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Free media, violence and Islam
By Hameed Abdul Karim
Some years ago, there was a controversy among Muslims in London. A TV crew came over to interview Muslims about their stand on this controversy one day after Friday prayers but, to my surprise, not a single Muslim responded to the overtures of the anchorman, scampering from one Muslim to another to get his 'story' for the evening news. He couldn't get a single Muslim and I was happy that the Muslims were wise to the media game.

But imagine my surprise when I heard that the evening news actually carried a Muslim raving and ranting about the controversy as if he had gone mad. By his reaction, he provided the image of the stereotype Muslim that the media has created.

It's Muslims like this that writer Ameena Hussain (The Sunday Times, May 5, 2002) is exposed to in Geneva and the rest of the West, not those who dismissed the trap laid by the anchorman. Since she is shown only pictures like these, she is naturally convinced that Islam has become a violent religion.

As for Daniel Pearl, well there are a lot of stories whizzing around on the 'underground media' namely the Internet. One report said that he was an Israeli Jew - a Zionist - working for a Zionist newspaper, The Wall Street Journal. That part of the information has been 'independently confirmed' by the western electronic and print media. There are other unconfirmed reports that he was a spy, operating as a 'journalist' trying to connect Richard Reid, the 'Shoe Bomber' to the Al-Qaeeda.

If Ms. Hussain wants to know the various covers that spies take, all she has to do is read the book 'By Way of Deception' by Victor Ostrovosky, in which he relates that Mossad agents even become pimps to serve their country.

In an eulogy of sorts, the sad-looking CNN girl said that Daniel Pearl lived for three things - his wife, their unborn child and for a free media. I have no quarrel with the first two goals but I simply cannot accept the third one.

I share Ms. Hussain's sorrow over Pearl's death but to highlight one horrible death - murder - execution - call it what you like, and ignore the thousands killed by both his countries (Israel and America) is like missing the wood for the trees. We have to remember just one incident among many where about 40 Muslims were blown to bits by American bombs while worshipping in a mosque in Afghanistan.

This was no less ghastly than Pearl's death. Didn't these harmless Afghans have anything to live for like Pearl? Didn't they have wives like Pearl? Didn't a single one of them have unborn children like Pearl? Why is it that we don't hear of this massacre in a media that Pearl believed was free?

Why didn't Pearl's 'free' media interview the wives of the men the Americans killed like they interviewed his weeping wife? Don't Muslim women weep for their husbands like Ms. Pearl?

How easy it is, and hypocritical to legitimise violence, disguising it as an act of altruism, and then claim its victims are violent because they react violently to free themselves from an oppressive aggressor?

Wasn't Nelson Mandela's fight for freedom from his oppressors a violent one? Violent not because he wanted it to be so but violent it became, because his aggressors reacted to his peaceful demands with all the violence at their command. Should we, then, classify the lovable Nelson Mandela as a violent man? Is freedom violent? If a nation is involved in a violent struggle for democracy, should we, then, classify democracy as a violent ideology?

The Catholics of East Timor fought for their independence from Indonesia and naturally violence ensued and engulfed the tiny nation. Is Catholicism violent? If the answer to these questions is no, why should Islam be classified as violent when Muslims under occupation in Kashmir, Chechnya, Palestine and Muslims under proxy government fight for their freedom and independence from their oppressors?

I apologize to Ms. Hussain for not agreeing with her when she says that there is an Islam that is violent.

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