"is dedicated to bringing public attention to the role that jihad theology and ideology plays in the modern world, and to correcting popular misconceptions about the role of jihad and religion in modern-day conflicts. We hope to alert people of good will to the true nature of the present global conflict."
By which they mean:
"non-Muslims in the West, as well as in India, China, Russia, and the world over, are facing a concerted effort by Islamic jihadists, the motives and goals of whom are largely ignored by the Western media, to destroy their societies and bring them forcibly into the Islamic world -- and to commit violence to that end even while their overall goal remains out of reach."
...and thus my soul sank.
Studying journalism, as I am, starts out with a sort of soft-focus view of your future. For me it was a romantic, Superman-style news room where reporters would report the good and the bad and it was really damn easy to see the difference (normally because the bag guys would have eight mechanical limbs and the good guy wore a suit to work and could fly...). The reality? It's a minefield where you cannot make any possible subjective statement for fear of being drawn and quartered by your peers. Actually let me rephrase... you can make a subjective statement. In fact the media does it all the time. The difference is that it needs to be the kind of subjective statement that your subjective audience will hear and to their ears it would sound objective.
Where Islam came into the story was during the whole "ban the burqa" debacle in Australia. To summarise the argument, senator Cory Bernardi and back-bencher MP Fred Nile (reverend... pfft) both publicly announced that the burqa is "un-Australian", is demeaning to women, and is a security threat and should therefore be banned nationwide. In response, people like myself argued that "un-Australian" is bullshit and is just another way of saying "the things I don't want to understand because it makes my head hurt"; that legislating women out of clothing choices because of the possible ways that they could be interpreted is more sexist than what they think the burqa means in Islamic society; and finally the assumption that the burqa provides terrorists a disguise is racial profiling and reinforces the false notion that Muslims are criminals. Add that to a "media ethics" class and there was a lot to say.
What this whole debate inspired in me was the desire to finally figure all this out for myself. I thought back upon my personal experiences with Islamic people and I suddenly felt ashamed. I felt ashamed of the way I had let myself be hoodwinked by the anti-Islam sentiment that was going around. I felt saddened that the only contact most people had had with Islam was through the context of international news reportage where all you hear is "jihad", "Muslim extremists",and "taliban fighters".
Comparing that to my own experience, there is a stark contrast. It all started with Aladdin, sure its a kids story but it is set in Arabia, with Islamic characters, they "praise Allah" and it is perhaps one of my most treasured memories. Sure if I analysed it now I could find some pretty nasty anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic sentiments, after all it is Walt Disney we're talking about, but at the time the culture was beautiful, exotic and interesting. Once when I was about 10 we visited Warner Bros. Movie World on the Gold Coast and on the bus trip back to the hotel and I fell asleep on the shoulder of a young woman next to me. Her name was Fatima. I woke up, embarrassed, and looked at her. She just smiled, patted her shoulder and said "sleep". So I did. And finally university has been surprisingly beneficial in helping me get over this racial distancing that I had not been aware that I was doing. I met a group of students, who were Islamic incidentally but it wasn't important, we talked about things, worked on assignments together, and I realised - people are people.
People are just people. Everything that we say about them is made up, is make believe. Basically, it's bullshit. Before you judge a group of people, meet a few of them. If you don't want to meet them, then you are guilty for the way they behave, because you have chosen to not give them a chance to be understood and accepted like all people deserve to be. I think the very definition of the phrase "un-Australian" is to believe that "un-Australian" exists.
