Changing the Media’s Relationship to Muslims

“As we all know, the media is the most important tool of modern times. It provides us not only with knowledge of what is happening in the world around us, but it also profoundly affects our analysis of world affairs. Due to our hectic way of life, most of us believe in what we see and hear in the news as holy truth. We don’t have time to check the authenticity of what has been shown or told to us.

I hadn’t realized the effect of media on even very young children until I recently overheard my four-year-old grandson telling his seven-year-old sister that he liked Obama. The six-year-old yelled back that she liked Hillary.

Unfortunately, Muslims in America have a unique relationship with the news media.
To begin with, Islam and the Muslims have never enjoyed a balanced portrayal in the West due to centuries of competition between the world’s two largest religions, and to the Middle East conflict that began in 1948. Now, it seems the events of 9/11 have given a free hand to the media to pick on Muslims, who have become the number-one minority group demonized in the public square, in books, in print and broadcast media, on movie screens, and increasingly on the Internet with the explosive proliferation of single-focus sites where hate-speech runs unchecked.”

To read the rest of the article, go to Engage Minnesota and read it there.