Author: Dr. Sami Alrabaa
Publication: Islam-Watch.org
Date: October 26, 2008
URL: http://www.islam-watch.org/Sami/Western-Media-Handle-Islamism-Superficially.htm
As I recently opened my email-inbox I saw
an email under the subject: "Wall Street Journal Question". I thought,
"I don't know anybody in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)". "Is
it spam?" But finally I decided to open the email. It was from Andrew
Higgins, a journalist with the WSJ.
Higgins wrote, he read my article "Islam
Professor Converts from Believer to Non-Believer," on Europe News, found
it "fascinating" and needed to ask me some questions; if I could
give him my telephone number, which I later did. He called from Paris and
we talked for more than one hour. He asked questions about Professor Kalisch,
I had written about - the German Islam professor convert who claimed that
the Prophet Muhammad maybe did not exist. I answered all his questions and
gave him lots of information, he did not know about.
I asked Higgins, if I could publish articles
in the WSJ about Islamism and Islamists. He welcomed the idea. Two days later,
I sent him an article in which I focused on how Islamists use Zakat (alms)
and riba (usury) as sheer hypocritical Islamic propaganda. I documented how
in practice the so-called "Islamic banks" do take and give interests
which Islamists call "murabaha" (shared profit), but de facto it
is usury, if we use the Islamist terminology.
Higgins promptly replied, he "would drop
attacks on Islamic banking as a fraud. This is a big and complicated issue."
Thus, exposing Islamic banking as a fraud,
according to the WSJ journalist, is a "big and complicated issue."
Obviously, the WSJ and other Western media
do not want to alienate oil Arab sheikhs whose investments in the West are
estimated at 3 trillion dollars. The Western readers should realize that part
of the profit, accrued from these investments, is spent on funding Islamic
terror across the globe rather than in job-creating projects in poor Muslim
countries.
My article about Islamic banking was never
published by the WSJ and Higgins stopped calling or answering my email. He
got what he wanted from me about Kalisch for his article in which he will
certainly handle the surface and not the core of the matter. He updated his
information, but surly he would not be critical of our fellow Islamists as
I am and many others are.
It is clear that Higgins and his ilk do not
want American and international readers to learn about the fraudulent methods
of Islamic banks and Islamist "charity" organizations which fund
terrorist organizations worldwide.
By the way, I checked out the archive of the
WSJ, and I could not find one single article about "Islamic banking"
of which Islamists brag. In fact, the WSJ as a newspaper that primarily focuses
on economics and finances should actually discuss such a controversial issue
in the midst of a severe international financial crisis, which the Islamists
are using to promote their political agenda.
So, not only Western governments are soft
on Islamism, but also the mainstream media. These governments are aware that
especially Saudi Arabia teaches hatred and violence against other faiths in
its schools and funds madrassas (faith schools) that teach the same in Pakistan
and elsewhere.
The mainstream media want to keep aloof. They
sometimes report about these schools, but never blast them as if they were
reporting about schools on another planet, although they know quite well that
these madrassas graduate suicide-bombers and export them into the whole world.
The majority of the 9/11 attackers were from Saudi Arabia, for instance.
Michael Slackman tells in the New York Times
(February 17, 2008) the story of a young Muslim Egyptian, Ahmed Muhammad Sayid,
who allegedly turns to Islam to calm down his "daily grievances".
Slackman does not mention in one single word the Islamists who are behind
the ordeal of this man. It is the Islamists who turned Egypt into a stone-age
place that lacks entertainment and transformed it into a sex-segregated society.
That is the kind of stories which the New York Times and other mainstream
media tell their audiences.
When I phoned Professor Fathi Abulainain,
a colleague at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, and told him about Slackman's
story, Abulainain told me "The whole story is a fabrication. Slackman
came to us and was desperate to have a story for his newspaper. I referred
him to one of my students, to Sayid. Slackman met with Sayid and wrote the
story. Later Sayied told me, Slackman wanted the story like that. For $ 200.00
I would tell anything."
Abulainain commented, "You know those
Western journalists. They seek the sensational, the exotic, but not the substantial.
They don't want to discuss the root causes of violence in the Muslim world.
They prefer to discuss the symptoms, not the causes."
Money and profit is the name of the game.
According to the International Institute of Media in Berlin, the Saudis possess
more than 27% of the stocks of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times,
and the Washington Post.
The media is an important industry and a lucrative
business like any other one. Especially international media fiercely compete
amongst themselves. The larger their consumers (readers, viewers) are, the
larger are their profits, via commercial spots and adverts. Hence, they avoid
blasting anybody, including Islamists. These media are friends with everybody,
including despotic regimes. Then antagonizing any regime would imply blocking
them and boycotting them which involves a big market loss.
The Arabsparticularly do not enjoy any freedom
of speech. The local media are state-controlled and propagandistic, the commercial/private
ones are in Saudi hands, and the international media hardly criticize Arab
regimes. If they ever do that, they do it very moderately. You can get uncensored
CNN, WSJ, The New Times, The Washington Post etc. in all Arab cities. Why
should they be censored ? They flirt with all Arab regimes. CNN brags, "Everybody
talks to CNN."
Having said all that, the winners are the
Islamists. They are tightening their grip on the majority of Muslims in Muslim
and Arab societies, and nobody dare stop them. The voice of moderate Muslims
are heard neither at home nor on the international stage.
Eventually, neither Western governments nor their mainstream media are serious
about the war on terror. The NATO troops in Afghanistan have proved to be
a paper tiger vis-à-vis the primitive Taliban front. They are not acting,
they are rather reacting. Besides, they have lost both the hearts and minds
of the local population. And the mainstream media act unconcerned. They rush
to the scene of a suicide bomb and report the slightest detail. The underlining
root cause behind these bloodsheds, however, remains untouched and undiscussed.
If the West wants to win the war on terror,
it must inevitably fight the root causes of terror, and these lie particularly
in the oil rich Arab countries, Egypt, and Jordan, all despotic friendly regimes
of the West.
The war on Islamic terror can only be won
from inside countries of the Middle East, not with America's troops and those
of its allies. Only when the West wins the heart and mind of the majority
of Muslims through freedom of speech and democracy, can the Islamists terror
be defeated.
For the Western mainstream media to gain credibility,
they should tackle the true issues related to Islamism and highlight the hypocrisy
of its leaders. The Islamist propaganda can only be defeated by exposing it.
The naked truth must be told regardless of how bitter it is. Covering up the
truth about Islamism only makes the mainstream Western media an accomplice
to the Islamist terror and its propaganda.
Fatima Mernissi, a Moroccan sociologist, said
on Arte TV (October 13, 2008), "Only when the heat of Islamist terror
reaches Western countries, like in Afghanistan and Iraq, Westerners would
wake up and start seriously discussing the root causes of terror. In the meantime,
they will continue staring at the peel of Islamism."
Indeed, the West is still handling Islamist
terror as isolated events and routine news. They are incapable or unwilling
to explore the true crux of Islamism and its dimensions.
