https://watermark.silverchair.com/jjcmcom1063.pdf
Rasha A. Abdulla
Journalism and Mass Communication Department The American University in Cairo
This study analyzed the contents of three of the most popular Arabic-language online message boards regarding the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States. Although terrorists claimed that the attacks were committed in the name of Islam, those who posted messages on all three forums rejected this claim. More than 43% of the messages condemned the attacks as a criminal act of terrorism that contradicts the core teachings of Islam. Some 30% saw some justification behind the attacks, even if they felt sorry for the victims and their families. However, those participants viewed the attacks as a political, rather than a religious, issue.
Introduction Islam is the youngest, fastest growing, and perhaps most controversial of the three monotheistic religions. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States (henceforth, 9/11), Islam and Muslims started to come to the forefront of the Western media, albeit not for very positive reasons. Because Osama Bin Laden cited religious motives for his criminal attacks, a debate started brewing in the Western media over the true nature of Islam and whether or not it justified or even encouraged violence, particularly against non-Muslims. Many media outlets referred to the 9/11 terrorists simply as ‘‘Muslims,’’ which fueled stereotyping of Islam and did nothing to help stop the verbal and physical attacks taking place against Muslims in the U.S. at the time. In an attempt to study how Muslims viewed the attacks from a religious point of view, this article examines the online message exchange on three major discussion boards in the Arab and Muslim world. Through a descriptive content analysis of these messages, the different viewpoints reiterated through Internet conversations are examined. This is an important medium in this part of the world (the Middle East), since most of the media are government-owned and controlled. The Internet, however, provides a relatively free expression forum for Middle Eastern audiences.
It therefore has the potential to reveal Muslim points of view without governmental slanting of ideas in any particular political or religious manner. Arabs and Muslims in the Western Media At the outset, there is a need to differentiate between the terms ‘‘Arab’’ and ‘‘Muslim,’’ which tend to be used interchangeably in the Western media. Arabs are members of an ethnic group of people who reside in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Muslims are those who choose Islam as their religion. Most Arabs (more than 90%) are Muslims. However, the majority of Muslims are not Arabs. The majority of Muslims come from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, all of which are non-Arab countries (Abdulla, 2007). Long before the attacks of 9/11, Arabs had voiced their concerns about their image in the Western media. In 1980, journalist Djelloul Marbrouk noted that the Arab in American television stands for ‘‘terrorism, hijack, intractability, sullenous, perverseness, cruelty, oil, sand, embargo, boycott, greed, bungling, comedic disunity, primitive torture, family feuds, and white slavery’’ (Shaheen, 1980, n.p.). Shaheen quotes Newsweek regarding the image of an Arab on television, ‘‘He is swarthy and bearded, rich and filthy, dabbling in dope smuggling and white slavery; swaddled in white robes, he carries a curved knife, rides a camel and abuses young boys. He knows a thousand vile curses such as ‘May the fleas of a diseased camel infect the hair of your first born’’’ (n.p.). Shaheen provides examples of many programs that portrayed Arabs in a negative light in the late 1970s, from Hollywood pictures and productions such as Vegas, Fantasy Island, and Charlie’s Angels to comic strips such as Brenda Starr and Dennis the Menace. He also provides examples of antiArab and anti-Muslim coverage from reputed news shows such as 60 Minutes and 20/20, in addition to regular news bulletins that associated Arabs and Muslims with terrorism. A few years later, Shaheen (1984) noted that ‘‘the stereotype [of Arabs] remains omnipresent, appearing in new programs and dated reruns’’ (p. 113). Shaheen reports on an interview with a CBS Vice President who confirmed the notion, saying he ‘‘had never seen a ‘good Arab’ on TV,’’ and that Arabs are rather usually portrayed as ‘‘warmongers and/or covetous desert rulers’’ (p. 114). Indeed, Slade (1981) analyzed a poll of American attitudes and perceptions towards Arabs and found that Americans have little knowledge of Arab culture, history, or contributions to the world. She reported that Americans commonly think of Arabs as ‘‘anti-American,’’ ‘‘anti-Christian,’’ ‘‘unfriendly,’’ and ‘‘warlike.’’ Christensen (2006a, b) argues that the spread of Islamophobia in the West is at least in part the responsibility of distorted and imbalanced media coverage. He argues that news programs are perceived usually as ‘‘serious’’ and ‘‘truthful’’ because journalism is associated in the public mind with objectivity and fairness. Western news stories, he says, tend to show a mosque, a minaret, or a veiled woman regardless of the nature of the story, even when the story is about terrorism. ‘‘The combination
of stereotypical images adds up to a whole that is, in many ways, greater than the sum of its parts’’ (Christensen, 2006b, p. 30). Said (1997) argues that the image of Islam in the U.S. media has always been influenced by a framework of politics and hidden interests and is therefore laden with ‘‘not only patent inaccuracy but also expressions of unrestrained ethnocentrism, cultural and even racial hatred, deep yet paradoxically free-floating hostility’’ (p. ii). He characterizes the image as involving ‘‘highly exaggerated stereotyping and belligerent hostility’’ (p. xi). Said, himself an American Christian scholar, states, ‘‘Malicious generalizations about Islam have become the last acceptable form of denigration of foreign culture in the West; what is said about the Muslim mind, or character, or religion, or culture as a whole cannot now be said in mainstream discussion about Africans, Jews, other Orientals, or Asians’’ (p. xii). If this was the image before 9/11, things took a turn for the worse after the criminal attacks. Despite the fact that all Arab countries condemned the attacks, for the most part, voices communicated through the mass media still failed to differentiate between Arabs and Muslims, on one hand, and terrorists, on the other. Pintak (2006) reports on Eric Rouleau of Le Monde, who criticized the tendency to portray images of ‘‘Muslims praying, mosques or women in chadors to illustrate stories about extremism and terror’’ (p. 33-34). Pintak adds that after the events of 9/11, ‘‘the U.S. media immediately fell back on the prevailing—and stereotyped—narrative about Arabs and Muslims and reverted to its historic tendency to present the world, in Henry Kissinger’s words, as ‘a morality play between good and evil’’’ (p. 39). Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR, 2001) noted that ‘‘many media pundits focused on one theme: retaliation. For some, it did not matter who bears the brunt of an American attack’’ (n.p.). For example, on September 12, 2001, Steve Dunleavy wrote in the New York Post: ‘‘The response to this unimaginable 21stcentury Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift—kill the bastards. A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them if you have to. As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts.’’ On September 11, former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger commented on CNN, ‘‘There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately directly involved in this thing’’ (FAIR, 2001, n.p.). On September 13, Bill O’Reilly, on his popular The O’Reilly Factor show on the Fox News Channel, said it ‘‘doesn’t make any difference’’ who you kill in the process of retaliation against the attacks (FAIR, 2001, n.p.). On the same day, syndicated columnist Ann Coulter wrote: This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack.. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war. (FAIR, 2001, n.p.)
Rasha A. Abdulla
Journalism and Mass Communication Department The American University in Cairo
This study analyzed the contents of three of the most popular Arabic-language online message boards regarding the attacks of September 11, 2001 on the United States. Although terrorists claimed that the attacks were committed in the name of Islam, those who posted messages on all three forums rejected this claim. More than 43% of the messages condemned the attacks as a criminal act of terrorism that contradicts the core teachings of Islam. Some 30% saw some justification behind the attacks, even if they felt sorry for the victims and their families. However, those participants viewed the attacks as a political, rather than a religious, issue.
Introduction Islam is the youngest, fastest growing, and perhaps most controversial of the three monotheistic religions. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States (henceforth, 9/11), Islam and Muslims started to come to the forefront of the Western media, albeit not for very positive reasons. Because Osama Bin Laden cited religious motives for his criminal attacks, a debate started brewing in the Western media over the true nature of Islam and whether or not it justified or even encouraged violence, particularly against non-Muslims. Many media outlets referred to the 9/11 terrorists simply as ‘‘Muslims,’’ which fueled stereotyping of Islam and did nothing to help stop the verbal and physical attacks taking place against Muslims in the U.S. at the time. In an attempt to study how Muslims viewed the attacks from a religious point of view, this article examines the online message exchange on three major discussion boards in the Arab and Muslim world. Through a descriptive content analysis of these messages, the different viewpoints reiterated through Internet conversations are examined. This is an important medium in this part of the world (the Middle East), since most of the media are government-owned and controlled. The Internet, however, provides a relatively free expression forum for Middle Eastern audiences.
It therefore has the potential to reveal Muslim points of view without governmental slanting of ideas in any particular political or religious manner. Arabs and Muslims in the Western Media At the outset, there is a need to differentiate between the terms ‘‘Arab’’ and ‘‘Muslim,’’ which tend to be used interchangeably in the Western media. Arabs are members of an ethnic group of people who reside in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Muslims are those who choose Islam as their religion. Most Arabs (more than 90%) are Muslims. However, the majority of Muslims are not Arabs. The majority of Muslims come from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, all of which are non-Arab countries (Abdulla, 2007). Long before the attacks of 9/11, Arabs had voiced their concerns about their image in the Western media. In 1980, journalist Djelloul Marbrouk noted that the Arab in American television stands for ‘‘terrorism, hijack, intractability, sullenous, perverseness, cruelty, oil, sand, embargo, boycott, greed, bungling, comedic disunity, primitive torture, family feuds, and white slavery’’ (Shaheen, 1980, n.p.). Shaheen quotes Newsweek regarding the image of an Arab on television, ‘‘He is swarthy and bearded, rich and filthy, dabbling in dope smuggling and white slavery; swaddled in white robes, he carries a curved knife, rides a camel and abuses young boys. He knows a thousand vile curses such as ‘May the fleas of a diseased camel infect the hair of your first born’’’ (n.p.). Shaheen provides examples of many programs that portrayed Arabs in a negative light in the late 1970s, from Hollywood pictures and productions such as Vegas, Fantasy Island, and Charlie’s Angels to comic strips such as Brenda Starr and Dennis the Menace. He also provides examples of antiArab and anti-Muslim coverage from reputed news shows such as 60 Minutes and 20/20, in addition to regular news bulletins that associated Arabs and Muslims with terrorism. A few years later, Shaheen (1984) noted that ‘‘the stereotype [of Arabs] remains omnipresent, appearing in new programs and dated reruns’’ (p. 113). Shaheen reports on an interview with a CBS Vice President who confirmed the notion, saying he ‘‘had never seen a ‘good Arab’ on TV,’’ and that Arabs are rather usually portrayed as ‘‘warmongers and/or covetous desert rulers’’ (p. 114). Indeed, Slade (1981) analyzed a poll of American attitudes and perceptions towards Arabs and found that Americans have little knowledge of Arab culture, history, or contributions to the world. She reported that Americans commonly think of Arabs as ‘‘anti-American,’’ ‘‘anti-Christian,’’ ‘‘unfriendly,’’ and ‘‘warlike.’’ Christensen (2006a, b) argues that the spread of Islamophobia in the West is at least in part the responsibility of distorted and imbalanced media coverage. He argues that news programs are perceived usually as ‘‘serious’’ and ‘‘truthful’’ because journalism is associated in the public mind with objectivity and fairness. Western news stories, he says, tend to show a mosque, a minaret, or a veiled woman regardless of the nature of the story, even when the story is about terrorism. ‘‘The combination
of stereotypical images adds up to a whole that is, in many ways, greater than the sum of its parts’’ (Christensen, 2006b, p. 30). Said (1997) argues that the image of Islam in the U.S. media has always been influenced by a framework of politics and hidden interests and is therefore laden with ‘‘not only patent inaccuracy but also expressions of unrestrained ethnocentrism, cultural and even racial hatred, deep yet paradoxically free-floating hostility’’ (p. ii). He characterizes the image as involving ‘‘highly exaggerated stereotyping and belligerent hostility’’ (p. xi). Said, himself an American Christian scholar, states, ‘‘Malicious generalizations about Islam have become the last acceptable form of denigration of foreign culture in the West; what is said about the Muslim mind, or character, or religion, or culture as a whole cannot now be said in mainstream discussion about Africans, Jews, other Orientals, or Asians’’ (p. xii). If this was the image before 9/11, things took a turn for the worse after the criminal attacks. Despite the fact that all Arab countries condemned the attacks, for the most part, voices communicated through the mass media still failed to differentiate between Arabs and Muslims, on one hand, and terrorists, on the other. Pintak (2006) reports on Eric Rouleau of Le Monde, who criticized the tendency to portray images of ‘‘Muslims praying, mosques or women in chadors to illustrate stories about extremism and terror’’ (p. 33-34). Pintak adds that after the events of 9/11, ‘‘the U.S. media immediately fell back on the prevailing—and stereotyped—narrative about Arabs and Muslims and reverted to its historic tendency to present the world, in Henry Kissinger’s words, as ‘a morality play between good and evil’’’ (p. 39). Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR, 2001) noted that ‘‘many media pundits focused on one theme: retaliation. For some, it did not matter who bears the brunt of an American attack’’ (n.p.). For example, on September 12, 2001, Steve Dunleavy wrote in the New York Post: ‘‘The response to this unimaginable 21stcentury Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift—kill the bastards. A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them if you have to. As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts.’’ On September 11, former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger commented on CNN, ‘‘There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them even if they are not immediately directly involved in this thing’’ (FAIR, 2001, n.p.). On September 13, Bill O’Reilly, on his popular The O’Reilly Factor show on the Fox News Channel, said it ‘‘doesn’t make any difference’’ who you kill in the process of retaliation against the attacks (FAIR, 2001, n.p.). On the same day, syndicated columnist Ann Coulter wrote: This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack.. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war. (FAIR, 2001, n.p.)
