We're not all terrorists,  Muslim leaders tell media

We're not all terrorists

Canadian media are fostering hatred against Muslims by wrongly labelling Islam as a religion of violence, says the Canadian Islamic Congress.  By Bob Harvey, Ottawa Citizen, Sept. 24, 1998 In a press conference in Toronto yesterday, the newly-formed umbrella organization for Canadian Muslims released the results of a six-month-long survey of five major Canadian anglophone newspapers, including the Citizen. "We have found instances of anti-Islam in all five newspapers,'' said the Islamic Congress's president, Mohamed Elmasry.  "In most cases, it's not done intentionally, but people who have an agenda try to generalize and say that all 1.2 billion Muslims around the world are terrorists.''

"The Muslims who commit these crimes are no different than the Muslim believers living here in Toronto,'' wrote Mark Harding.

In the survey, the Toronto Star fared worst, followed by the Globe and Mail, the Montreal Gazette, the Citizen and the Toronto Sun.

Mr. Elmasry, an engineering professor at the University of Waterloo, said the effects of repetitive headlines like "Muslim terrorists'' are serious.

"This has an impact on your Muslim neighbours. We see children coming home crying, saying 'I'm a Muslim, but I'm not a terrorist'.''

He said there are also frequent reports of adult Muslims being harassed because of their faith. Mr. Elmasry said Muslim women are often called names when they wear Muslim head-scarves in public. And two weeks ago a Muslim man in Windsor reported overhearing his neighbourhood storekeeper say "Watch this guy. He might leave a bomb in the store.'' When the person confronted the shopkeeper, the man said "You look like a terrorist.''

Mr. Elmasry said there are bad Muslims just as there are bad Christians and Jews. "We treat them as such and so should you. But Islam is a religion of peace. Muslims have a religious duty to be tolerant of other faiths and other ideologies.''

Mr. Elmasry said journalists need to differentiate between the peaceful teachings of Islam and the claims of some Muslim extremists that their actions are justified by their interpretations of Islam.

In the survey, conducted between October, 1997 and April, this year, the Congress identified 350 stories relating to Muslims and found a widespread use of terms like "Muslim extremists'' and "Muslim militants'' as well as examples of what evaluators rated as cultural insensitivity, lack of balance in stories about political events and false inferences that Islam condones and teaches violence.

The greatest number of offensive references to Muslims were found in stories originating with foreign news services covering events in other countries. However, the survey also found anti-Islam references in political cartoons, local news stories and opinion pieces.

Mr. Elmasry said Canadian media would never think of identifying the religious or ethnic affiliation of any other persons linked with crimes.

He likened the situation of Canadian Muslims today to that of Canadian Jews 50 years ago. "Jewish children were being (wrongly) called Christ-killers just as Muslim children are called terrorists today.''

There is little anti-Semitism in the Canadian media because the Canadian Jewish Congress and other organizations have worked hard to educate journalists and the Canadian public, said Mr. Elmasry.

He said the Canadian Islamic Congress intends to continue monitoring newspapers, seek interviews with newspaper editorial boards, and also launch a review of anti-Islam references by the electronic media and the entertainment industry.

Mr. Elmasry said there are some bright spots in newspaper coverage of Muslims. All five publications surveyed had more coverage of Canadian Muslims in 1998 than they did in 1997, and two of the newspapers surveyed, the Globe and the Gazette, printed fewer anti-Islam references after Muslim leaders met with editorial boards of the newspapers.

Wahida Valiante, vice-president of the Islamic Congress, said Canadian Muslims cringe and expect harassment whenever world events like the 1991 Gulf War or the August bombings in East Africa bring a fresh upsurge of media references to "Muslim terrorists.''

Mrs. Valiante is a social worker in Toronto and says that during the Gulf War, she received referrals of several Muslim children who were disturbed by harassment at school.

"In the schools, if your name was Mohammed, you were through,'' she said. She said it is long past time that Muslims spoke out against such stereotyping. "As parents, it's difficult to justify why we have done nothing about it for a long period of time,'' said Mrs. Valiante.

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