Mad Mel will no doubt be fuming: Geoffry Alderman, a fellow columnist alongside Mad Mel at the Jewish Chronicle, said in a lecture to the Islamic Sharia Council that the experience of British Jewry* showed there was room for aspects of Sharia to be incorporated within English law without compromising the principal that all citizens must be treated equal under the law.
*Not going as far back as 1290, of course…
Rahmatullah Naikzad, an AP photographer in Afghanistan, took a snuff film of the Taliban executing two women. The evidence is pretty solid against him for violation of the AP’s own ethical code of conduct:
AP employees must avoid behavior or activities - political, social or financial - that create a conflict of interest or compromise our ability to report the news fairly and accurately, uninfluenced by any person or action.
Editorial employees are expected to be scrupulous in avoiding any political activity, whether they cover politics regularly or not. They may not run for political office or accept political appointment; nor may they perform public relations work for politicians or their groups.
Al Azhar, regarded as Sunnism’s leading scholarly and religious institution, has condemned a documentary by Iranian filmmakers on Anwar Sadat. Al Azhar has said the film should be burnt.
As the FaithWorld blogger, Aziz El-Kaissouni, notes, this is a good example how Muslim states enlist “Islamic scholars into echoing the government’s grievances with an added Islamic flavour”. No Orientalism here, I am afraid. The more uncomfortable truth may be that a major Muslim institution is acting in the service of an autocratic regime (with the added phenomenon that it is ‘nationalising’ itself further).
Iran has responded by saying the film does no represent the official view of the state and has been made by a “private organisation”. On this point, El-Kaissouni notes:
[Iran’s official stance regarding the documentary] is one of the cultural issues that pops up every time something like this happens. During the Danish cartoons controversy, various figures in the religious or political establishments of Muslim countries demanded the offending paper and artists be prosecuted. They seemed to operate on the assumption that all states can control media output in their countries, as many Muslim and Arab governments do.
I don’t know if this response by Arab religious and political establishment figures can be necessarily called a ‘cultural issue’. I suggest it is more likely these establishment figures are interested in shoring up their political power. I do agree, however, that culture may play a part in what can or cannot be subjected to media scrutiny and intensity in different countries.
I wonder if Nicolas Sarkozy will speak out in favour of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo this time around?
CBS News has a investigation on the failure of American-funded Al Hurra channel to gain credibility amongst Arabs.
The CBS report also suggests Arabs are an ungrateful bunch for seeing through the intention of the news channel (my emphasis):
Compared to Al Jazeera, Al Hurra does feature more American and Israeli voices. It has extensive coverage of U.S. politics. Cultural programs, like an hour on blue jeans are among its most popular. But after nearly half a billion dollars, “The Free One” is seen by most Arabs as the U.S. government station, “The Cheney Channel” as some have called it, and that perception is limiting in a region where people tend to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Obamatoongate reminds me of a similar case back in 2003 involving Dave Brown, a political cartoonist for The Independent.
Brown depicted the then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon eating a Palestinian child during an election campaign. The cartoon came under fire for being antisemitic by invoking the blood libel slur against Jews. The Independent had to defend itself against (the admittedly toothless) Press Complaints Commission. Brown, and his defenders, argued they were satirising Sharon’s election campaign and Brown had alluded to Francisco Goya’s frightening painting, Saturn Devouring His Son, rather than an ancient anti-Jewish slur.
The critics agreed with Brown; his cartoon won an award that year.
(Perhaps more ’shocking’ would be the fact that as Saturn had to be eating his own children, then Sharon had to be eating one of his own too, i.e. the Palestinian child had to be his own.)
Wife-beating? That’s fine – unless you’re a Muslim.
The Times responds to criticism of one its journalists by threatening legal and criminal action against Media Lens, a website which targets coverage of current affairs from the ‘quality’ press.
Positive and negative responses to discrimination against Muslims in America.
The British Muslim Initiative (BMI) has threatened the blog Harry’s Place with legal action. BNR explains:
Researchers looking at the way British Muslims are represented by the media say they have found that most coverage is negative in tone.
Mark Steel in the Independent on the made-up-stories-about-Muslims
Maybe Muslim newspapers should retaliate by publishing their own made-up stories. So it will be reported that “Barmy PC teachers in Leicester have banned children from playing Noughts and Crosses, claiming the cross reminds Church of England kiddies of the suffering undertaken by Lord Jesus. A spokesman for the Board of Education said, ‘We have to be sensitive. Which is why we’ve replaced the game with ‘Noughts and Hexagons’. We did look into calling it ‘Noughts and Crowns of Thorns’ but decided Hexagons was more appropriate.
“
MoveOn.org has a petition you can sign to tell Fox to stop being racist douchebags (specifically when it comes to Obama, hypothetically in general).
This is a really important programme to watch. It can be watched it on Channel 4’s website if one has missed it. [Link]
There is an associated webpage and pamphlet
The classic scene is the journalist showing headlines that have appeared in newspapers here in the UK, with the words ‘Jew’ or ‘Black’ substituted for ‘Muslim’, and seeing the double standards.
Peter Oborne had a couple (1, 2) of articles in the Independent on Islamophobia in Britain.
An investigation for Channel 4’s Dispatches programme discovered many violent episodes and attacks on Muslims, with very few reported; those that do get almost no publicity.
As I type, Channel 4 are airing Oborne’s It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim as part of Dispatches War on Terror series.
One of the claims that will be made in the documentary is that when it comes to ‘Muslim outrage’ stories, you can just make up stories without investigating the facts. An infamous example is the “Muslim hate mob” story which was published The Sun, which turned out to be completely false.
*Dispatches is the same documentary series that received a lot of stick from Muslims over its “Undercover Mosque” programme.
I’ll be speaking this Saturday at the ISNA South Central Conference in Houston. The topic: using the Web to shape public discourse on Islam and Muslims.
As the ‘paedophile Nazi’ bomber is found guilty of terrorism, Septic Isle notes that
Foreign Policy’s top 10 public intellectuals for 2008 were all Muslims.
FP reckon identity politics carried the day. They’re probably right.
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