As to who is responsible for the Muslim terrorist stereotype as opposed to the handful of actual terrorists who happens to be Muslims is an open secret but I have attempted to highlight the issue from a different perspective. Please click on the two "Google trends" links first before reading the post or click on the images at the bottom of the post. Thanks.
You must have figured out by now that the links provided are to point out the way Islam is reported in the English speaking press/media and the use of the word "terror" in its various forms in conjunction with Islam and/or Muslims. That would be the bottom part of the graph. As you can see the terms shadowing each other closely as they appear in the popular Western press, which is in stark contrast to how the users at large use the terms, the top half of the graph.
Google trends is a tool that can be employed to expose this kind of bias through data mining in the absence of a clear cut cause and effect evidence. Although the correlation vs cause and effect comparison is a different discussion but let me just say this; this importance issue is hotting up primarily due to the fast improving tools and the mountain of data on offer. The data mining practitioner don't claim both methods are the same but are prepared to use a correlation model by constantly updating the presence of the related links. The use of the data mining method is justified whenever it is not easy to spot lurking variables that would have revealed certain hard facts.
In the examples above it takes on a new twist. The twist is that the correlation in all probability is engineered. How can that be possible given the shear scale of the data? A little research solves the mystery. If we were to analyze the fact that the supposedly diverse Western media is in practice controlled by 4 or 5 mega groups http://www.newint.org/features/2001/04/01/facts/ with a history or at least recent history of anti Islam bias then the link (s) expose the deliberate pattern. It is not such a crazy notion anymore to suspect that there is a common set of engineered variables responsible for the negative reporting of Islam as is evident from the collective processing of the data but difficult to isolate for obvious reasons.
As to the exact methodology (s) of how the variables are deliberately kept in the stealth mode need more research, one can easily speculate on how this would be possible in practice but I will leave that for a later discussion. As for now if we were to offer alternative explanations for the blatant links, it would raise even more disturbing questions instead of explaining it away. For example one can make a case that since a lot of terror related incidents are linked to Muslims hence the reporting inadvertently link the two. Then the question arises that why are the words peace and Islam not reported with the same linkage since the correlation between these two terms is clearly evident in the general usage as per the link below
Notice the reversal in the pattern :) I must admit it is extremely difficult to accurately arrive at irrefutable proof when it comes to data mining but by the same token it is not easy to explain away in your face anomalies :)
Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of terrorist in all years. Learn more
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Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of terrorism in all years. Learn more
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Google trends Muslim and terrorist
Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of islam in all years. Learn more
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Google trends Islam and terrorism
Google trends peace and Islam
Interesting. There's not a lot of search results for "Christian Terrorist", even though they do have their fair share of terrorists as well. I got upset about that a few days ago after a would-be abortion bomber was caught, and posted my $0.02 about it http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5784486/socalled_christian_terrorist_arrested.html?cat=9
ReplyDeleteIn a documentary that I am watching right now "Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think", Dalia Mogahed, the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies mentioned an interesting statistic from a study on the U.S. media content: 57 percent of the U.S. Media content portray Muslims as militants while in fact they only make up a fraction of 1% of the global population of Muslims. I don't know which organization was this or what methodology they employed, but you might be interested to find out more. Watch the video here: http://www.groundzerodialogue.org/ Interesting article, btw.
ReplyDeleteWe should complain I guess, if we want positive image of Islam then as they say, you must own the press. Thanks for the links
ReplyDeleteSorry it should read "We should not complain" :)
ReplyDeleteWhile it's true that we are not going to own the press any time soon, and the nature media, I assume, is not going to be reformed any time soon, what CAN change and very often does change is the public opinion that the media thrives on. In fact, while the influence of the media might be strong, what affect a person’s perspective the most about something like Islam is very often one’s own experience or friendship with Muslim individuals. My personal journey to Islam attests to this statement. Perhaps it is best for us to start small and promote dialogue on a grassroots level. Changes might not come quickly, but with patient perseverance and the help from Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala), insha Allah changes WILL come. Peace.
ReplyDeleteGet an educational DVD and start a dialogue:
http://www.20000dialogues.org/
"having good manners is the best da'wah"
I agree 100%, Grassroots trumps owning the press anytime :)
ReplyDelete