What misconceptions? You know, the usual: the idea that any teachings of Islam sanction violence against unbelievers, or supremacism, or deception, etc. The media is to blame for anyone thinking that, you see. 10,000+ jihad terror attacks since 9/11? No, of course they have had nothing to do with anyone coming to believe that any teachings of Islam condone violence. What are you, some kind of Islamophobe?
"Media to blame for Islamic misconceptions," by Alan Blank for the Daily Pilot (thanks to Kemaste):
The managing editor of one of the country’s biggest newspapers thinks news organizations ought to hire more Muslim reporters.Philip Bennett, the Washington Post’s managing editor, said reporters often struggle with understanding Islam during a speech Monday at UCI about the difficulties of covering the religion.
Bennett’s speech focused on the media’s need to cover issues concerning Islam in an in-depth, long-term manner.
To illustrate this point he drew mainly from quotes of notable colleagues and statistical polls, rarely giving his own opinion directly.
“Six of 10 Americans, according to a 2007 ABC Poll, don’t understand the basic tenets of Islam,” Bennett said.
He attributed this to the lack of Muslims working in American newsrooms.
“At the Post I want more Muslim readers and I want more Muslim journalists,” he said.
Words poorly translated from Arabic to English are a big source of confusion caused by the lack of Muslim voices in the American media, according to Bennett.
Zeyad Maasarani, 22, a Muslim reporter for California’s most circulated Muslim publication, Southern California in Focus, agrees with Bennett that terms like “jihad,” “madrasa” and “hijab” are a big source of the public’s misunderstanding of Islam.
“Jihad means holy war, which is the definition that most Americans know, but it also means struggle, and valiant attempt,” Maasarani said.
Uh huh. And this refutes Osama bin Laden how exactly?
Yeah - that'll be a good reason to subscribe to the Washington Pest. How long before it's in the toilet with the NYT?
WaPo managing editor: Media to blame for "misconceptions" about Islam
I agree. But MY list of misconceptions if different from his. On my list of misconceptions of Islam presented by the media:
1) Islam is a religion of peace.
2) Jews, Christians, and Moslems all believe in the same God.
3) Jihad is essentially an inner spiritual struggle.
4) Moslems are no more prone to violence than adherents of other religions.
5) Terrorism is condemned by Islam.
6) Add your own . . . .
Check out the readers' comments adjacent to the linked "Daily Pilot" story. Like one of the responders, I can truthfully say that the more I learn about Islam, the less I like it.
I understand perfectly and not because a reporter is Islamic or not, but because of the actions and words of the Islamists themselves. The most recent example of how I come to this perfect understanding, is the joyous celebrations of the Palestinians after two cowardly Muslim males gunned down eight unarmed students in Jerusalem today. Yeah, I might be an Islamophobe.....I can live with that....and I can pray for the eight that can't!
“Six of 10 Americans, according to a 2007 ABC Poll, don’t understand the basic tenets of Islam,” Bennett said.
I'd say it's more like 99 out of 100. At the State Dept and White House it's even worse.
If more muslims are employed as journalists it will only result in islamist creep into the MSM.
You only have to look at what has happended at the BBC for the past decade or more.
“At the Post I want more Muslim readers and I want more Muslim journalists,” he said.
So his solution is to drop an iron curtain of lies? No matter what the question more muslims is not the answer.
No matter what the question more muslims is not the answer.
Grenn - what about this question:
"How can you make the most people miserable the quickest?"
"How can you destroy civilization as we know it?"
etc.
Death ratio 40 Palestinians to every 1 Israeli. This is the reality. These are the facts. Research for yourself, how many of you have family ties in the region or have lived in the region you all talk about with such hateful comments about Palestinians and Muslims. What if it was your family, your home, your religion, how would you feel. Really, stop and think about it, please.
I invite you to travel with me as I go back every year to the U.A.E. and or Iran to visit me and my wifes friends and family. I know with absolute certainty you will feel the opposite of how you do now about Muslims once you meet my family and friends, and experience the warmth and hospitality of back home. If that's too much for you I invite you to my mosque and my house to meet a Muslim family, my family, and spend time with Muslims in America.
I just want to change the view of one of you and soften your heart. This is my struggle, challenge, my jihad.
It would seem that the way this guy sees deepening understanding if Islam is via a media affirmative action program, by hiring more Muslims. How about making a careful study of Islamic texts, or is that too tedious?
Come to think of it, why not hire some Klansmen while you're at it, to clear up any misconceptions about white supremacism.
what absolute balderdash - but typical of a dhimmi elite and who shares with his islamosupremacists heros their most prominent character traits cowardice and gross hypocrisy based on warped reality perception!
what is in the mind of this man - who has somehow managed to make it all the way to the top of a major media outlet
better if he were to pursue his true calling - as used car salesperson in a lemon lot
his citing the "abc poll" tells his entire story -the poll question translated from leftist-lunatic cultural-marxist speak really means: dhimmi elites of the USA cannot convince -on behalf of their islamosupremacists handlers and pay-masters the remaining (i.e. majority) 6 out of 10 Americans who know all they care to know about the "religion of peace" (a.k.a. tyrnanical-fascistic political system that will do anything to expand) and have had enough of it - that they are in cahoots with the islamosupremacists - because they have lots more easy money ... and they hate the USA as much as do the adherents of the "religion of peace"
how about this philip bennet - just for starters publish a few articles in your pro-tyranny rag about quoting ishak's sira number 48, and cross reference it to sahih bukhari numbers 5 and 58 ...better still - publish some factual and historically sound facts about what the "prophet" did during his last decade - (your islamosupremacists heros might not like you doing any of the above, but be brave - try some real "change" for once - and go ahead and publish some reality about your "religion of peace"
or just continue on your path of ease - that of dhimmi hypocrite-coward's (it's safe and pays really well)
"Philip Bennett, the Washington Post’s managing editor, said reporters often struggle with understanding Islam during a speech Monday at UCI about the difficulties of covering the religion.
I think Mr. Bennett is the one having a struggle understanding Islam.
I'll agree with Mr. Bennett on one thing though, That the majority of Americans don’t understand the basic tenets of Islam.
And he better hope they never do. That would end any chance of hoodwinking them about the peaceful nature of Islam.
Death ratio 40 Palestinians to every 1 Israeli.
This just means that Israel is being kind.
Maybe if those Hamas people would quit shooting rockets and suicide bombers at irael would cut that 40/1 number down to twenty to one.
Talib:If that's too much for you I invite you to my mosque and my house to meet a Muslim family, my family, and spend time with Muslims in America.
Why that's nice of you Talib, can we all come at the same time? I'm sure your family is adorable, but adorable people don't address the problems of Islam.
It's your many, not so adorable brothers, that are the problem, and that book the Quran, that told you not to take Christians, Jews, and assorted unbelievers as friends. Of course there is every possibility that your offer is not made on friendship, but salesmanship. You wish to sell us a warm cuddly, loving family experience that has nothing to to with Islam as a religion, but we might 'think' it does.
Are you planning on trying to convert any unbeliever who showed up? Otherwise what is the point? You just trying to expand your circle of friends? Allah is watching you my friend, watch out...
40-to-1 death ratio? I may not be the sharpest tack in the box, nor do I have time to read every newspaper on the planet, but methinks this ratio is very much inflated. And for a specific reason.
As for "hateful" comments, then propose, at minimum, 10 ways the Palestinians (and Muslims as a whole) can make us non-Muslims "stop and think about it."
Do you hire Nazis to understand The Aryan Nation?
Or just good, investigative journalists?
The fallacy at work in this newpaper is noxious.
Research doesn't require conversion.
Viz.- Robert Spencer.
Talib-
I've been all over the Mid East Egypt, Iran... and in many 'warm' Arab homes where the 'warm' people had to tactfully avoid touching me because they were going to prayers and to even touch me, an infidel would DEFILE them. AND not knowing I was Jewish I heard ad infinitum. how America was veddy good veddy good but the Joos they poison the wells of the Palestinians, the Joos they make the aids virus... blah blah blah. Up yours Talib and your family too.
I must confess I am not an expert on Islam.
Before 9/11 I thought the majority of muslims were just like most people I know. Before 9/11 I thought the conflict in the Middle East between the Israelis and the Palestinians was a regional one, just like the one with the Russians and the Chechens, and so on.
After 9/11, I've learned there are people who use their religion as an excuse to hijack civilian airliners and crash them into office buildings.
I've learned there are muslims who will riot because some teddy bear was named Mo.
I've learned there are muslims who will riot because Mo was illustrated in a political cartoon.
I've learned that muslims find it acceptable to target schoolchildren to advance their political agenda, as what happened in Beslan.
I've learned not to be impressed by islam, except for its followers' tendency towards violence and desire to spread that demonic religion throughout the rest of the world.
WaPo managing editor: Media to blame for "misconceptions" about Islam
I agree. But MY list of misconceptions if different from his. On my list of misconceptions of Islam presented by the media:
1) Islam is a religion of peace.
2) Jews, Christians, and Moslems all believe in the same God.
3) Jihad is essentially an inner spiritual struggle.
4) Moslems are no more prone to violence than adherents of other religions.
5) Terrorism is condemned by Islam.
6) Add your own . . . .
7( that the Koran is beyond reproach and that Islam cannot be criticized
The managing editor of one of the country’s biggest newspapers thinks news organizations ought to hire more Muslim reporters.
well what organization that calls itself a newspaper like the national Inquirer does can not use more liars and fantasy writers on staff
Philip Bennett, the Washington Post’s managing editor, said reporters often struggle with understanding Islam during a speech Monday at UCI about the difficulties of covering the religion
this is true, because every time you criticize it or publish something critical of Islam like the cartoons in Denmark you end up with someone being killed or Muslim rioting in the streets. And they call it the religion of peace yes the peace of the grave, because it's nothing more peaceful than a dead infidel
Re: Talib's stats:
See this analytical survey of a study done on stats involved with the "al-Aqsa Intifada" (i.e., the latest exertion of the Jihad against Israel):
Here's a quote:
"such numbers hide as much as they reveal: They lump combatants in with noncombatants, suicide bombers with innocent civilians, and report Palestinian “collaborators” murdered by their own compatriots as if they had been killed by Israel. Correcting for such distortions, we can arrive at a figure of 617 Palestinian noncombatants killed by Israel, compared to 471 Israeli noncombatants killed by Palestinians (see Graph 1.2). While Israelis account for 27 percent of the total fatalities as generally reported, they represent 43 percent of these noncombatant victims."
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/mostly.html
Funny but I don’t see this man talking about all the misconceptions held by fellow Americans about Hinduism, o Buddhism, or other religions. Why only Islam? And what misconceptions? Muslims shouting Allah Akbar as they saw off the heads of people? Or stoning women? Or waving their Korans while holding guns and suicide belts? Or dyed in the wool Muslims adoration of Osama bin laden and other radical Muslims?
WaPo must be getting some serious money to buy advertising from the Saudi Arabian government.
Robert, is it my imagination or does it seem like a very real thing that during the past year or so there has been a concerted counteroffensive being waged against you and all of us by the House of Saud?
Americans certainly need to know more about Islam. But the worst way for them to come to "know about Islam" is for more Muslims -- who are keen, out of a variety of motives, to keep Infidels from acquiring a true and deep knowledge of Islam, and eager to use their inhibiting presence, and their personal charm (or should that fail, then the implied threat of their mere presence, and the need not to offend that so often takes precedence, in newsrooms as in university departments and government offices everywhere, over the task at hand, or the standards -- the goddam academic standards, remember them! -- to be maintained.
I have been an anti-jihadi since 1974 when I visited the territorial-demographic sewer called Turkey. In fact, I attacked Bush on a forum, seconds after I first heard his "islam is peace" spew. After 9-11, I made a practise of attaching the MSA-USC link to the "jihad" pages of the Bukhari Hadith, to corrective correspondence sent to practising dhimmis. Said pages would only take a few minutes to read and understand. Still, my efforts were ineffective. In fact, dhimmism became sacramental. Why? Because the muslim enemy is usually a person of color, and in our guilt culture a majority cannot see evil in non-Caucasians. Even where it is admitted, perverse conduct is allowed to be a response to a challenge posed by the Caucasian Horde.
It is not a matter of an inability to comprehend the utter depravity of Islam and the sickness of mind of its perverse adherents; they WON'T understand. If you can, check out the Bosnian propaganda film, "Go West," about a Muslim who cross dresses to escape nominal Serb killers, and is fixated on completing his chosen place of exile, where he can freely practise his faith in the arab tribal deity. The place? Mecca? Medina? Istanbul? Riyadh? Jakarta? Peshawar? Hardly. It is: Amsterdam. Those vulgar savages insist of bringing their infected brains to the West. And majority guilt allows them to spread their poison here.
“Six of 10 Americans, according to a 2007 ABC Poll, don’t understand the basic tenets of Islam,” Bennett said.
Is this guy for real?
If we don't understand the basic tenets of Islam then neither do 99.44 out of 100 Muslims. If they did we wouldn't have these bombings, RIGHT?
Islam is a religion of PEACE, RIGHT?
Talk to the Muslims, ABC News. Ask them how they get the idea that blowing up supermarkets and seminaries is part of Islam. Talk to the sheikhs that call for America and Israel to be wiped off the map. Islam has bad organization if it can't educate its own people on the tenets of its stupid religion of peace. I'd say Muslims don't know the definition of peace. Does peace also have a different meaning in Arabic? Maybe ABC News can clue us in.
Didn't one of the ABC News reporters interview Osama ten years ago? Does Osama understand Islam? Then how to explain 9/11? ABC News needs an education! And it won't come from hiring Muslim reporters.
Again with this magical language of Arabic that cannot be translated to any other language. What exactly is lost in the translation of "piece of cloth that covers a woman's face"?
We understand the terms just fine, thank you. We also understand such untranslatable phrases such as "kill the unbelievers wherever you find them."
Make a graph; on one axis is the amount of familiarity with core Islamic beliefs; on the other axis, map how positively Islam is perceived. The trend will be unmistakeable.
Robert Spencer: we know you're a Zionist, but even you should draw the line at out and out lying. If Islam is responsible for 9/11 then we should do away with all nation states, because nationalism was responsible for 2 world wars. The least you can do is use the same rules of debate on Islam as you do with other "isms." Your hatred and rancour are very typical of Zionists, you are the biggest threat to the American way of life, not Islam.
Robert Spencer: we know you're a Zionist, but even you should draw the line at out and out lying. If Islam is responsible for 9/11 then we should do away with all nation states, because nationalism was responsible for 2 world wars. The least you can do is use the same rules of debate on Islam as you do with other "isms." Your hatred and rancour are very typical of Zionists, you are the biggest threat to the American way of life, not Islam.
UK's National Party is under the Muslim gun for accusing ROP members of drug dealing. UN documents attribute most heroin sold in Asia and Europe, to Afghanistan, under the Bush indulgence of the drug industry. Under Karzai, that cess pool has turned into a heroin producer. UN documents reveal an archipelago of factories along the border with Pakistan, which now has 2,000,000 addicts. While Karzai's Pashto Mafia has now cut out Turks and Central Asian Musolims from processing raw opium. distribution is carried out by Muslims in Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia. Again, heroin is transhipped to Muslim communities in Holland. Only there does it find its way into non-Muslim organized crime.
I am not a supporter of the NP, although I don't consider them a danger to peace and security. However, this incident reveals an unsettling truth: big media won't report the Muslim drug industry. In fact, they report - falsely - that the Taliban abolished the trade. In fact, they took a 15% cut of raw opium sales. Opium production went down because those savages wouldn't permit women to work the fields.
http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk/news/headlines/display.var.2097928.0.police_probe_into_bnp_heroin_leaflet.php
Muslim-
Is it the schizophrenia that requires you to post lies twice?
Or being two-faced?
(Forked-tongued?)
As more and more data, and more rational analyses of that data, grow, we will see over the next decade or two, PC MC grow stronger, not weaker: More and more stewards of PC MC (as opposed to mere followers who don't bother articulating defenses of their givens) are showing signs of battening the hatches and manning the bastions as the sheer water and air pressure of reality impinges more and more on the Box of their reigning paradigm which has served them well for the past 50-odd years. It can't last much longer -- but don't make the mistake that it will crumble immediately. It will take at least another 25-50 years, and likely the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives in various locations in the West at the hands of Muslims, if not more, before the West regains the higher degree of rationality it had before.
“Six of 10 Americans, according to a 2007 ABC Poll, don’t understand the basic tenets of Islam,” Bennett said.
.................................
This question of Westerners--especially Americans--ignorance of Islam is always raised with expressions of hand-wringing, exasperation, and even sneering.
Why? How many Americans are very knowledgable about Hinduism, or Buddhism? How about Jainism? What is a Boddisatva? What is the relationship between Rama and Shiva?
Is this too exotic? OK, what about the Church of Latter-Day Saints? Who was the Angel Moroni? Why does the Mormon Church have the largest archive of ancestry information in the world?
What, exactly, do the Amish believe? How is this different from the Mennonites? Are the Shakers different from the Quakers? How about Seventh-Day Adventists?
Hey, there are a lot of Methodists in this country--how do their beliefs differ from those of Baptists? How many American Catholics are in complete agreement with the Pope? What are the doctrinal consequences for them if they are not?
What sort of misconceptions are we harboring about the Bah'ai? About Animists, and Wiccans, and the Great Spirit of the Cherokee?
Why aren't we wringing our hands over this blatant ignorance?
Because none of these groups are using their religion to justify mass violence against the rest of the world. It is only because of this that we are expected to know more about Islam than any other world religion.
Much of what Americans have learned about Islam, even through the mainstream media, is that many jihadists are using their religion to justify this violence against non-Muslims and those who are considered "insufficiently Islamic".
This is what the sneering is about--Americans are supposed to doubt what they have learned, and fret that they might not have fully parsed all the nuances of the concept of "Jihad", or grasped the fine points of what might constitute "defensive warfare" against the infidels outside a Caliphate.
It is possible to get so tied up in the minutia of Islam that the violence of global Jihad gets overlooked.
"The managing editor of one of the country’s biggest newspapers thinks news organizations ought to hire more Muslim reporters"
--from the post
Yes, that's how to meet the Moslem challenge to our freedoms:
hire more Moslem reporters
hire more Moslem police
enlist more Moslems in our armed forces*
bring more Moslems into rge political arena
elect more Moslems to Congress
hire more Moslem teachers for our public schools
tenure more Moslem professors at our universities
get more Moslems--openly professing Islam--on TV
replace Americans, when- and where-ever possible with Moslems
But . . is turning the whole country over to the Moslems the way to end this?
Or would it be better to rid the country of all Islamic influence?
Of course to do that, we have to get rid of anyone at the top that has the taint of Islam about them
____________________________________________
*remember the Moslem Marine who went over the hill in Iraq and after escaping U.S. confinement, is alive and well in his native Lebanon
*and how'bout Abu Jihaad? The sailor who provided fleet movements to Islamic elements.
*and who can ever forget the Moslem soldier who fragged his commanding officer and more in Kuwait while awaiting deployment to Iraq?
Let's test Bennett's knowledge of core Islamic beliefs and history:
How/when/why was the Sunni/Shi'a schism created? How did they, the earliest followers of Mohammad, resolve their differences?
What is the meaning of abrogation within Islam, and how do Muslim scholars agree it should be applied?
What are the "Gates of Ijtihad", and when did they close?
What is the significance of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah?
What was the "Battle of the Trench"? Why wasn't it really a "battle? How was it resolved?
How old was Aisha when Mohammad consummated their marriage? How old was Mohammad? Why is that relevant to today's Islamic societies?
Muslim,
As a Muslim, perhaps you have no need for nation states, if you yearn for all Muslims to be governed by a global Kalifat. I'm sure you are convinced that such will bring peace to the Muslims of the world, at least to those who embrace this archaic idea that there could be a universal authority within Islam; an archaic idea, since the Prophet failed to establish any undisputed, lasting sucession to his own authority.
Similarly, everyone who promotes Islam should bite the dust
Geez, if only...Once again, muslim, how do Zionists threaten the American way of life?
Similarly, everyone who promotes Islam should bite the dust
Geez, if only...Once again, muslim, how do Zionists threaten the American way of life?
Has the Washington Fish Wrap published the Danish cartoons yet
http://illustratedpig.blogspot.com/2008/03/phucking-twat.html
A Westerner understanding Islam is a virtually insuperable problem. The obverse is equally true. This personal observation is manifest from regularly reading the weekly San Antonio Express-News opinion columns of Mansour El-Kikhia. He simply does not understand the West. How can he teach us about Islam and the Muslim world? In my opinion, he fails abyssmally. Actually, he doesn't even try. He's too busy falsely judging America. Where do we go to find mutual understanding between the West and the Middle East? Muslim columnists in the MSM is most definitely not the answer. Why would anyone presume otherwise?
Move the WaPo to Saudi Arabia where they can have all the Muslims they could ever want.
If Islam is responsible for 9/11 then we should do away with all nation states, because nationalism was responsible for 2 world wars.
Posted by: Muslim
Where have you been for the last 60 years, Mr. Muslim? Haven't you ever heard of the United Nations, or the European Union, or NAFTA? All of these are attempts to limit national sovereignties. In Europe, the EU has nearly abolished the nation-state.
But who is to blame for the massacres of millions in Indonesia, and Nigeria-Biafra, and Somalia, and Iran, and Algeria, and Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and the Sudan in the years since WW2? The Moslems, not the European nation-states.
To be fair, I may add that equally-serious massacres have taken place in non-Moslem countries, like China, Cambodia, and Burundi.
What we need is less Islam and less Muslims in the West. The only thing I want to understand about Islam is how to eradicate this cancer from the west. This Death Cult doesnt belong in Western Culture, and the sooner the West realizes that the sooner we can destroy it. My People and I are sick and tired of walking around on egg shells worrying about how the poor muslims feel. Why? Because these Blasphemist's don't care how we feel, and because these Blashpemist's would rather chop off my head than co-exist!
I say Death To Islam, and LETS BRING ON THE NEW CRUSADES!!!!!
A letter sent to Philip Bennett at the Washington Post:
Mr. Bennett:
You must be crazy to want to hire Muslim journalists simply because of your own ignorance of Islam. That's like saying (ca., 1939), "We need more Nazi reporters because we want more Nazi readers." This assumes, of course, that the Nazi (Muslim) journalists would shape the news to make their views more favorable to the public.
You need a crash course on Islam. You might start by reading Ibn Warraq's book, "Why I Am Not A Muslim." Perhaps a deeper understanding of the issues, and not a knee-jerk political correctness, would provide some enlightenment.
This country needs more Muslims and creeping Islamic appeasement like it needs a hole in the head.
We are all of age. We certainly don't need the Washington Post (and their newly-hired Muslim journalists) telling US what the 'real' Islam is-- or is not.
If any of us are in doubt about Islamic doctrine and its tenets, we have real sources like the Kuran at our disposal, we can read and interpret them for ourselves WITHOUT their supervision. The Washington Post and its newly-hired Muslim journalists can go lecture al-Qaeda and its terror personnel on THEIR misinterpretations of Islamic "tenets" and we'll see how far they get.
It could be just as easily said that 6 out of 10 Americans don't care about or want to understand the basic tenets of Islam. We understand the primary tenet of Islam, violence, all too well. The rest is superfluous.
Talib:
What if you do not get to "soften" the heart of even one American? Will you then harden your heart against us and seek to kill us as your "holy" texts instruct you to do? What if the hardness of our non-muslim hearts are a result of all the muslim violence we have witnessed. Millions of Americans await your seemingly "moderate" muslim answer.
Talib:
What if you do not get to "soften" the heart of even one American? Will you then harden your heart against us and seek to kill us as your "holy" texts instruct you to do? What if the hardness of our non-muslim hearts are a result of all the muslim violence we have witnessed. Millions of Americans await your seemingly "moderate" muslim answer.