As
a graduate student of the department of Orientalistics at the Higher Institute
of Islamic Da’wa, Muhammad Ben Saud Islamic University-Riyadh, it is part of my
academic interest to read how Islam is represented in the American and English
Media.
Two
months ago Professor T. B. Irving (Haj Ta’lim Ali” sent me a short newsletter
containing an article written by Rev. R. Marston Speight titled “ What will be
the next bug-bear?” Though Rev. Speight is the director of the Office on
Christian- Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary, he has taken the initiative
to speak on behalf of Islam.
In
his article Rev. Speight expressed his apprehension and fear about the new
campaign against Islam in the American media. He said :” As a result of the
tumultuous and astonishing events in Eastern Europe, the forces of the world
communism no longer seem as threatening as they did before. So those Americans
who constantly dwelt on the supposed danger of communism to our nation are
suddenly left deprived of one of their favorite themes.”
Based
on Rev. Speight’ s knowledge of how Islam is represented in the American media,
he drew the conclusion that “ Islam will be set forth as the new bogey man.”
The
example cited in the above newsletter is the syndicated column by Charles
Kruthammer (Feb.19, 1990) in which he wrote under the banner “Islam lunches a
new global crusade”. This crusade is also termed as “a global intifadah”
struggling for” political independence and political domination.”
The
distortion is even more apparent when Kruthammer tries to show why the Islamic
struggle is “threatening” by saying that “the force of Islam is autocratic and
intolerant” and in the Islamic world self-determination is permitted only to
Moslems (sic)”
To
cite another example in this lengthy subject, Professor Bernard Lewis (Emeritus
of Princeton University) and presently the director of Annenberg Institute for
Judaic and Near Eastern Studies) was chosen to give the annual Thomas Jefferson
lecture at the Library of Congress. The title of his lecture was purely
academic, but the contents were quite polemical. The title “Western society s
viewed from Islamic Perspective” could be justly put” Why Muslims hate
America?” or “a new cold war with
Islam”
Lewis
said in his lecture:” But Islam like other religions, has also known periods
when it inspired in some of its followers, a mood of hatred and violence.”
Lewis moves from
speaking about Islam as a religion to his favorite topic of fundamentalists,
radicals, etc. and their views of the west. He said:” the struggle of the
fundamentalists is against two enemies; secularism and modernism.”
A third example of what type of
representation Islam receives in America is the commencement address of the
graduation and commissioning ceremony of the class of 1990 of the US Naval
Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, by the United States Vice President on May 30th.1990.
In his speech the Vice President
said:” We have been surprised this past century by the rise of Communism, the
rise of Nazism, and the rising of radical Islamic Fundamentalism. I am sure
we’ll be surprised in the future as well. Though we may be surprised, let us
always be prepared.”
If the Vice President is surprised by
the rise of “radical Islamic Fundamentalism “ it is also surprising that he
terms the Islamic revival or resurgence as radical fundamentalism and even more
surprising is to link Islam with Nazism and Communism
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