More on the "Fear, Inc" report from the Center for American Progress, that I wrote about here, from the oddly-headlined "Exacerbating the 'Perception Problem': Center for American progress Chronicles the American Right's Decade of Baseless Aggression Against Islam" by Jeff Emanuel:
Related:
The Attempted Terrorist Attack by the Face of Peaceful Islam, and the Problems it Presents for Media and Muslims Alike, Jeff Emanuel, August 1st 2011. here.
...on pp. 94-95, where the authors take the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) to task for translating and disseminating the words of international Muslims and Islamists. Such selective outrage, which blames “Islamophobia” on those who translate and publicize what Islamists themselves are saying (within a document that seeks to lay the blame for initiating a decade of Islamic skepticism at the feet of right-wing Westerners), is not only utterly useless in terms of furthering our national discussion of these important issues, but only further widens the divide between the involved parties. [my emphasis]
Which brings me back to the main problem with Fear, Inc. That the "radical right-wing Islamophobes" that it fingers are only quoting Islamic sources on the issues of (1) Islamic supremacism and (2) the spread of Sharia. The report's attack on these people is classic case of attacking the messenger.
[Note: mind you, I don't give the critics of Islam a completely free pass. They're a disparate lot, sometimes tetchy, sometimes overwrought and sometimes, no doubt, wrong. But I don't question their motives as sinister, right-wing, racist or bigoted. I believe that most if not all are genuinely concerned about the threat of Islam (or radical Islam, if you will), to the west and its freedoms of speech of conscience and the rights of women and minorities. There are many bloggers who blog for the interest and concern, for not a dime in return; they do it because they're genuinely worried -- and have a lot of evidence to substantiate the worry -- not because they've been "duped" by some vast right-wing conspiracy]
More from the above article:
This unwillingness to identify Islamists’ successful and unsuccessful terrorist attacks on western targets with the religion in whose name they are being carried out, combined with Islamic and left-wing groups’ first reactions to terrorist attacks being not a condemnation of the act but a warning to the greater public not to accuse or discriminate against Muslims, has greatly worsened the Perception Problem faced by western adherents to Islam. Efforts like this CAP report to place the blame for Islamic skepticism on a right-wing “Islamophobia network” while refraining almost entirely from mentioning the actions that ignited that skepticism in the first place only widen the chasm between the perception of Muslims and far more benign reality.Read it all.
Related:
The Attempted Terrorist Attack by the Face of Peaceful Islam, and the Problems it Presents for Media and Muslims Alike, Jeff Emanuel, August 1st 2011. here.
