“The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, it is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and obsessed with the inferiority of their power” (Samuel Huntington)
Currently, Mass Media is more influential than it ever was. Media has almost turned the world into a global village. It plays a significant role in shaping, controlling and manipulating the opinions, thoughts and views of the people. It has worked as a bridge to interconnect different regions of the world. Thus, a racist segment of the West is using media as a major tool to advance its political agenda and to inculcate anti-Muslim sentiment among its non-Muslims masses.
The writings like ‘Clash of Civilization’, ‘End of History’, and ‘Coming Anarchy’ seem to be the part of the Western propaganda to set a platform to prove legality and legitimacy of their future violent acts against Muslims. In a thesis “The Clash of Civilizations”, Samuel Huntington argued that the underlying problem for the West is not ‘Islamic fundamentalism’, but ‘Islam’ itself.
As a result of such type of stereotyping, Muslims get have to suffer various form hardships, and human rights violation. They’re profiled as “potential terrorists” and “supporters of extremism” in the Western world.
A major factor which played a significant role in creating anti-Islam or anti-Muslim sentiment in the West is the media’s selection of words, i.e. fundamental Islam, radical Islam, Islamic Jihadist, and extremists etc, to describe the Muslims and Islam.
Actually, wars in the battlefields are the collective actions of what is planned, designed, discussed, and propagated through media. Media is being used as a vehicle to manipulate public opinion. Western governments are consistently spreading Islamophobia to spread hate and prejudice against Muslims
Various Islamic and Quranic terms and verses are vastly misinterpreted, mistranslated and misunderstood by the Westerns. They are using some concepts of Islam as card stacking by disseminating or omitting them.
The concept of Jihad is most misperceived concept by the West. They propagate its meaning as a holy war where Muslims irrationally kill non-believers. But the fact is that the word jihad which actually means “to struggle” and is only used as a defense mechanism in the face of foreign aggression. However, the West often takes the word “jihad” out of context to propagate negative views against Islam.
The religious terrorist groups which consider themselves as the true believers of religion, who want to impose laws and rules accordingly to their own will on the whole world could be from any religion, not only from Islam. Hitler also killed Jews in the name of religion for example.
Actually such terrorist organizations can misinterpret some specific teachings of a religion. It is true that some Muslims are terrorists. It is true that some Muslims are fanatics, but the same is true for the believers of any other religion, the Christians, the Jews or the Hindus.
Islamophobia in the West mainly spread after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre (WTC). Due to the extent of these attacks it allowed the media a favorable condition to turn people in favour of war against Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Iraq in the name of “War against Terrorism”. Ever since this senseless war has created more radicalization and increased terrorism than doing any good.
In Short, Western Nations have very smartly arranged a ground in favor of their own interests, therefore, Muslim world should join hand against this devious attempt. All of Muslim countries should jointly take steps to project and propagate true teachings of Islam in front of the whole world.
