another article published last June in the same magazine under the title “Islam’s Dark Side”, The Economist called upon the “international community” to give the Sudanese opposition — most notably the rebels in the south — “whatever help it needs to remove Mr. Turabi.” While The Economist cites what it refers to as an “economic disaster” in Sudan — of course forgetting that such a “disaster” was created by the Western embargo on Sudan — as the reason for its anger against Turabi, it could not hide the fact that the Islamic orientation of the Sudanese government is a major source of its anger, namely its efforts to implement “shari'ah law” and its attempt “to export its version of Islam.”

Not all global media activities, however, take the form of an open distortion of facts and views. A great deal of the media campaign against Islam involves sending subtle messages and employing subtle methods to achieve its aims. Using the adjective “Islamic” to describe terrorist acts carried out by radical individuals or groups is widely in vogue. A headline announcing that “A trial in France is showing how difficult it is to pin down the blame for Islamic terrorism” is not uncommon. Of course, violence by Jewish or Christian individuals and groups can never be referred to as Jewish terrorism or Christian terrorism. The phrase “Catholic terrorism” would never come across the mind of The Economist’s editors when describing car bomb attacks by the Irish Republican Army. Such practice is reserved solely for Islam Even when an article is not particularly hostile to Islam and Muslims, hostile titles are used, such as “living with Islam”, “Islam — arrow of death” and “a religion with many faces”.

In an article published in Herald Tribune in its July 6, 1995 issue, Richard Cohen examined the rising popularity of the Welfare Party in Turkey. In assessing the growth of the Islamic presence there, and its implications to the West, he had the following to say:

For the west the stakes here are enormous and the threat of Turkey going the way of Iran has given the country an importance it has not had since the cold war ended . . . Should Turkey become an Islamic republic, no Iranian containment policy could succeed — nor, probably, one directed at Iraq. Turkey would leave NATO, in a sense fleeing Europe for the Middle East. Undoubtedly, it would join the anti-Israeli bloc of Islamic nations. What it would do in Bosnia, and to the sleep of the Greeks, is not hard to guess.

The above words are quite revealing. Although the Welfare Party cannot be accused of militancy or violence, its Islamic orientation is sufficient to make the prospect of an Islamic Republic in Turkey alarming. For, as Cohen put it, in this case Turkey would be “fleeing Europe to the Middle East” and hence cannot be relied upon, as it would be supporting the interests of the Muslim Middle East, rather than those of the Western Europe.

The same approach was used by the American media after the car bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. On April 20, 1995, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoted Robert Herbal, former FBI director of counterterrorism, saying: “My feeling is — if it looks like a duck, talks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck . . . car bombings are the tool of Islamic fundamentalism.” The next day, The Wall Street Journal published the following statement on the Muslim communities in the United States: “Growing Muslim communities in other areas of the US, such as in New York, Detroit and Oklahoma City, also include some extremist members who could provide support for terrorists, analysts say.”

Another tactic used by the global media is to justify acts of aggression against Muslims. Again one can find many examples of this kind of tactics in Western press. In an article published in Le Monde on September 13, 1994, and reappeared in English in the Guardian on September 25, Robert Sole defended the move by certain French schools to prevent Muslim girls from wearing hijab (headscarf). While conceding that Christian and Jewish pupils are not prevented by French schools from wearing religious symbols such as cross and kippas, he took exception to Muslim pupils. For wearing hijab, as he saw it, is neither a simple act of displaying religious symbol, nor one that aims at maintaining Muslim modesty, but rather an act that “symbolizes the inequality of the sexes and the confinement of women.” And so rather than attributing repression to schools, which prevent Muslim girls from practicing an important religious duty, repression is strangely attributed to the victims of an act of aggression.

Another example of justifying aggression against Muslims can be found in a report published in the December 26, 1994 issue of Newsweek under the heading “Retreat”. The news report examined the effectiveness of the United Nations mission in Bosnia, and concluded that the mission had been disastrous. However, rather than calling for tougher measures against Serb aggression, the article insisted that sending peacekeeping troops and declaring certain Bosnian cities “safe areas” can only contribute to prolonging the agony of the Bosnian people. As Kenneth Auchincloss, the author of the article puts it:

And in retrospect, it’s not at all clear that anything the Western nations might have done — short of an all-out armed intervention that none of them was willing to undertake would have stopped this war; it springs from ancient hatreds that outsiders can’t suppress or assuage. What is clear is that half measures like arms embargoes and so-called “safe areas” have very likely prolonged it. The blue helmets have helped relieve some of the horrors in Sarajevo but their very presence reinforces the stalemate that makes the siege go on — and this is hardly a favor to the beleaguered citizens. What lies at the heart of the miscalculations about Bosnia is a kind of sentimentality to which the West is particularly prone. We rush to make humanitarian gestures without thinking very much about the consequences. When confronted by the spectacle of human suffering, we feel an immediate impulse to try to help. When the suffering occurs in a war zone, the only way to send help is under cover of an armed force. And when an armed force is sent, it inevitably gets drawn into the battle but lacks the strength to stop it.

A similar article published in Time magazine on June 26, 1995 under the title “Why Peacekeeping Doesn’t Work” made even a more outrageous suggestion. Henry Grunwald, the author of this article proposed that “peacekeeping” force should not be committed to areas such as Bosnia and Somalia, where Muslims are slaughtered, but rather to places where dictators are involved in power struggle with Islamic groups in order to support the former against the latter.

But the notion that U.S. decisions are subject to the U.N. is a somewhat paranoid fallacy, fed by the Clinton Administration’s vacillations and its rhetoric about multilateralism. But with or without the U.N., under what circumstances should the U.S. intervene? All right, not Somalia, not Bosnia — but where and how? In some cases ii must limit itself to humanitarian aid and avoid military involvement. In other cases, intervention by the U.S. and its allies may be necessary. For example: aggression or nuclear threats from Iraq, Iran or North Korea; eruptions of Islamic fundamentalism, which are even now destabilizing Algeria and could threaten Turkey, bringing intolerable pressures on Europe; “local” wars, like those in India and Pakistan, that might turn nuclear. Neither the white house nor its critics are —educating Americans about how such event-and others-would affect

U.S. vital interests. This kind of crisis would certainly require more than “peacekeeping”. Thus some new words have entered the conversation: peace making, peace enforcing. But perhaps we should revive the term pacification, in the sense the Romans had in mind when they “pacified” the unruly Germanic tribes, or the British when they pacified” the Northwest Frontier. This is not to prescribe a new imperialism but to recognize that sometimes peace requires adequate force.

While the overwhelming coverage of Islam and Muslims is of the distorted type, as we pointed out above, one can still find every now and then some objective reporting. Examples of this kind can be found even in publications known for their anti-Islamic stance. Le Monde, for instance, carried in its 19th April issue a news feature, entitled “Egypt Shuts Islamists Out of Politics”, describing the regime’s repression, and human rights violation against Islamist groups in Egypt. An editorial by the Economist, in its issue of March 18, 1995, advocated, under the title “Living with Islam”, a more accommodative stance, and cautioned against lumping various Islamist groups into one category. The question, however, is how are Muslims responding to global challenges?

Admittedly, the Muslim response to media distortion of Islam is, for the most part, meager and ineffective. On the whole, the campaign of distortion and misinformation against Islam has not been effectively countered by Muslim media, simply because the latter is practically non-existent. For beyond the few publications, which normally circulate among small groups of people who are already committed to the cause of Islam, one can hardly speak of Muslim mass media. While the ineffectiveness of Muslim media and its inability to counteract the campaign against Islam may be partially explained by the economic and political imbalance between the established global order and the world of Islam, the true reasons lie in the way through which Islam is being introduced and promoted.

The term used by committed Muslims in reference to the various activities that aim at exposing people to Islam and promoting Islamic beliefs and values is da‘wah. The method of da‘wah that is widely discussed and is accepted for passing on the true Islamic values and beliefs is the personal interaction between the transmitter of the Islamic message and its recipients, the model being the one practiced by the Prophet (peace be on him) and his Companions. Thus an author writes:

“Da'wa is not an occupation to be undertaken by any professional group, neither is it a contingent or part time activity nor one undertaken in reaction to Christian missions or communist onslaughts. Da’wa is the responsibility of every Muslim, whether a ruler or ruled, a leader or follower, a scholar or student, a sufi or soldier, a trader or farmer, wealthy or poor, a man or a woman, living in the East or the West, North or South. No one has a greater or lesser responsibility among Daiya, those who undertake dawa, and no one can (shrink), postpone or evade this responsibility under any circumstances.”[iv]

The above argument, which represents a widely accepted view, fails to distinguish between promoting Islam by individual Muslims from different walks of life, as a result of the goodness of their character and attitude, and the nobility of their actions on the one hand, and promoting Islam through planned action undertaken by professionally trained Muslims, on the other. The latter requires the utilization of the most advanced skills and techniques available, most notably Arts and Technology. Arts include, among others, playwriting, acting, and singing. Technology includes the use of electronic media whereby transmitted pictures and sounds can be employed to convey the message of Islam. The marriage of the two has produced powerful media, capable of transmitting values, beliefs, and views in the form of movies, theatre plays, documentaries, educational programs, talk shows, cartoon shows, and others.

But despite the importance of electronic media and the profound impact it has made in effecting cultural change, they have not yet become tools and instruments for the dissemination of the message of Islam. One important sign of the lack of appreciation of these powerful tools may be seen in the fact that Islamic higher learning institutions do not consider arts and technology to be useful means for reaching out with the message of Islam, but continue to focus on interpersonal communication, and to a lesser extent on public speaking for this purpose. Recently, print media has received a relatively more emphasis by Islamists. However, newspapers and magazines published by Islamists are very often addressed to the audience who are already sympathetically disposed to the ideology of the Islamic movements rather than the public at large.

The challenge posed by the global media is tremendous and quite serious. Nothing can be more devastating to the image of a religion distinguished by its tolerant and liberating spirit than being reduced to the categories of “terrorism” and “fanaticism”. But this is exactly what the detractors of Islam hope to achieve through their global campaign against Islam. Rising to the global challenge requires a well-thought and well-implemented strategy.

While developing an appropriate strategy it requires extensive discussion and debate among concerned Muslims, and the contribution of various Muslim scholars and leaders, I would like to present the following four strategic points for responding to the global challenge.

1. The stumbling block in the face of developing an effective Muslim mass media comes from certain influential quarters that insist on excluding arts and technology from da‘wah activities. The rigid views advanced by these individuals and groups not only stem from their static understanding of certain Islamic injunctions, understood out of their context and without regard to the basic Qur’anic principles and purposes, but also from failure to distinguish between expectations of persons pursuing a life of high devotion, and expectations of ordinary people who are content with doing what is firmly required by Islam and avoiding what is explicitly prohibited.

In this regard it should also be borne in mind that reducing leisure time to the minimum possible is befitting the individuals who have committed their lives to serve noble causes, this should not be expected from the great majority of people who lack such motivation and aspiration. For most people entertainment is something required and sought, and hence entertainment programs should be used to convey the noble message of Islam.

2. For the above reason, professional mass-media organizations should be established to promote the noble values of Islam, and to present more equitable views of Muslim aspirations and practices. In order to meet the global challenge by such media, it has to speak in a global “language” and to target a global audience. This requires that Muslim media agencies employ all sorts of arts and technology available to reach out to the widest audience possible, and to carry the concerns of humanity at large, rather than the concerns of a small group of ideologically committed people. It should also try to report on a wide range of issues, and discuss, in a structured manner, a wide range of questions, not necessarily confining its focus on questions that are of interest to Islamic groups and movements. For this reason, professional media organizations should be divorced from social and political movements. This is important for maintaining the professionalism of these organizations, since coming under the direct influence of any political and social group would inevitably lead media organizations to become the mouth-piece of those groups.

3. But for media organizations to operate in the manner proposed above, they would require highly trained personnel who have acquired technical skills and artistic talents. For this purpose, the contributions of technical schools and the institutions of higher learning is very crucial. Islamic Universities in particular carry the burden of developing academic programs and curricula that would ensure integration of Islamic knowledge and technical skills, so as to ultimately produce journalists, playwrights, script writers, actors, singers, documentary producers, and communicators who combine technical skills and artistic talents with Islamic commitments and aspirations.

4. Finally, in order for Muslim media to make a global impact, Muslim resources should be pooled throughout the globe. Pooling of resources need not aiming at unifying the capital or management, although a limited degree of this can be useful. Rather, pooling of resources should primarily aim at exchanging experiences, facilitating destribution, and such other forms of cooperation, which may lead to the development of a network.

Distortion of the image of Islam, as I tried to show, stems from the fact that Islam is seen by powerful interest groups as a challenger to the established global order. To check the expansion of Islamic appeal and to mobilize public opinion against its symbols, Islam has to be presented as a negative force, leading to oppression and violence. It is the duty of all Muslims to see to it that the true nature of Islam as the religion of reason, tolerance, and justice reaches out to people all over the world.

Combating distortion and restoring the true image of Islam is by no means an easy task. It requires full cooperation among Muslim organizations and institutions of higher learning so as to enable the pooling of resources. It also requires the development of artistic and technological skills and capabilities necessary for the utilization of the wide spectrum of mass media tools for the communication of the message of Islam. Most important of all, it requires a profound change in the prevailing attitudes and practices concerning the use of arts and technology for the promotion of Islam, and the development of appropriate strategies for confronting its detractors.

NOTES

[i] Daniel Lemer, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, ILL, The Free Press, 1958), p. 45.

[ii] Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books, 1992), pp. 45-46.

[iii] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of Twenty-first Century (New York: Maxwell Macmillan, 1993), p. 159.

[iv] M. Manazir Ahsan, “Dawa and Its Significance for the Future”, in Beyond Frontiers. Islam Contemporary Needs, edited by Merry Wyn Davis and Adnan Khalil Pasha (London: Mansell Publishing, 1989), p. 14.