The Daily Clarity

Religion and the media – forces for change

The media loves to expose and espouse failure. The ideological blogs and forums relish finding fault with the opposition, especially a juicy immoral stumble. If you can stomach the bile, take a visit to such a site, like Michelle Malkin, and bathe in the certainty of unexamined beliefs where stridence is equated with veracity. Like frauds, scandals, and disasters, these story lines, along with sex scandals and celebrities, or any combination thereof – ‘moves the needle’ in terms of circulation, as media pundits tell us. Eyeballs on articles are the measure of success, regardless of the content or its value.

The media loves to simplify complex issues for instant guilt-ridden, bite-sized consumption. Whether this says more about the reader or the writer is a point of debate, but it certainly has become a case of supply reacting to demand. The jury is out as to who initiated the cycle but the negative spin is pervasive and self-fulfilling. The moral and intellectual demise of the media has a lasting impact on the a civilization. Media matters – it is the voice of a civilization and the quality of reporting can influence the tribal intelligence of a nation. A persuasive spin, a dictatorial editorial policy, questionable facts, poor logic, or a speculative opinion piece matter. Whether for evil or for good, the media shapes the consciousness of a people.

The US is poorly served in this capacity, as we have reported before, but this is not a problem confined to the Americas, it is a global issue. It is also an issue that has more than one dimension. It is not only the quality of reporting that is questionable in many cases, there is also the issue of journalistic tone and intent. Give a journalist a choice to report a story, and in the vast majority of cases that will to misquote a song, ‘they will accentuate the negative.’ Sadly, this negativity conveys a gravitas that many current reports don’t warrant based on the simplicity of content and the absence of analysis

The media especially loves horror—inducing, spine-tingling sound bite stories in relation to what it terms the shadow of ‘radical Islam’. Even in so naming the phenomena, they look for a fear based label. The current conflict should be more correctly identified as a battle against ‘militant Islam’, as the predominant issue is political militancy, not religious radicalism. Religion may well be used as a cloak in this conflict, but it is a secular power and resource war, not one of ideology, despite what the media tells us. The pursuit of political dominance and a desire for unfettered governance over a country’s population may well be dressed in the language of religious purity, as it has been for generations, but it is the most earth-based, lustful, secular desire for power that exists. However, couching a conflict as a struggle for resource and political gain doesn’t set one a quiver in quite the same way. However, if one is to truly give readers from afar an insight into the nuance of a issue, rather than a while hat-black hat over-simplification, one needs to report the detail, and in an attention-deficit age, detail doesn’t often resonate.

Let’s take the intent and the consciousness of the Muslims and the Muslim nations as a case in point. In the West, if one only had access to domestic media, one could be forgiven for believing that every Muslim has evil intents towards America. One could be led to the conclusion that every Muslim and every Muslim nation intends death and destruction to the citizens of the United States and their interests around the world. Some do, but to characterize it as an intrinsic element of Muslim philosophy, or as a universal self-truth hardly stands up to even the most rudimentary of analysis. In a global conflict not every one is so cleanly aligned, so philosophically resolute – certainty lies in extremism and it dwells only in those incapable of doubt. The minority in reality, not the majority, regardless of the ideological bent.

In reality, it is a small percentage of Muslims that desire to do harm to the US and their interests, and surprisingly it is declining year over year. The one notable exception to this trend is Palestine, and this should be understood within the context of a specific reaction to the Israeli attacks on the Gaza, which many Palestinians see the US as complicit. A recent global public opinion poll of Muslims in predominantly Muslim countries has found that the vast majority of people continue to oppose attacks on U.S. civilians as a means to pursue a political agenda. In the poll, the largest number of those who approve using violence for political gain on U.S. civilians could be found in the Palestinian territories with 24% in favor, 15% with “mixed feelings”, and 59% opposed. After that, all the numbers drop off sharply. For those who support attacks on U.S. civilians, 8% in Egypt, 5% in Indonesia, 9% in Pakistan, 7% in Morocco, 11% in Jordan, 8% in Turkey, and only 4% in Azerbaijan.

These percentages, albeit frightening, are relatively consistent with the number of non-Muslims in our own Western nations who believe the use of violence for political gain is acceptable.There are a lot of violent political extremists out there, and not all of them are Muslim. Let’s also have a realistic view though, there are a large number of people in the world who do have desires to cause the US harm, and a large numbers of them are Muslim. However, not every Muslim has the same agenda, as not every America believes has the same exact ideological set. The spectrum of opinion is as varied as the countries, the sects and the regions. This is a case where over-simplifying the issue is dangerous. Such an absence of nuanced understanding of complex issues can result in flawed foreign policy.

To quote WorldPublicOpinion.org, sponsors of the poll:

Steven Kull, director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, comments, “The US faces a conundrum. US efforts to fight terrorism with an expanded military presence in Muslim countries appear to have elicited a backlash and to have bred some sympathy for al Qaeda, even as most reject its terrorist methods.”

“People in majority-Muslim countries express mixed feelings about al Qaeda and other Islamist groups that use violence, perhaps due to this combination of support for al Qaeda’s goals and disapproval of its terrorist methods.

However large majorities support allowing Islamist groups to organize parties and participate in democratic elections. In some majority-Muslim countries, Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, are forbidden from participating in elections.

The Muslims surveyed still remain suspicious of US objectives. The report continues:

In all Muslim publics polled, majorities see US support for democracy in Muslim countries as conditional at best. Only very small minorities say “the US favors democracy in Muslim countries whether or not the government is cooperative with the US.” The most common response is that the US favors democracy only if the government is cooperative, while nearly as many say that the US simply opposes democracy in the Muslim countries.

If you read the full survey report, one can see that the issues are complex and interdependent. The US is mistrusted in relation to Israel, is seen as hypocritical in the application of international law, and more interested in oil than freedom in the region. The fears and level of mistrust expressed in the Muslim world are not inconsistent with the view from the West – neither side trusts the political intent or agenda of the other side. Is this misunderstanding and conflict an innate state of affairs or a manufactured agenda?

The confusion of messaging of each other’s intent may not just be an issue of media agenda. The message as delivered in the mosque, the church, or the temple rings true and resonates with the faithful, but is it consistent with the faith’s true tenets or the orator’s political agenda? Does extremism hide in the veils of religion? Anecdotal evidence would appear to support the hypotheses. Extreme rhetoric and intolerance is preached in many organized religions – from the evangelical pulpits of the American South, through the mosques of Europe, to the Temples of Tel Aviv. While the media likes bad news, religion both relies and thrives on it. Religion is a primeval, tribal force built on dogma, regardless of creed, that is anathema of intellectual debate. Perhaps there is a lesson there for the media, and especially the politicized outlets, that ideological dogma is an intrinsic part of the problem, regardless of the flavor, whether it emanates from a keyboard or a pulpit.Whether the hate is preached in the name of a God, circulation or a political ideology, the outcome is often the same. The next time you read or hear an extreme position, regardless of the channel used to deliver it to you, we hope you will bear that in mind.