The Role and Contribution of Islam in Promoting the Culture of Peace in a Globalized World

(Part 1)

The problem

Four factors make this theme challenging:

First, I believe that due mainly to globalization of media disinformation, one of the most difficult hypotheses for a researcher to prove in the 21stcentury is the innocence of Islam of most of the world tensions going on today. The simple reason for that is the fact that the public opinion has already been hijacked and masses hypnotized by a well- designed cunning world media, which for decades has perfected the art of disinformation. Today when one attempts statistically to catalogue terminologies used by the world media, one finds that human sub-conscience has been constantly bombarded with terms of Islamic militancy such as the Mahdi Army, the Islamic Army, Saraya Quds, the Army of God, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic terrorism so on and so forth.

The venom and shrewdness of such a mass media is evident in the fact that in order to turn positive negative, the media always hides the other face of the coin i.e. it hides direct and indirect causes of the events, such as illegal occupation of many of Muslim lands, as it also deals with world events in very shameful paradoxical double standards. For decades, for example, tensions and killings were going on in Ireland and no Christian terrorism terminology has been developed. A Buddhist or Christian school shooter who killed a number of innocent students in Virginia Tech was never branded Buddhist or Christian terrorist.

The shrewdness of such a media can also be sensed in the way it plays with words. This is what I call secularization of language. For, if one wants to tamper with peoples' consciousness, one has to temper with the ideas they base their thoughts and the best mechanism to do so is to play with terms. The example is the term jihad, which was once very attractive during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan so much so that in some Hollywood movies, Rambo was proudly associated with the jidadists. Today under the impact of what may be called intellectual terrorism, the same terminology has been made scary and a crime. Who is playing the rules?

Second, intellectual manipulative interpretation of the Islamic sources by some orientalists and by some fifth battalion Muslim modernist thinkers who would, for example, intentionally interpret the Qur'nic injunctions addressing the concept of jihad out of context just to impart a false picture of Islamic intolerance.

To be continued