Press TV
Britain's politicians are taking good advantage of an Islamophobic propaganda campaign launched by the UK media outlets to portray a dangerous image of Muslims.
British Muslims correctly believe that certain media outlets are disseminating an inaccurate image of them and their religion falsely and unjustly, according to a January 2007 report by the Islamic Human Right Council entitled, “The British Media and Muslim Representation: The Ideology of Demonization”.
In 2008, a Channel 4 Television “Dispatches” documentary, based on a Peter Oborne and James Jones “Muslims under Siege” document, revealed how UK media and political figures propagate widespread Islamophobic views, similar to America where Muslims are vilified as terrorists.
West has been vilifying Islam in a longstanding, cruel, and unjustifiable way. In his 1978 book “Orientalism,” Edward Said explained a pattern of Western misinterpretation of the East, especially the Middle East. He explained that Muslims are portrayed as dangerous bomb-throwing terrorists by the West where they wrongfully victimize Muslims based on totally unfounded, baseless allegations.
Most media reports in the UK have been portraying Muslims as dangerous, backward, irrational, extreme, incompatible with British values, and prone to commit terrorism since 2000, said the Islamic Human Rights Council's report.
British media writers proudly talk about their Islamophobic ideas. Polly Tonybee, a writer for the Guardian newspaper, once said “I am an Islamophobe and proud of it”. Bruce Anderson of the Independent and Martin Amis of the Times have expressed same ideas.
Recently, the first female Muslim minister in the British government said that she believes “it is now socially acceptable in the UK to discriminate against Muslims”.
Sayeeda Warsi, co-chairman of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party warned against an increasing trend of “intolerance” in the British society.
"It has seeped into our society in a way where it is acceptable around dinner to have these conversations where anti-Muslim hatred and bigotry is quite openly discussed," said Warsi.
The UK politicians are using Islamophobia as an important tool to unify public as mentioned by author Martin Amis in the “Muslims under Siege”.
“Islamophobia is a tremendous force for unification in British public culture. It does not merely bring liberal progressives like Polly Toynbee together with curmudgeonly Tory commentators like Bruce Anderson. It also enlists militant atheists with Christian believers”, the Times' writer has said.
Mainstream politicians also made Islamaphobia Britain's remaining socially respectable form of bigotry.
“To even hint of making common cause with Islam….is political insanity….We should be positioning ourselves to take advantage for our own political ends of the growing wave of public hostility to Islam currently being whipped up by the mass media”, said British National Party (BNP) chairman Nick Griffin.
Western politicians throughout the UK, US and Europe have been viciously targeting Muslims for political advantages since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.
Innocent men and women are bogusly charged and imprisoned for crimes they neither planned or committed with no regard for democratic values and justice based on which the western bullies have always been trying to push forward their imperialistic policies.
“During the past year [2010], there has been a dangerous upsurge, largely manufactured by the media, in anti-Islamic bigotry.
Simultaneously, supposedly, in the name of 'peace,' ” American and Western allies have attacked and occupied non-threatening Muslim countries preemptively and lawlessly”, said Ramsey Clark, a former US Attorney General and the founder of International Action Center (IAC) in his new year's message.
Western vilification of Muslims has also been condemned by former Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who described it as “insensitive and irresponsible”.
“False accusations and hate are widespread within mainstream Western society….The West should treat Islam the way it wants Islam to treat the West and vice versa. They should accept one another as equals”, Badawi once told an audience in Kuala Lumpur.
Britain is home to a growing Muslim population of 2.9 million now, or 4.6 percent of the population, up from 1.6 million in 2001, according to research published by the US-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
January 25, 2011, Press TV
