No You Can’t

Eboo does some good work in this piece on media representations. I think it’s the next area we have to talk about: how even basic media framing perpetuates fear and ignorance about religion. The Faith Divide: Nine years after 9/11, a debate about Islam – On Faith at washingtonpost.com. There you have it in a nutshell. The forces of intolerance scream from the rooftops, “Islam is about domination”. The forces of moderation are questioned with the intent of delegitimizing them (they’re either just liars, or liars and secret radicals).

While the filmmakers behind the anti-Islam film, ‘Innocence of Muslims,’ may not have intended to cause protests and violence across the Muslim World, they did clearly intend to perpetuate Islamophobia. And while their film may not have succeeded in directly doing so, it seems as if the subsequent violent protests may be helping them achieve their aim. So as protests in the Muslim world continue, more Americans may become disillusioned with our involvement in the region. But what does that mean for Muslim Americans, here in the United States? Answering that question is Hussein Rashid, professor of religion at Hofstra…

It’s a good, basic criticism of associational strategies in new stories. I do, however, take exception to the fact that Fox is the only guilty of this. They may be the most inelegant, but they are not alone. Why I Don’t Watch Fox News « Et cetera. I don’t try to assess whether or not news channels and newspaper companies are biased, because there is no question that they are all biased towards one thing or another. It is virtually impossible to be completely objective in any kind of news story. It is not, however, virtually impossible to provide good…