Wednesday 8 October 2014

CAN MEDIA REDUCE TERRORISM?

From Yasser
The question may seem awkward when media is all about delivering the latest stories. Whenever any incident of terrorism occurs , the story hits the headlines and the breaking news. Did we ever thing how it effect the viewer's ? Just imagine of an afghan child watching the latest news from his local news channel. The moment the breaking news pops up with red color stating " An Islamic terrorist blew himself in busy crowd of foreign tourists in kabul." So how would this effect little child. For this we need to go back in the past of the child. Ever since childhood he was taught that Islam is the truth, your success is in Islam and you must follow it till death , without teaching what Islam really is all about. It's not that those teaching Islam weather it be parents or teachers hide Islam, they themself know almost nothing.
So who teaches the child Islam? Yes ofcourse the local Madrasa but where does he learn terrorism from ? I wound not speak on madrasa since my focus is on media. When word "Islamic " come from a news channel, the child remember Islam is the truth, success and must be followed. So whatever comes after the word "Islamic " the child is ready to accept it as truth and is ready to follow it. The next word usually is " Terrorism" followed by the the details of the incident, usually suicide attack , civilian deaths,
damaged cars and so on. Everything is connected to Islam. For the child everything is correct. No matter how ugly story of terrorism it be the child starts justifying it inside his innocent brain until he loses his innocence. Many may not believe in this, but imagine if the child is an orphan, his parents died from an American drone strike, would not news motivate him to be another terrorist ? This is why its no wonder why terrorism hiked in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq ,Syria ,Yemen and Pakistan after American invasions and main stream news associating Islam and terrorism . It0 is highly likely that media companies may not have intended so, probably the Americans must have intended something else too. After all one thing the world realised war doesn't end terrorism on opposite it only promotes. The world is yet to realise that associating terrorism with Islam is only promoting terrorism!
Where an air strike kills one terrorist it also kills twenty other innocent civilians who's brothers and sons become new terrorist. So it never decreased terrorists. Some what similarly media does the same thing, probably unknowingly. One terrorist incident  covered only promotes many others to do the same.
So should the media covering a terrorist incident be stopped? If it can decrease terrorism then I would support stopping the media covering the incidents. If we think carefully and ask ourselves would stopping the coverage of incidents really solve the problems ? It doesn't matter weather media covers the story or not. What matters is media can educate Muslims about Islam. Those who suicide if they knew Islam has no room for suicide and no room for killing innocent life's. More over Islam asks victims to be patient at times of hardship, to forgive their oppressors , to overlook others mistakes. If these messages reaches those who are likely to become terrorists, would they not change their decisions ? When they would know there is nothing like holy war and seventy virgins awaiting in paradise for what they are doing, instead they would be punished in hell for killing innocents , would they continue to suicide? Who can broadcast this message ? If the news channels instead using Islamic terrorism and change it to only Terrorism and teach real Islam, probably terrorsim will decrease, otherwise it is only going to grow. Reminding deviated muslims about the truth of islam is a very good solution. 
If the media owners and other politicians are really interested to decrease terrorism then they would need to think for some change. If things don't change then I think we can assume the intentions are not only to covers terrorism but also to promote terrorism. Probably when terrorism reaches till their door , they may realise their mistake, but by then it would be very late.

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