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U.S. Muslims Slash CBS over 'Fabricated' Translation
WASHINGTON, August 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. Muslim leaders expressed outrage Thursday at an apparent made-up quote of an Arabic sound byte from a Palestinian talking about resistance bombings on CBS's 60 Minutes Sunday night, news sources said.
The leaders said they feared a political agenda was behind the mishap to spread hysteria about Islam and Muslims in the United States, where more than seven million Muslims now live. Muslim leaders charge that the report presented false stereotypes of Muslims and defamed their religion.
On August 19, reporter Bob Simon spoke on "60 Minutes" with members of the Palestinian occupation resistance group, Hamas, to give viewers "a chilling look into the how and why of this latest rash of deadly suicide bombings in Israel," according to the CBS News Web site.
During the broadcast, Arabic speech from the Palestinian man being interviewed was translated to say, "God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness," according to a Knight Ridder article.
But members of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a Muslim advocacy organization, which sent out a news alert regarding the broadcast, said that native Arabic speakers who listened to the piece carefully did not find anything in the Arabic words that corroborated what the CBS translator said in English, the article said.
Mahdi Bray, the political director of MPAC's Washington bureau, said in the article that the Arabic speakers translated the Palestinian's words to mean, "As long as I love the land (of Palestine) and as long as it is under occupation, I have no hesitation in doing what I am doing."
MPAC sent a letter to "60 Minutes" Executive Producer Don Hewitt, asking him to retract the erroneous translation and to provide a transcript and a full, unedited version of the interview so that Arabic speakers could verify what was actually said.
A member of MPAC's Los Angeles bureau, Sarah Eltantawi, said that CBS provided the transcript, but that the CBS spokesman she talked to did not admit any kind of retraction.
"I asked him what CBS's response was," Eltantawi said, "and he said, 'We stick by our translation and it may have been truncated.' "
"Even if it had been truncated, that's still a misrepresentation of what the man said," Eltantawi stated.
Knight-Ridder said in its article that "60 Minutes" officials told them they were investigating the discrepancies in the translation, but had no explanation as of yet.
The article quoted MPAC's executive director, Salam Al-Marayati, as saying that the seriousness of the mistake lay in the fear among Muslims that the media is careless about defaming their faith.
"A lot of these times when they start talking about Hamas or any Muslim group, we have noted a pattern of mistranslations, and we fear there is a political agenda to spread hysteria about Islam and Muslims in America," he said in the article.
Dr. Maher Hathout, a Muslim scholar with the Islamic Center of Southern California, was also quoted in the article, and expressed his alarm upon discovering how different the translation was from the actual statements, and how false the alleged fabricated translation was.
"There is nothing in the Qur'an or in Islamic teachings about 70 virgins or sex in paradise," Hathout said in the article. "This is ridiculous, and any true Muslim knows that."
Eltantawi said that MPAC is concerned about a growing "rash" of the use of the false "70 virgins" quote.
"We've just completed two reports on media bias, and what we've noticed is that there's been a rash of this '70 virgins' sound byte" in order to explain "suicide bombings", she said.
A slightly different version of this "myth" appeared in a USA TODAY article earlier this summer by its reporter Jack Kelley.
In his July 5 article entitled "Devotion, desire drive youths to 'martyrdom'," Kelley claims that Hamas trains youngsters to become "suicide bombers" by promising them rewards in heaven, including the "risqué" reward of "unlimited sex with 72 virgins in heaven."
"Lured by promises of financial stability for their families, eternal martyrdom and unlimited sex in the afterlife, dozens of militant Palestinians like Hotari (the Palestinian responsible for the June 1 Tel Aviv bombing) aspire to blow themselves up, Israeli and Palestinian officials say," Kelley claimed.
Eltantawi elaborated on MPAC's stance about this fabricated verse, which is not given any reference in any articles quoting it. "We take the position that it's not from any authentic Islamic source," she said, "[and] we definitely take the position that it's being repeated."
Echoing Al-Marayati on American Muslims' concern about the continuous media misrepresentation of Islam, she said, "One could argue that there's a concerted effort being made by certain pro-Israeli groups to propagate that quote... in order to paint Palestinians as crazy, sex-crazed irrational people."
Eltantawi said that the CBS spokesman told her he would get back to her by Monday, August 27 regarding the availability of the video interview by Bob Simon.
"We still consider [the sound byte] a misrepresentation, and we're still waiting for them to respond to us," she said.
In its news release, MPAC said they also demanded from CBS that its news producers "should contact mainstream Muslim organizations to verify any translations on their broadcasts."
U.S. Muslims have often complained religious intolerance in the U.S. with many of them complaining about workplace problems. Muslim women have also reported discrimination for wearing hijab, modest attire that usually includes a head covering.
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