[Islam-Online- 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 I will endeavor to demonstrate, it is not by sheer coincidence that the campaign against Islam receives its momentum 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 order to discredit a universal belief system which has been presenting itself as a civilizational alternative to western secularism, and to undermine a historical movement which, as its critics admit, has the potential to become a globalizing power. The recent western interest in Islam dates back to the mid-1970s, when the Islamic way of life became the choice of an increasing segment of Muslim society. The rejuvenation of Islamic ideas and practices was felt in 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, a decade earlier, had declared the triumph of western liberalism and the demise of Islam in the Muslim world. Daniel Lerner made, in The Passing of Traditional Society, the following assessment of the place of Islam in the Middle Eastern 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."1
By the late 1980s, the western perception of Islam took a drastically different form. With the spread of Islamic reassertiveness eastward and westward, within and beyond 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, potentially threatening to western globalization. In his widely read and highly celebrated book, The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama had 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.2
While Fukuyama moves quickly in the next paragraph to dismiss the relevance of Islam on the grounds 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 to pose a threat to western globalism, as it is capable of providing a "coherent ideology" and is "potentially universal, reaching out to all men as men."
The above sentiments are echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, an American statesman and foreign policy strategist. In Out of Control, a book published shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union, Brzezinski 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.3
While Brzezinski does not dismiss the capacity of Islam to effect sociopolitical 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.
Antagonistic Attitude in Policy Making and Reporting:

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 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 were 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 a 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 seem bent to equate the highly tolerant and humane worldview of Islam with religious fanaticism, and to reduce the widely diverse approaches and concerns of Islamic groups into religious violence. What is more disturbing, however, is that while western media strongly condemn what is wrongly portrayed as Islamic imposition and aggression, they take all pains to justify secular imposition and aggression, ruthlessly practice by security forces of military dictatorships throughout the Muslim world.
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 feed into each other, leading to constant and continuous escalation in the confrontation between Islam and the West. That is, by supporting military dictators in the Muslim world, 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 hard line.
Global Media Tactics in the War on Islam:
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, distortion represents 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 tactics may be pointed out:
Distortion of Islamic worldviews and practices:
Western media reports are rampant with distorted views about Islam. However, a few examples should suffice to demonstrate this point. In a news feature published in its 15 September 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 the Christian "exodus" to deteriorating economic and security conditions caused by Zionist and Maronite excesses in Palestine and Lebanon respectively, the article points a finger at Islam, citing alleged Muslim "revenge on all Christians" following the defeat of the Crusaders, and alludes to the emigration of many Christians to Europe and the Americas, following the colonial powers' withdrawal from Muslim lands.
The article fails to point out 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 Christian gothics. Neither does the article state that many of the emigrants who left with the colonial powers were Muslim collaborators who feared retribution for having supported invading forces.
In another article published in June 1995 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 "disaster" is created by the western embargo on Sudan-as the reason for its anger with Turabi, it could not hide the fact that the Islamic orientation of the Sudanese government is a major source of its anger, particularly the government's efforts to implement "shari`a law" and its attempt "to export its version of Islam."

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