Islamic news bias obvious

By Jon Heit

Misinformation about Islam runs rampant in today's media -- allowing bigotry and prejudice to fester. While the severity of the bias varies from one outlet to another, Islam is constantly depicted as a religion of terror and violence.

Dr. Parvez Ahmed, a board member for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the U.S.'s largest Muslim civil liberties advocacy group, recently conducted a study of newspaper articles which found that if a Muslim and a Christian committed the same crime, it was 1,000 times more likely that newspapers drew a connection between the criminal Muslim and Islam rather than the criminal Christian and Christianity.

Ahmed cited Aug. 5 of this year as a prime example. There were three main stories in The Associated Press news wires that day: the arrest of two Muslims in a sting operation, the arrest of a man who allegedly had plans to bomb a federal building and a FBI raid on a home investigating a purported anthrax threat. Guess which story made your headline news?

Even the Sept. 13 Time article, "The Struggle for the Soul of Islam," featured biased experts. While the piece was nicely done overall, the authors quoted the Holy Qur'an a total of six times. Five of these described graphic violence, while only one talked about the importance of not harming non-combatants.

In fact, the bias against Islam is not always so subtle, as demonstrated by the Sept. 18, 2003, Fox News program, "Hannity and Colmes." The news talk show guest, televangelist Pat Robertson, suggested that Islam was a religion of terrorism, "a monumental scam," and "to think (of it as a) peaceful religion (was) fraudulent."

That same week, talk show host Bill O'Reilly compared the Holy Qur'an to Hitler's Mein Kampf. A subtle way to express an opinion of Islam, isn't it?

Can you imagine what the reaction would be if someone made similar statements about the Bible and Christianity on network television? Viewers would be up in arms.

With this often not-so-subtle bias against Islam, what is the public supposed to believe?

Well, there is that one article from Time, "Shaking Up Islam in America," which was mostly balanced and well written. Unfortunately, "Shaking Up Islam in America" was only one page long. And it was written by a well-educated Muslim journalist. Go figure.

*Jon Heit's column appears once a month. He can be reached at jtheit@scu.edu.