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The British Media: Fair or Biased?
The Portrayal of Muslims After the London Attacks
By
Dina Abdel-Mageed**
Staff writer – Muslim Affairs
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July
27, 2005
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| Muslims listen to London Mayor Ken Livingstone (Reuters Photo). |
The
impact of technology on our lives cannot be denied. Such an
influence is manifested in the unchallengeable power of the mass
media, a power that shapes and controls public opinion.
Unfortunately, that massive force usually tends to be misused.
Nowadays, on many occasions, the media is used as an organ of
propaganda and as a means of demoralizing the enemy.
The
fact that the alleged perpetrators of the London Underground
bombings are Pakistani Muslims has put Muslims again under the
microscope. Everyone is attempting to understand the reasons
behind the attacks; the question of “What made them do it?”
is all over the British press. Various explanations and views
are presented. Nevertheless, a thorough examination of what is
presented in the British press reveals that the coverage of the
July 7 attacks is far from objective.
The
response of the British media to the London attacks can be
perceived as the last manifestation of a long process that has
been going on for years and maybe decades—a process through
which all kinds of stereotypes about Muslims have been built
into the psyche of Westerners. As a result, Westerners today
tend to perceive Muslims according to their already bigoted
convictions.
“A
Western news agenda dominated by hostile, careless
coverage of Islam distorts reality and destroys
trust.” |
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It
can be argued that, in the Muslim World, Western media is not
trusted anymore. Even the institutions that were regarded
unbiased by Muslims at one point are gradually losing the battle
for hearts and minds in the Muslim World. “Western reports,
when positive, are seen as selective and partisan; when
negative, hypocritical and insensitive. Everywhere you go people
talk not only of double, but also of lower standards,” wrote
Faud Nahdi, the founding editor of Q-News, in openDemocracy.
“A
Western news agenda dominated by hostile, careless coverage of
Islam,” Nahdi argues, “distorts reality and destroys
trust.” Some observers believe that the image of Muslims in
the media is not only biased, but also politically dictated.
Such a prejudice has become increasingly apparent since the 9/11
attacks and, most recently, the London bombings.
Some
newspapers attempt to introduce a relatively neutral portrayal
of Muslims. Interestingly, even those newspapers end up blaming
Muslims implicitly; they present the argument that even if
mainstream Muslims are peace-loving people, they are not
exerting enough effort to eradicate the radical elements from
the community. In the words of Prince Charles, true Muslims must
“root out extremists.” As part of its coverage of the July 7
bombings, BBC
News
reported that the British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, held a
meeting with Muslim MPs to find out ways to deal with “this
evil within the Muslim community.”
This
reporting may seem to be fair at first sight. However, it tends
to blame the whole community for not condemning terror strongly
enough, and sometimes even for sympathizing with terrorists.
“Muslim immigrant communities as a whole [do not] represent a
fifth column within European society… [But] there are enough
sympathizers within these communities to make the terrorists’
job feasible as opposed to impossible,” wrote David Reiff in
the Guardian.
In
the article published in the Independent,
Kishwer Falkner argues that “the boundary between …
apologists [who carry out acts of terror in the name of bringing
about justice to Muslims] and the mainstream is not always
clearly identifiable.” Simply, the whole Muslim community is
urged to apologize for the action of a few Muslims who are still
merely suspects.
As
a matter of fact, Muslims are put in a corner and forced to take
a blatantly apologetic attitude by constantly attempting to
disassociate themselves from the suspects. Surprisingly, a fatwa
was issued by a number of scholars in the UK, considering the
perpetrators, if Muslims, non-believers. The fatwa shocked many
people: Who said that a Muslim who murders is considered an
unbeliever? Such a fatwa can only be seen as a reflection of a
state of panic that is controlling the actions of the British
Muslim community; British Muslims are trying to do everything
possible just to put some distance between them and the
suspects.
Everyone
is asking the Muslim community to bear the burden of dealing
with the problem, which is totally unreasonable. Focusing only
on the internal factors reflects the one-dimensional
presentation always used when it comes to Islam and Muslims.
By
ignoring the external factors, Western reports, in general, and
British reports, in particular, give the audience the impression
that the problem always has to do with Muslims themselves. The
Western audience is the victim of “lazy, unexamined
assumptions about Islam …” (Armstrong, 2005).
Ahistorical
Coverage
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| British Muslims pray for the victims of the attacks (Reuters Photo). |
The
type of media coverage discussed above opens our eyes to another
important problem, which is the fact that news coverage is
usually ahistorical. In other words, it tends to present
superficial information that tells the audience what is going on
at the moment, but does not allow them to understand the wider
context. This might be part of the nature of news coverage,
which is not supposed to get into deep analysis.
“In
a fast moving news story it is often difficult to supply content
and background but consequently weeks after the event when more
explanation is provided, people are already rooted in the
simple, basic facts, which though accurate are misleading in
their lack of detail” (Conte, 2001). Moreover, nowadays,
“[there] is an increasing tendency to go for quick, easy
stories.” According to Nahdi, that phenomenon can be
attributed to the "increasing commercialism and
pragmatism” of mass media institutions.
The
avoidance of context that we are talking about is clearly
manifested in the reporting of many issues that have to do with
Muslims. An example would be the Palestinian Israeli conflict,
in which the historical context is ignored most of the time; the
way the conflict is reported gives the impression that
Palestinian actions are unreasonable and illogical. The same
thing can be said about the way the British media responded to
the London bombings.
It
is extremely naïve to portray the perpetrators as a
bunch of cartoon villains who need to be “rooted
out.” |
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Since
the attacks, British readers have been showered with writings
that describe those home-grown Muslim extremists who hate
Western freedom and democratic values. Though such acts of
terror cannot be justified, explaining the motives of the
alleged perpetrators can create a different public attitude.
It
is important to make it clear that those people, if found
guilty, did not kill for the sake of killing; rather, they have
grievances that need to be tackled. Surprisingly, despite the
recurring themes throughout the statements made by the
perpetrators of similar attacks, still there are writers who
argue that the bombings “cannot be blamed on the
Anglo-American invasion of Iraq” (Reiff, 2005).
Some
writers resorted to socio-economic explanations. We find in the
British press articles about the bombers who attacked the London
transport system just because of their “burning resentment
that the prosperity of the city has largely passed them by”
(Britain’s …, 2005). Also, a reader of the British press
will come across analyses that blame the blasts on the inability
of the Muslim community to integrate into the British society;
among Muslims, “integration into the wider British community
is rare,” wrote Falkner.
It
can be argued that socio-economic issues might be part of the
story. Nevertheless, reducing the turmoil we are witnessing
today on a global level to socio-economic problems is a blatant
oversimplification.
Writings
about extremism in Pakistan and how the alleged perpetrators
were “radicalized” are there throughout the British press.
As reported by BBC
News,
some people think that “the Pakistan trip is the key to
working out ‘who got at the boys’.” Hence, there is a
tendency to discuss the reaction rather than the action. What we
witness now is a process of deliberate dehumanization of the
suspects.
This
is not an attempt to rationalize or defend slaughtering innocent
people; however, it is a call for exerting some effort to
understand the logic of the bombers, who are victims
themselves—victims of an unjust global system, a disappointing
international Islamic political scene, and a wrong understanding
of Islam. It is extremely naïve to portray them as a bunch of
cartoon villains who need to be “rooted out.” In the words
of Faud Nahdi, the problem that we face today is that while the
Western media is “reconstructing [its] … whole contemporary
narrative around 11 September, the Muslim world is building its
own history around its own ‘Ground Zero’: and it is Jenin
not New York.”
Another
indication of a biased coverage of the bombings is the
value-loaded language used by some writers. An oft-used term in
the British press is “jihadi” or “jihadist.” In an
article published in the Sunday Herald under the title
“ Inside
the breeding ground for fanatics,”
the writer uses the words extremists and jihadis
interchangeably. Also, jihadists and jihadism are recurring
terms throughout the article published in the Guardian
under the title “Talking
with the jihadists.”
Such a use of language interrelates notorious acts of terror to
the noble duty of jihad.
Those
who think that the word “jihad” means indiscriminate
violence should understand that, for Muslims, “Jihad is … a
cherished spiritual value …” The literal meaning of the word
is “struggle” or “effort.” It was reported that the
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) on his way back from a battle told the
Companions, “We are coming back from the Lesser Jihad [i.e.
the battle] and returning to the Greater Jihad”—the more
crucial and testing struggle for reforming our hearts and our
society (Armstrong, 2005). The point here is not to take an
apologetic attitude by claiming that jihad is only about
spiritual struggle; the word jihad also refers to physical
struggle against an enemy who fights Muslims, but it has nothing
to do with attacking innocent people on their way to work.
"Putting
the House In Order"
“The
general impression is that Muslims are very very nice
but they are too tolerant of those who irrationally hate
'us'.” |
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In
an interview with Judith Brown, the director of Arab
Media Watch,
she told IslamOnline.net: “What was …to be expected and
happened was that the coverage tended to toe the government
line, really with few exceptions even in the quality papers such
as the Guardian and the Independent that usually
give good voice to minority voices.”
She
explained how she noted that there “was a spirit of ‘us’
standing up to ‘them.’” Such a scenario, she argued,
“was war talk, the sort of talk that occurs from leaders to
ordinary members of the population in a war in order to keep
them on side.” What she found really disappointing was the
fact that only a few people highlighted the relationship between
the bombings and the policies of the British government in the
Middle East.
Responding
to a question about the image of Muslims in the British media
after the attacks, Brown stated: “Newspapers were keen to
‘prove’ that they were not Islamophobic … There was also
several articles describing mainstream ‘good’ Muslims [who]
condemned this attack but, as I explained earlier, this did
have an undercurrent of stifling Muslim debate.” She argued
that “there was also the impression given that Muslims have to
put their house in order. The general impression is that Muslims
are very, very nice but they are too tolerant of those who
irrationally hate ‘us.’”
Brown
criticized the way the alleged perpetrators are presented in the
media. She believed that the “one area which might show a
great deal of one-sided coverage is the framework of reasons for
disaffection that led to the attacks.” The suspects, she
argued, “was presented as ‘brain-washed’ and ‘groomed’
even by their own family members.” She added: “Young men do
die for causes. That includes soldiers in regular armies. I
think the way that these men were presented should be analyzed
and compared with the way that ‘our’ fighters are
presented.”
Commenting
on the 9/11 attacks, one of the Independent's
readers wrote: “The notion that Mohammed Atta sacrificed his
future, studying for months, dedicating his whole life in order
to fly a plane into an American skyscraper because he just
couldn’t stand the idea that Americans could freely elect
their leaders is laughable.”
The
same line of reasoning can be used while analyzing the London
attacks, if the perpetrators are proven to be Muslims. We agree
that “two wrongs do not make a right,” but, at least, the
Western media, in general, and the British media, in particular,
should have enough courage not only to raise, but also to
respond fairly to the question, Why did a group of young men,
regardless of their religion, chose to sacrifice bright futures
ahead of them and kill dozens of innocent people? For those who
seek the truth, not ready-made answers, the response does not
lie in the “evil ideology” they embrace or in their trips to
the “breeding ground for fanatics.”
Sources:
Armstrong,
Karen. “The label of Catholic terror was never used about the
IRA.” Guardian
Unlimited.
11 July 2005. Accessed 15 July 2005.
“Britain’s
enemy within.” Scotland
on Sunday.
17 July 2005. Accessed 17 July 2005.
Casciani,
Dominic. “Leeds
asks: What made them do it?” BBC
News.
13 July 2005. Accessed 16 July 2005.
Conte,
William. “British
Media and the Portrayal of Muslims In the Wake of the September
11 Attacks.” Culture
Forum. 28
September 2001. Accessed 15 July 2005.
Falkner,
Kishwer. "Where now for the Muslim community?" The
Independent.
12 July 2005. Accessed 16 July 2005.
“Letters:
Londoners stand firm against bombers, Muslim values and
others.” The
Independent.
14 July 2005. Accessed 16 July 2005.
Meo,
Nick. “Inside the breeding ground for fanatics.” Sunday
Herald.
Accessed 16 July 2005.
Nahdi,
Fuad. “Doublespeak: Islam and the media.” openDemocracy.
3 April 2003. Accessed 15 July 2005.
Rieff,
David. “Talking with the jihadists.” Guardian
Unlimited.
16 July 2005. Accessed 17 July 2005.
“Root
out extremists, prince urges.” BBC
News.
14 July 2005. Accessed 15 July 2005.
**Dina
Abdel-Mageed is staff writer for the Muslim Affairs section of
IslamOnline.net. A graduate of the American University in Cairo, she
holds a BA in political science with a specialization in Public and
International Law.
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