Shia Strength: [MahdiUniteMuslims] Nigeria: The West, Media and Islamphobia (i), by M.Haruna

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

[MahdiUniteMuslims] Nigeria: The West, Media and Islamphobia (i), by M.Haruna

Nigeria: The West, Media and Islamophobia (i)

Mohammed Haruna

14 February 2010

I'll like to define the key words in today's lecture. These are Terrorism, The Media, and Islamophobia. To start with Terrorism, no two persons agree on the meaning of the word "terror" because the word, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder; to say that one man's terrorist is another's hero has since become almost like a cliché.

In the early 80's the American State Department defined terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets, by sub-national groups or clandestine agents usually intended to influence an audience".

The Oxford English Dictionary defines it simply as "The use of violence and intimidation to achieve political aims".

Yet another definition of the word is that it is "the deliberate use or threat of violence, politically motivated and directed against non-military personnel".

The discerning observer would have noticed a major difference between the American definition of the word and the other two, namely the American narrow definition of its agents as "sub-national groups or clandestine agents". This is a highly significant difference as we shall see presently.

The difficulty in arriving at a universal definition of terrorism was underscored by the fact that in 2005, the 60th United Nations summit tried but failed to decide on a universal legal definition of the word. I should also point out that two years later a commission set up by the government of the United Kingdom concluded that "there is no single definition of terrorism that commands full international support".

Even then, there is a common denominator in all the innumerable definitions of the word. This is that it is the use of violence or intimation or their threat for political objectives. Opinions differ mainly on the scale of violence and who uses it.

As we have seen from the US State Department's definition, the Americans regard only non-state actors as agents of terror. Obviously this is a highly problematic and subjective definition, to say the least, because States too can be, and have been, agents of terror, as the history of America itself in its many wars abroad testifies.

States have not merely sponsored terrorism. They have themselves perpetrated it and in so doing the harm they cause as a result of the weapons of violence and the organization at their disposal dwarfs any that non-state actors can inflict as we shall see in due course.

The Oxford English dictionary defines it as "Television, radio and newspapers as the means of mass communication". Useful as this is, it is obviously a highly restricted definition because it leaves out many other means of mass communication.

These include traditional means like the gong, the talking drum, the town crier, etc. The definition also leaves out the more modern means of mass communication. These include books, magazines, cinema, CDs, DVDs, cassettes and, not least of all, the internet, perhaps the most revolutionary of them all.

In defining media, it is important to talk not only about what they are. We should also talk about what they do, which, universally are acknowledged as informing, educating and entertaining the public and also shaping public opinion. As it is often said, perception is as important as reality, sometimes even more so. As the famous American president, Abraham Lincoln, once put it, "Public sentiment is everything ... he who moulds public sentiments goes deeper than he who executes statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes or decisions possible or impossible to execute."

The contemporary American historian Prof. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was even more sweeping in his opinion of the importance of the media. "Karl Max", he once said "held that history is shaped by control of the means of production. In our times history is shaped by control of the means of communication."

The late Malcolm X, the famous Muslim black American, was somewhat more cynical in his opinion of the importance of the media but his insight was useful nonetheless. "If you are not careful," he once said, "the media will have you hating those who are oppressed and loving those who are doing the oppression."

Finally, the definition of Islamophobia. The word itself seems a post 9/11 creation even though the sentiments it seeks to capture have existed for centuries going back to the Crusades in the 15th century. A combination of the words Islam and phobia, it simply means an extreme or irrational fear of Islam.

Although this extreme or irrational fear of Islam has existed especially in the West for centuries, 9/11 seems to have raised it to higher level than at anytime in the history of relation of the two.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 as the greatest obstacle to the spread of Western values seemed to have led to the replacement of Communism, the Soviet creed, with Islam as the West's main bogeyman. In his 1994 book, Out of Control, for example, the American statesman, Zbigniew Brzezinski, raised an alarm about what he said was Islam's march northwards in to Europe from its Middle Eastern core through Central Asia with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Being excerpts of a lecture given under the auspices of Gombe State branch of National Council of Muslim Youths Organizations (NACOMYO)

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