Media Handle Islamism Superficially

by Dr. Sami Alrabaa
November 2, 2008

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/124/media-handle-islamism-superficially

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 Islamic hypocritical 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 is, according to the WSJ journalist, 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 not 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. (Check out http://www.weeklyblitz.net/index.php?id=137 ).

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 the American and international reader 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. (Check out file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/user/Desktop/Sami's%20Articles%20in%20KT/Saudi%20Arabia'%20s%20textbooks%20incite%20hatred.htm

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 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 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, also with despotic regimes. Then antagonizing any regime would imply blocking them and boycotting them which involves a big market loss.

In particular Arabs, they 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 CNN, WSJ, the New Times, the Washington Post, etc. in all Arab cities, uncensored. Why should they be? 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 un-discussed.

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 minds and hearts 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 how bitter it is. Covering up the truth about Islamism can only make of the Western mainstream 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.

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