Six pillars to understanding Islam
By Yahya Sadowski Posted Apr 1 2002
The Qur’an was dictated to Mohammed by one of Allah’s angels, Gabriel. The tenants of Islamic faith are very similar to those found within the books of the Bible and the Torah.
“MOHAMMED'S ASCENSION” / ABD AL-RAZZAK
The panic that followed September 11 placed a new burden on journalists: explaining to Westerners the wider Islamic background from which the terrorist mindset had emerged. The results have not been very illuminating. Westerners’ beliefs of Islam have been tainted by biases and ignorance that will persist unless coverage is improved. These half-a-dozen helpful practices will enable journalists to bypass stereotypes without missing deadlines.
1 – Profile Diversity
In English, the word “Islam” can refer to: a religion, a particular civilization, a cultural tradition or a society where Muslims are the dominant culture. These are all very different things, and they should not be confused. For example, the religion of Islam states that women, along with men, have a right to inherit agricultural land, but because these societies were thoroughly patriarchal long before they became Islamic, virtually every Muslim society denies women this right.
It’s still dangerous to make any generalizations about Islam even after you distinguish between Islamic religion and Islamic societies. With more than a billion Muslims in the world, it should not be surprising that the Islamic world includes a wide variety of diverse communities. Some are quite militant; some are pacifist. Some are very political; others are totally apolitical. In Turkey, some Muslims (the Hilafet Devleti) interpret their faith as a call to war on all expressions of Western culture, while others (the Nurcular) insist that Islam is an essentially modern faith. Even though both subscribe to a mystical interpretation of Islam, the patriarchal, legalistic Islamic society of rural Morocco is radically different from the matrilineal, pluralistic Islamic society of central Sumatra.
Although the majority of the world’s Muslims live in South and Southeast Asia, Western reports gravitate to the Middle East, home to only a quarter of the Muslim population, for their images. How would Americans feel if every time the media discussed “religion in America” they focused on Jerry Falwell?
2 – Avoid Not-So-Innocent Questions
The West has confronted the Islamic world longer than any other civilization. By the time the first crusades were launched, Westerners had already spent five centuries refining certain negative stereotypes about Muslims. Today these stereotypes persist, albeit in a more subtle form. Often they emerge as apparently innocent questions that imply a need for a “reform” of Islam. They are:
Is Islam an authentic religion? Until this century, Westerners portrayed Islam as a crude corruption of Judeo-Christian mythology contrived by one Mohammed: part fakir, part sensualist and part despot. The scholarly and journalistic representation of Islam has changed, but the change is less than you might think. Popular stories often include ideas that reinforce Islam’s falsity, such as misinterpretation of the Qur’an, the Judaic heresy of Islam and Islamic indifference toward Jerusalem.
Is Islam fatalistic? One idea often invoked by 19th-century imperialist states in order to justify the occupation of Muslim societies was the need to awaken them from the torpor of Islam. Islam was portrayed as having a doctrine of predestination that was ultimately fatalistic. The same idea resurfaced in the post-September 11 debates about whether or not Islam was an obstacle to modernity and economic progress.
Does Islam endorse oppression? This question has a long history in the rhetoric of imperialism. When the French invaded Algeria in 1830, they claimed they were working for the liberation of women. Some Americans have recently raised the same claim about Afghanistan, but women’s liberation is not one of George W. Bush’s war aims, and it looks like the majority of Afghan women will remain veiled despite the presence of U.S. troops in their country.
Most Muslim societies are patriarchal, but so are most Third World cultures.
Is Islam a violent belief? When the conquistadors occupied the last Muslim kingdom in Spain in 1492, they were already claiming that Islam was a religion of violent fanatics. Islam, like all religions, has been used to justify numerous actions including violence. Is there something special about Islam, about its monotheism, its universalist claims or its missionary dimension, that inclines Muslims to commit acts of violence? Maybe, but the same forces are at work in the other two Abrahamic faiths: Judaism and Christianity.
The answer to these questions will always depend on which Muslims you are talking about. Some Muslims are violent, but casualty figures from the wars of this century suggest they are less violent than Europeans. If you insist upon posing these questions, at the very least be prepared to report on all aspects of their subtle and complex answers.
3 – Make Global Comparisons
A “fundamental attribution error,” warn social scientists, can occur when we exaggerate the differences between cultures. In an attempt to make sense of an unfamiliar culture, differences in values and motives are exaggerated. It is easy to focus too often on the fact that Muslims follow Islam, and forget that they live in Third World countries whose problems and opportunities are drastically different from those in the developed world. One of the easiest ways to correct this is to learn about the wider context of life among people who live in societies that are not industrial, democratic or modern. For example, a peasant in the West Bank has much more in common with a campesino in Guatemala than he does with an American farmer or even an urban Jerusalemite.
Few Westerners know what it is like to live in permanent danger of a currency meltdown or a famine. Westerners worry about crime, not civil war. Do they have any idea what it’s like to live in a society where just getting water or cooking fuel may consume a third of the working day? The problems that the majority of Muslims face are quite alien, and until Westerners understand those problems, they cannot hope to understand their behavior.
4 – Shun Clichés
Perhaps the best advice ever given to writers (or journalists) came from George Orwell: “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” Seemingly every other news story about Africa features the image of a body lying ignored along the roadside. Nobody ever seems to write about roads in Africa that don’t have bodies strewn along them.
The same is true of the Middle East and Islamic societies. The vast majority of stories focus on “senseless” violence and oppression embodied in the image of the armed tribesman or the veiled woman. Try to capture a picture of something you haven’t seen before. The simple fact that it violates the prevailing stereotypes might make it newsworthy.
5 – Get a New Rolodex
Most of the Western “experts” on Islam consulted by journalists, when they are not out-and-out frauds, are living clichés. Their positions are well-staked out; their hostile or sympathetic postures are well-practiced; their bumper-sticker sound bites are well-honed. The easiest way to write a story may be to interview two sources known for opposing viewpoints and contrast their quotes, but that is not enough to attain insightful objectivity.
With a little more work, journalists can come up with an original and valuable approach to “the Islam story.” There are now think tanks and media centers scattered all over the Muslim world. There are Muslim novelists and filmmakers who are exceptionally articulate, and there are Egyptian Copts, Balinese Hindus and Afghan Jews who might have their own unique insights into life among Muslims. Try talking to more people from the countries you are studying. Even someone as unlikely as a bank teller may have an interesting story to tell. After all, aren’t taxi drivers one of the best sources of news worldwide?
6 – Test for Bias
If you are really unsure about whether something you have written is biased, try this simple test. Reread your draft, but substitute the name of your own religion or society for “Islam.” If it makes you uncomfortable, if the questions seem unfair or if the answers seem over generalized, you have a problem.