My God is different from your God

Posted by Super Admin
Wednesday, 30 July 2008 12:35

Sure, I whack and insult those Malays who claim to be Muslims. But they are not of my religion. I am not of their religion. They and I do not share the same God. I whack and insult them because they have false Gods.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin Call to media to stop portraying Islam, Muslims negatively
(Bernama, 30 July 2008)

-- The media must give fair coverage and balanced representation on Islam and Muslims in reporting conflicts involving Islam and Muslims, said Dr Haja Mohideen Mohamed Ali, a lecturer from the Communications Department of International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM).He said distinctive choice of words, phrases and terminology used by the media in reporting on Islam and issues concerning Muslims could have a negative impact on the perception of Islam and its followers by the global public.

"Some of the media are responsible, they like to look things from a proper perspective but a lack of understanding of Islam and Muslims cause them to use negative terms when reporting on the religion and Muslims," he said when presenting his paper "Linguistic (MIS)Representation of Islam and Muslims in Conflicts Reporting in the Print Media" at the International Conference on the Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media here, Tuesday.Haja Mohideen said the misrepresentation of Muslims could also be found in the media from Muslim countries, although at a smaller scale compared to the media from the West.His views was shared by another scholar, Dr Zulkarimein Nasution, a lecturer from the Communications Department of the University of Indonesia.

Zulkarimein said bias against an ethnic or religious group such as Muslims in the mass media had negative impacts on peoples beliefs and perceptions and that the best approach to minimise the effects was through education."The public, especially the younger generation, should be taught how to analyse the mass media. They should be made aware that the representations made by the media are not always appropriate, and that what they see or hear in the mass media is not always the reality," he said.He said, when a negative act was done by non-Muslims, the media did not label their act by their religion but only focused on their act alone unlike Muslims' negative acts, where they are always associated with the religion they profess.

He said the media should give a neutral representation of Muslims by not giving any reference to the doers of the act, rather by referring to the act itself.More than 27 communications scholars from Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Canada, Qatar, Indonesia, the United States and United Arab Emirates are participating in the two-day conference which ends tomorrow. The conference is organised by IIUM.