Islamic Scholars Convene an Anti-ISIS Summit in Mecca – The Atlantic

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

Good piece contrasting the US-led CVE summit and the Muslim World League, a Saudi-backed alliance of Islamic NGOs, led summit in Mecca on “Islam and Counterterrorism:”

According to Will McCants, director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings Institution, there’s a logic behind the divergence in messaging from Washington and Mecca. “This conversation can’t really happen in the U.S., or in the West, because the [Obama] administration is determined not to frame this [conflict] or have it be interpreted as a religious war,” he told me. “It wants to take that talking point away from its enemies.” McCants added that Muslim leaders may also feel more comfortable speaking openly about an issue that is afflicting their own community. When the U.S. tries to adjudicate theological issues, he said, “it can discredit the people who reach the same conclusions we do. If Muslims and the U.S. government say these guys don’t represent Islam, it makes the Muslims look like pawns of the United States.”

The priorities of the CVE and Muslim World League summits were also distinct. The impetus for the conference in Mecca appears to have been the Saudi government’s belief that Islamist terrorism represents not only a threat to the security of the region, but also an existential threat to Islam itself. It would therefore have been impossible for the speakers to ignore ISIS’s Islamic roots. The conference’s organizers cast their mission as developing a coordinated campaign to promote a moderate, peaceful vision of Islam that disavows the violence and apostasy that ISIS thrives on. The program, above all, emphasized that this is a specifically Muslim issue, and placed the onus on the Muslim community to craft a narrative that overpowers the Islamic State’s.

In comparison, the CVE summit was more concerned with addressing radicalization in all its forms, and emphasized the economic and social conditions in which people tend to become radicalized. The agenda also had a largely domestic focus despite the United States being low on the list of countries contributing foreign fighters to jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq.

But whether ISIS’s deeds are labeled “violent extremism” or “Islamized terrorism,” the conversations in Washington and Mecca had at least one thing in common: They deepened the debate over whether ISIS and its fellow travelers are “Islamic,” and whether the answer matters in the first place. That debate is not just academic. It has real consequences for how the Islamic State’s opponents mount their counteroffensive.

Given the somewhat uncomfortable role that Saudi Arabia has played in encouraging the spread of Salafism (albeit non-violent forms), somewhat ironic that they now have to focus on some of the indirect consequences.

Islamic Scholars Convene an Anti-ISIS Summit in Mecca – The Atlantic.

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Stop Blaming the Media! – New Canadian Media – NCM

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

Fair points on the media and bias but there are any number of studies on coverage and portrayal of groups, not only Muslim, that show a particular slant:

However, some of my colleagues, among them Muslims, and the nattering voices of social media jumped immediately to the conclusion that the media were biased in not instantaneously identifying this as a hate crime and in being slow-footed with their reporting. If we believe it is the job of the media to draw conclusions about racism, we are wrong. The reporter’s job is to tell the story. Absent conclusive evidence, reporters did not say that the alleged killer was Islamophobic.

But I have to point out that deliberative and well considered reporting works both ways. If we media were permitted to conclude the UNC killer was a Muslim hater, then the Parliament Hill shooter, who killed Cpl Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa, should have been immediately identified by the media as an “Islamic terrorist.” They didn’t do that. The man may have claimed he was inspired by his (faulty) understanding of Islam, but the Canadian reporting more readily identified him as a deranged – even psychotic – “lone wolf,” more likely influenced by drugs. The coverage got it right.

There’s also the matter of simple reasoning that seems to be lacking these days. If all terrorists are, say, men of the Purple religion – and the media simply report that fact – it doesn’t mean they hold a bias.  Logic 101: just because all the terrorists are Purple men, doesn’t mean all Purple believers are terrorists. It doesn’t mean all men are terrorists, either. It’s a simple matter of reason.

But Landau’s recommendation makes sense:

In the media welter, there are some proactive steps you can take to heighten your community’s media profile. Tell your own stories by starting your own website. Contact the mainstream media when you have a story you think others might want to hear (I know New Canadian Media is always listening). Encourage your children to go into journalism. Teach yourself and others media literacy so that you can separate fact from opinion. Wherever possible, make sure that whoever lays claim to speaking for your community is articulate and credible.

Stop Blaming the Media! – New Canadian Media – NCM.

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Pew Study On Religion Finds Increased Harassment Of Jews : The Two-Way : NPR

2015/03/02 Leave a comment

Pew_Forum_Religious_Harassment_2015_pdfThe latest report on harassment of religions, both from governments and by individuals:

The Pew report, which is based on data and reports from 2013, finds that Muslims and Christians face comparable levels of hostility, though Christians are harassed more often by governments, Muslims more often by individuals.

One group faces increased hostility: Jews. Each year since 2007, when Pew began these surveys, the targeting of Jews around the world has gotten worse.

European Jews, in particular, encounter intolerance, says Peter Henne, the lead Pew researcher on the report.

“There’s a pretty marked harassment of Jews in Europe,” he says. “They’re harassed in 76 percent of countries in Europe, which is higher than the number of countries in which they’re harassed in other regions.”

The United States does not get off the hook in the Pew report. It ranks the U.S. as having a “moderate” level of religious harassment, on par with such countries as France, Slovakia and Mongolia.

“In terms of what we see in the United States, there are some issues with land use, churches or mosques trying to build or expand their site and being blocked by local governments,” Henne says. “There are some tensions in prisons — limits on prisoners’ ability to convert or to use things like tobacco in religious ceremonies.”

Overall, the level of religious harassment in 2013 is about the same as it was the year before, according to Pew. But with only seven years of data, it’s hard to see any historical trend.

Pew Study On Religion Finds Increased Harassment Of Jews : The Two-Way : NPR.

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