In a lecture on Tuesday, Emmy Award-winning journalist Anisa Mehdi examined the Western media’s portrayalof Muslims and how that portrayal impacts Americanattitudes towards Islam.
“Who are we afraid of? What are we afraid of?” she asked the audience.
“Islam? No. Muslims? I don’t think so. Christianity? Christians? Judaism and Jews? Are we afraid of Hinduism or Buddhism or Atheists? No. Those are generalities,” she said, adding that people should instead be afraid of ideologies of hate, a lack of engagement between different viewpoints and inaccuracy as opposed to inquiry.
“We have this notion of Muslims as frightening… but remaining afraid is not going to do us any good, and it’s not going to further American foreign policy and, if we continue going the way we’re going, we’re not going to calm that fear,” she said.
Mehdi is a broadcast journalist specializing in religion and the arts. She is known as the first American broadcaster to report on the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, and has made several films on the topic including “Inside Mecca” and “Sacred Journeys: The Hajj.”
Mehdi explained that she first got inspired to do journalistic work during the 1960s when she would listen to her father do interviews with reporters on the stateof Palestine at the time. Mehdi said that, even as a child, it disturbed her when reporters would ask her father why he hated Jews.
“My father had been talking about Israel, my father had been talking about Zionism. He never mentioned Jews, he never mentioned Judaism. Anytime he burned an Israeli flag on the streets of New York he would cut out the Star of David, and fold it and tenderly put it in his breast pocket. Because he respected Judaism,” she said.
Mehdi said that today’s media, while it’s evolving and increasing its inclusivity of marginalized groups, it does not hold the same type of respect for the Muslim community as, say, her father had for the Jewish community.
For example, she noted that in coverage of the current Syrian refugee crisis and of the plight of victims of recent terrorist attacks by ISIS, there is no mention of the refugees'Islamic faith.
“When we learn about the misery of the migrants, typically we are not told that they’re Muslim. Now, we know that they’re Muslim. But we’re not reminded that they are Muslim… we don’t get that empathy working the way we get the antipathy working,” she said, referring to how the Muslim identity of the refugees is rendered invisible when Muslims are the victims.
“We are reminded when they aggress, we are reminded when they perpetrate a crime, we are reminded, regularly, that ISIS is an Islamic state. And when those boys attack… we are reminded that they’re Muslim. But when their mother are suffering in mud, they are migrants,” she added.
Mehdi noted that the mass media often disregards stories that look favorably upon Muslims and Islam, such as the story of Rachel Corrie, who stood in front of and was eventually run over by a bulldozing truck while trying to protect Palestinian homes in 2003 on the Gaza Strip.
Mehdi explained that, while it is good that the media had plentiful coverage of celebrities like Malala Yousafzai, the media has failed in its overlooking of the work done by other feminist Muslim women who focus on teaching the Quran to fellow women.
Despite this, Mehdi said she is encouraged by some most-recent portrayals of Muslims in the media, such as New York Times articles showing Muslims mourning for victims from the Brussels terrorist attack.
“Change is happening slowly, slowly, slowly. There was a time, in the newspapers, you didn’t know there was anything other than ‘Arab’. There was no distinction other than ‘Arab’. Now, we know, there’s Libya, there’s Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, even Palestine is a word that’s used,” she said.
The lecture, entitled“Islam, Muslims, and Our Phobic World,” took place on Tuesday in Robertson Hall at 4:30 p.m. and was organized by the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice. The event was free and open to the public.
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