A Frame for Islam
A Frame for Islam
A Frame for Islam
A Frame for Islam
They parked the Black Ford Van across the street. A normal, peaceful day it seemed; everybody preoccupied with their own work, living their lives on a usual basis.
Nobody suspected a thing.
"Are you ready?" a firm, manly voice from the front seat broke the silence. Rodger, tightening his belt, nodded his head once in agreement. A guy opened the back door, and Rodger stepped out.
He looked right, then left, scanning his path for the right moment to approach. With his right foot leading the way, he crossed the busy street to the sidewalk right across. A gigantic bone-white building laid there staring at him, questioning his arrival. He did not belong there.
He entered slowly.
Papers shuffling, people talking, telephones ringing, footsteps shifting, keyboards typing all that noise grew silent as he felt isolated in his own bubble.
With his hands locked straight down, he lifted his right thumb. Heart beating wildly, he closed his eyes and took a last deep breath.
Finally, he pressed the button.
In less than a second, the building moaned in pain as it blackened the sky with its heavy smoke and covered the streets with its shattered tiny pieces. The peaceful city of New York turned hysteric, for the Wall Street Building had just been bombed. Various reporters and journalists approached the destination as soon as possible to inform the citizens of another terrorist attack.
Nowadays, the media has a wide influence on the people of this generation. Citizens from all over the world rely on some type of media to stay up-to-date with the events happening around them both local and worldwide events. However, most of the time, the media does not quite deliver the exact information precisely as it happened. Muslims have been victims of the media; referred to as terrorists and given immoral stereotypes, such as killers, the Islamic religion has grown vague to the majority of people. The people in the Western countries lack the proper knowledge about Muslims and rely mostly on the information given by the media. Muslims own two images in today's world: the terroristic dominant image that shows the Islamic religion as a supporter of murder, and the normal everyday life of a Muslim that people fail to acknowledge about. The media clearly gives off an unfavorable misrepresentation of the Islamic religion as a violent religion tolerating the murder of others thus leaving the Western people with fears and concerns.
The typical Muslims appear on television or in the news and magazines as barbarian individuals carrying a machine gun in one hand and the holy Qur'an in the other killing innocent people as well as themselves in the name of God. After the destruction of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City incident that occurred on 9/11 in 2001, Americans have developed a grudge against Muslims. Due to answers from several classmates about the image they view Islam as, Chase Sutton, Kate Wagner, Majed Al-Harthi and more support the media and, like most Americans, believe that Muslims are truly "terrorists".
Jews and Muslims have not been the best friends lately; in fact, they have not been friends to begin with. The establishment of the Jewish country, Israel, have had a long-time effect as a never ending war with the Islamic country, Palestine. Since that time, the Jewish people and the Islamic people do not like one another. Muslims feel the need to support their Muslim brothers and sisters in Palestine, and therefore unintentionally dislike Israel. In Lebanon, since birth, I have been taught not to trust Jews and I actually feel biased toward them. I admit that I do not like Jews however only because I was raised not to. I never really had any choice of my own. Similarly, the Jews have struggled quite a lot to acquire a country of their own and would not give it up that easily. This Israel-Palestine war drained all the loveable feelings between the two of them.
Fig.1. According to media.org, these are the six Jewish companies that own 96% of the world's media. Source: Media Channel Organization, October 2, 2006
Studies have shown that the Jews control the majority of today's media. Figure 1 illustrates the top five Jewish companies that control over 96% of the world's media according to the mediachannel.org. AOL Time Warner, Disney Channel, Vivendi Universal, Bertelsmann AC, Viacom and News Corporations are the names of the five top companies. As seen in Figure 1. the News Corporation Company controls many channels and newspapers from all over the world. It controls the STAR TV satellite as well as the Phoenix satellite that reach over 300 million people in Asia. News Corp also broadcasts to people in Europe and Latin America. In addition to that, it controls channels, such as the Fox News, and The New York Post in the U.S. along with hundreds of channels in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Joel Stein agrees with this idea when he said in his article "Who Runs Hollywood? C'mon" that "when the studio chiefs took out a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks ago to demand that the Screen Actors Guild settle its contract, the open letter was signed by: News Corp. President Peter Chernin (Jewish), Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey (Jewish), Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger (Jewish), Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton (surprise, Dutch Jew), Warner Bros. Chairman Barry Meyer (Jewish), CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves (so Jewish his great uncle was the first prime minister of Israel), MGM Chairman Harry Sloan (Jewish) and NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker (mega-Jewish)" (Los Angeles Times 19 Dec. 2008). It is no coincidence that all these owners of the most successful channels are Jewish. If Jewish companies control 96% of the media with a wide variety of news channels, and the media views Muslims as terrorists then are not the Jewish people responsible for dirtying the image of Muslims? In my opinion, I believe the Jews just show the world the way they see Muslims because of their mistreatment towards each other. The Jews might see Muslims as terrorists because of their constant fights over Palestine that end up killing people on both sides. This issue does go back to the never ending struggle over Palestine between the Jews and Muslims, and the Jews' fear of losing Israel. Oppositions to Islam often use parts of the Qur'an to prove the religion as violent. According to Ibn Warraq, he argues in his article "Islam Encourages Terrorism" that the religion encourages its followers "to fight and kill in the name of Allah" backing up his argument with verses he picked from the Qur'an (2). He uses verses such as "Do not yield to the unbelievers, but fight them strenuously with this Qur'an" and "Whether unarmed or well-equipped, march on and fight for the cause of Allah, with your wealth and your persons. This is best for you, if you but knew it" (3). However, in Nada El Sawy's article "Yes, I follow Islam, But I'm Not a Terrorist", she contradicts the verses he chose with a verse as well. She uses the Qur'an verse that states "Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but commit no aggression, for Allah loves not transgressors" (al-Baqarah 2:190) evaluating that one cannot jump to conclusions instead further research is needed (2). He obviously researched quite well; however, in Nada El Sawy's article, she clarified that a decent number of Americans do not the meaning of Allah but do know that "I worship Allah" however "without understanding that Allah is simply the Arabic word for God" (1). This verifies that most American citizens do lack the necessary information to sufficiently understand at least some aspects of the religion in order to wisely judge the Islamic religion as the religion they believe it is.Furthermore, people cannot simply read the Qur'an and understand the various features of the religion; it takes a lot more than that. Sumbul Ali-Karamali, the author of the book "The Muslim Next Door" clarified an important left-out detail. There is one and only one version of the Qur'an, and it is in the Arabic language. She clearly explained in Chapter 4 that the translation of the Qur'an is not precise because "a translation would never be able to convey the Qur'an's exact meaning" (63). The Qur'an translations are not the Qur'an itself but are "different attempts at translating the meaning" from Arabic to English or any other language (63). Therefore, one cannot rely on the renderings of the holy book to understand the religion and get into it in depth. Think of it this way, Shakespeare wrote many pieces of literature that remain untouched throughout all these years to preserve the EXACT meaning that Shakespeare wanted to convey. The same issue applies to the Qur'an, and therefore, in order to fully understand the Qur'an, one must understand the holy book as it came across in Arabic. All those attempts to use verses from the Qur'an to prove the violence and aggression found in it have been proven useless because there are contradicting verses that overcome and outnumber these "harsh" verses.Last but not least, political leaders play a huge role in one's life these days as well as politics itself. However, intense relations between one political leader and another may lead to straw man attacks on one another, attacking their image and character rather than their political views. Osama Benladen may have taken some foolish decisions but so did many others. Personally, I do not like Osama because his actions, from my perspective, should be classified as barbaric and irrational. The massive killing of innocent people does not show any humanitarian aspect in that is a quality that defines the Islamic religion. Having so many supporters does not necessarily mean that the actions are morally right. Osama used his religion to explain his actions but little does he know that he actually changed the way people look at Islam now. However, he was not the only political leader that killed many innocent people. Hitler, for instance, killed a whole lot more than Osama and performed the Jewish genocide. He did not even follow the Islamic religion. Clearly, a person does not have to be a Muslim in order to kill other innocent people. People have been using the Islamic religion as an excuse to their barbaric actions.In brief, despite all the oppositions, some American are willing to actually get to know the Islamic religion on its true identity regardless of the media's stereotyped image. The media can go a bit over the limit sometimes, but for that reason people should not believe everything they see or hear until they double check that the information provided is relevant.Karamli, Sambul Al. The Muslim Next Door: The Qur'an, the Media, and that VeilThing. Ashland: White Cloud Press, 2008. Print.Sawy, Nada El. "Yes, I Follow Islam, But I'm Not a Terrorist." The Newsweek 15 Oct. 2001.PrintWarraq, Ibn. "Islam Encourages Terrorism". Opposing Viewpoints: Terrorism. Ed. Laura K.Egendorf. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale.Austin High School-Sugarland FBISD. 27 Jan. 2011Media Channel Organization. Chart. Ultra Concentrated Media Top Selling Brands. 2 Oct. 2006.Print.Stein, Joel. "Who Runs Hollywood? C'mon." Los Angeles Times 19 Dec. 2008. Print. http://www.articlesbase.com/religion-articles/a-frame-for-islam-4387672.html
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