Often I wonder why what mostly appears in the press from the Muslim world appears to be either business as usual (the hajj is starting now) or the latest threat from some extremist or other, or of course the press’s favorite angle on either of those (hotel collapses during hajj or terrorists kill x people). All those things are legitimate news, and I’m glad that ordinary things do go on as usual. But where are the voices opposing the extremists?
Here’s one, from Iran. Former president Mohammed Khatami says:
Since the aggressive voice within the Islamic world is very loud today, and the poser circles in the west, too, try to further aggrandize it, we need to clarify that there is another voice within the Islamic world," Khatami was quoted as saying.
"In order to clarify which version of Islam we are talking about, there is no need to represent a nation, or a government, but we need to clarify that our voice is clearly heard in the Islamic world and accepted," he said.
— Iran’s Khatami calls for "another voice" in Islamic world (Xinhua) Updated: 2006-01-07 09:22
For that matter, why does this story only seem to be carried on two Chinese news agencies and a couple of middle eastern ones? Does the western press have no interest in a reasonable voice from the middle east? Maybe it’s too busy carrying the latest not-so-reasonable diatribe from the current president of Iran and ex-president Khatami’s reasonable voice doesn’t fit the current press template for Iran; I don’t know.
Khatami made the call at a conference on what he has been advocating — dialogue among cultures and civilizations. Khatami put forward the ideal in 2000 to stand against US scholar Samuel P. Huntington’s theory of clash of civilizations.
Other sources say Khatami first proposed a dialogue among civilizations in 1998 in an address to the U.N. general assembly. Maybe that’s why the western press doesn’t cover it when he says it again: they consider it old news. Yet it covers every pronunciamento from every terrorist. Why not provide a bit more visibility to other voices?
It seems the UN is still trying to promote this idea of dialogue:
Last September, one month after he left his post as president, Khatami was appointed by UN chief Kofi Annan as a member of " Alliance of Civilizations," a high-level UN organization grouping 18 members with a task to promote alliance among civilizations, especially between the West and the Islamic world.
Personally, I agree with Winston Churchill that jaw-jaw is better than war-war, and the former may reduce the risk of the latter.
-jsq
If it is a video tape of Bin Laden, there will be a huge fanfare in western mega media, because radical voices like Bin Laden’s, serve big powers and justfy the wrong policies of them towards Islamic world, but rational voices like Khatami’s is ignored because there is nothing in it to serve them.
As another example, at the end of Ramadan last year in Austin, Texas, there was a dinner at the Marriott (the same one frequented by legislators in that season).
This Eid ul-Fitr feast was attended by 400 people of varying religions.
Press releases were sent to all the local media.
Not one reporter showed up and not one story appeared in any of the media.
I guess if it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead; it doesn’t even get printed.
-jsq