posted
The media should really do a better job of unearthing the peace driven fatwaas then, all I ever hear about is the latest Imam to declare holy war against Westerners, and now apparently Christians in general.
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posted
Some of the Fatwahs against Hizbollah's attacks on Israel made the news.
However, most Fatwahs against violence don't make the news for the same reason most areas without violence don't usually make the news -- they aren't part of 'coups and earthquakes'.
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posted
I do remember the reports of the fatawa against Hezbollah.
But we're living in a world where peace is becoming more rare than violence in that part of the world. Then again, I'm working under the assumption that the media knows what "responsible journalism" means.
On another note, clerics and scholars in Pakistan are calling for the Pope to be removed. Guess it's time to beef up security around the Pope Mobile.
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posted
Responsible journalism does not mean reporting everything that happens in the proportion it happens in. I mean, could you imagine it if 98% of every news program were devoted to the day-to-day things that make up 98% of peoples' lives (warning: 98% statistic completely made up )
I too would like to see certain things reported more, but its hard to fault journalists for generally reporting things that are more exciting and generate more interest.
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posted
I think you took the reverse of my point, either that, or it's your assumption that the grand majority of fatawa are made in favor of peace, love and understanding, and the media only reports the crazed 2% that involve death chants and call for war against the West.
You don't think it's a little irresponsible to represent a Muslim world where all you ever hear about is the latest declared Jihad against the West, and nothing about peace movements or for that matter anything approaching sanity? Other than the backlash against Hezbollah during the Lebanon conflict, I've barely heard a peep out of the major news outlets, at least not without digging to find it, about fatawas of anything approaching a favorable nature to the West.
I don't expect proportionality, heck, I don't even HOPE for it, and not even sure I want it. But responsible journalism does mean covering two sides of an issue doesn't it? I want to hear the other side of the story. Do you even care anymore when you hear that Imam So and So has declared Jihad against whoever in the West and for the Crescent to fly over the Vatican? It's not exciting, it generates no interest, because it's been the same old story thrown in our faces for the last five years, at least.
Exiciting news, that generates interest would be hearing that no, in fact, not everyone over there hates us and wants us dead. And that I believe, would be responsible journalism, instead of the kind of journalism that perpetuates a stereotype, and a non-existant status quo for the sake of sensationalism.
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I'm sure that there are a whole lot of reasonable, mature, non-violent Muslims, but the impression that I keep getting is that there are a whole lot of irrational, childish, violent Muslims as well.
I know this is from the first page, but I am gonna respond to it anyway.
It occurs to me that this is not as much an observation of the disposition of Muslims, as on the nature of the religion and/or, the culture surrounding Islam.
When you think about it, this above statment about there being mature AND childish elements is pretty applicable to all people, but we are talking about Muslims for a reason. This is because the discussion is about religion, and on that score, (maybe!) "judeo-Christian" or American/European cultural values generally dispose us toward a different stance in an argument. We are living in a land (most of us) which was settled by a certain belief set and has grown out of that- so we experience the middle aspects of our culture and aren't frightened by them; they are harmless.
When you think about it, that feeling: "Hey buddy.. your taking yourself a little too seriously," is something you get with alot of groups, or the most extreme elements of all groups. These elements are also the most vocal, and the ones we are most likely to hear. Coming from the "other" side, the Islamic countries, of which in the west there are none, we hear the most extreme messages. Partly a function of our own news apparatus (bleeds it leads, etc), this feeling you are always getting, that extremist muslims are suspiciously spotlighted, leads some people to believe that Islam is generally "more extreme" than Christianity or Judaism or whatever else people believe- the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for instance. I think though, that Muslims in the middle of their own world of Muslims are likely to feel about the same way if they look at some of the more 'enthusiastic' and missionary of the Christian literature.
For instance, the Islamic tradition of studious record keeping a millenium ago is responsible for preserving a number of the great works of the West, including Plato and Aristotle, as well as Plotinus and Horace iirc. Muslims would be perfectly justified in being alarmed by the fact that it was Christian scholars, following and creating Christian doctrine, who essentially tried to erase two thousand years of literary tradition during the dark ages, and recreate the western world out of the ashes of our divergent histories. It was the classics preserved in Arabic that saved science, classicism, architecture and literary criticism from losing the entirety of their western past. Given that history, as well as the crusades, and our own outspoken extreme factions, I don't think it would be hard for the middle east to feel similarly towards us as you describe feeling towards them.
I'm not saying either interpretation is right, because both is informed more by a limited view (either that of the very recent or that of the historically removed) than I would want to use to base judgements on. What I do know is that what I learn about "the situation" from major news sources, CNN along with Fox news, NBC and others, is that I am not being shown what it is not in someone's decided interest to show me.
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The notion of carrying both sides of an issue is a tricky one. For one thing, some other authority declaring fatwahs of peace aren't really 'the other side' of osama bin ladin declaring fatwahs of war; frequently the people issuing the peace fatwahs are completely unrelated to bin ladin, beyond sharing a religion and sometimes a vague region of the globe.
Now, if it was some report about the nature of Islam, sure, but when its some report about OBL issuing a fatwah saying to kill Americans, the 'other side' isn't a fatwah by some other authority saying 'offer succor to strangers', its US officials.
To address some more specific points in my post: I took your post for exactly what it was, and tried to point out some complications in the assumption that 'responsible journalism' would necessarily include more mentions of peaceful fatwah. I also don't think 98% (or whatever) of fatwahs are about peace and love, but I bet about 98% of them are about mundane, everyday things. They're similar to some sorts of rabbinical statements in Judaism.
I can assure you that most things news stations are airing do generate interest. TV news in particular involves incredibly fine-grained attention to viewership numbers, and if a certain sort of segment isn't carrying the viewership, it gets cut (with a few exceptions for things the ownership cares about, but even those get run at off hours).
This isn't to say there aren't venues. CNN World Report will show just about anything a (non-US) local TV station sends to them (I took a journalism class with a former producer for the show, and they didn't reject a single clip while he was there, sometimes editing for time but never for content). CNN will show hours of footage about peaceful fatwahs if other stations send enough clips in. But even World Report pretty much runs on CNNI, which is largely a station for establishing reputation, not viewership.
There are serious issues with how news is reported, but there are much biggers issues with the general understanding of those problems. There isn't some long list of things that if the news would only cover them coverage would be 'responsible' (and no, I'm not saying you're saying this, I'm starting with a common attitude). There are complicated concerns regarding process, interest, responsibility to various stakeholders, et cetera. For instance, I can nigh guarantee you that if CNN started counterpointing every instance of Islamic militancy with peaceful Islamic statements, other news would be crowded out and their viewership would drop (those are two largely separate effects, not a causal ordering, btw).
And as pointed out before, instances of peaceful Islamic statements aren't really 'the other side' of militant Islamic statements, so that prescription doesn't seem to work, either. I mean, when some Christian group bombs an abortion clinic, we don't expect the news to cut to a random church four states over holding a food drive for the homeless in order to show both sides of Christianity.
Should the set of news being reported be modified? Yes. Are journalists painfully aware of the need? Generally, yes. Is there any good way to do it without introducing new problems? Not that anybody has found. The process of reporting news has changed significantly with time, and each new approach has had major strengths and weaknesses, but none has led to reporting that presents a view of the world not inviting bias among the viewership. It may be that no such approach (or any close approximation) exists.
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posted
Neither here nor there but OBL can't issue fatawa, he has to get an Imam to do it.
And I know that OBL isn't the same thing as good Muslims who'd probably just prefer to be left alone, as well as actively oppose him. But are you suggesting the entire viewership of the United States is that geopolitically aware of the situation?
I assure you, they aren't. If they were, I'd withdraw my protest.
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posted
Oh alright, you were just assuming that I didn't know what I as talking about, which considering how this discussion has been going, I really don't see how you could surmise.
What OBL thinks, and what IS, are usually two different things. He isn't an Imam, he can't issue fatawa. He can issue editorials and call them fatawa, but that doesn't make them so. If his crazy followers look at it like it is a fatwa, that's their business, but it still doesn't make it so. I can issue an encyclical, and maybe convince a couple hundred or thousand people tha it IS an encyclical, but that still doesn't make it one.
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posted
Imam-hood is not something that an established institution conveys. In a real sense, OBL would be an Imam if a lot of his followers thought he was (and perhaps he had apprenticed under an Imam, which would be easy enough for him to meet). IIRC, he (and his followers) actually considers himself a sheik, which would also give him the authority to issue fatwahs in his brand of Islam.
The only thing I've been assuming you didn't know about are the challenges associated with providing responsible journalism, particularly on this issue. You've also demonstrated you weren't aware of the typical composition of fatwahs, but I did not assume that.
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posted
Considering you just said it's an open ended thing, I wasn't aware there WAS anything "typical" about it.
Back in the early 90's, according to the 9-11 Commission Report, Osama specifically waited to find an Imam to issue a fatwah that he could use as a banner for his intentions.
The plural is fatawa, btw.
And we disagree on what responsible journalism means, unless you hold the keys to singular definitions for everything.
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posted
No, but I have had the odd high level journalism classes with extensive discussions on the subject, and I have tried to discuss the complicatedness of the issue, while you have not responded to my points on that issue at all. I might not hold the keys to singular definitions for everything (as I don't acknowledge such things exist), but I am aware of much of the scholarship and many of the practical developments in the area.
By typical compositions of fatawa, I mean that they're mostly mundane. There doesn't need to be a typical fatawa for there to be a typical composition of a set of fatawa. Similarly, all the atoms in an object might be in many disparate places, but it can still mostly be in one general location.
Also, I have just searched the entire 9/11 commission report for the word imam (which appears several times) and the word fatwa (which appeared many more times), and found no mention of that assertion regarding OBL wanting to find an Imam. They specifically mention that OBL issued the first fatwa without on his own perceived authority. Could you point me to where in the report it mentions him seeking an imam to co-issue a fatwa?
Additionally, the report specifically mentions at least one fatwa issued not by imams, but sheikhs, so it would seem one doesn't need to be an imam to issue fatawa (or if we're being fussy about plurals, fat?wa).
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Don't have anything approaching the energy to search through the 9/11 report right now, I've only read the first few hundred pages of it, but I'll get back to you on that if this thread doesn't disappear before I get the chance.
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