LImelight: Building bridges By Lubna Abdel-Aziz It is the Christmas season once again, with its traditional message that rings loud and clear of "peace on earth and goodwill to men". Yet no good will exists towards Arabs or Muslims at this, or any other season in the American media. That would not matter were not the American media the most powerful in the world -- moulding public opinion well beyond its continental boundaries. The fact of the matter is that it is, and it does. The American media has refined and polished the distortion of the image of Arabs and Muslims for the better part of the century. In the aftermath of 9/11 it has become relentless in its attack making the Arab the "villain of choice" in every venue of the written, audio and visual media. The war on terrorism has not been waged against a few radical fundamentalists, but on all Arabs and on all Muslims indiscriminately, producing an agenda of slander and hate towards 1.5 billion Muslims. Only a minority of Muslims are radical fundamentalists, only half of OPEC members are Arab countries, only 15 per cent of all Muslims are Arabs, but such details fall on deaf ears. This agenda is defined by bigotry and prejudice, generating hate amongst peoples of all persuasion, polarising communities and spreading more violence, destruction and resentment against Americans by one out of five of the world's inhabitants. The stereotype of the Arab or Muslim as a "towel-headed" desert villain is nothing new. It has been perpetrated for most of the 20th century without effective protest from Arabs and/or Arab organisations. Today, a formidable mechanism has been set in motion that hopefully will not only erase the negative image, but build "bridges" of understanding between America's eight million Muslims and mainstream America. That is the goal of Bridges a new cable-TV network whose aim is to combat the prejudiced view of the Muslim in the American media. Launched on US airwaves 3 December, the most famous Muslim heavyweight boxing champion Mohamed Ali, was on hand for the occasion, and what an occasion for Muslims! Bridges is no duplicate of Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiya channels, but rather the first American English language, Muslim TV channel for Americans. What can one say except -- "its about time!" The founder and chief executive officer of Bridges is 40 year-old Pakistani-born, American Muslim Muzzamil Hassan, who immigrated to the US in 1979. The idea came to his pregnant wife, while in the car on a road trip. Appalled by the derogatory remarks flooding the airwaves, she wished to rectify the wrong done to all Muslims for the sins of a few -- "she didn't want her kids growing up in this environment," said Muzzamil. It took three years to develop but the outpouring of support from within, as well as outside the Islamic community was clearly indicative of the dissatisfaction with the status quo. Muslims were strongly committed to changing the general poor perception of themselves. "If we don't define ourselves, others will!" Results so far are encouraging, as attested by four-time Emmy award-winning producer Sheldon Hatfield: "I am truly impressed by the quality of programming on Bridges TV. It is simply spectacular!" Will the world finally see the true face of Islam, of peace, tolerance, compassion, diversity, justice, and excellence? Excellence is what has distinguished Muslims in general and Arabs in particular in the US. They are by and large an affluent and well-educated group with an average annual income of $54,000, compared to the $43,000 for the average American, rising by 6.2 per cent annually, while the overall US economic growth is 0.9 per cent. Advertisers are already salivating at the promise of profit from such a large ethnic prosperous group. A "Zogby" survey predicts the numbers will reach 15 million within the next 10 years. Building bridges is the only weapon that can begin to destroy the purveyors of hate and encourage understanding and acceptance. Veteran American journalist James McCartney wrote "it is my personal belief that if the media as a whole in the Western world had done an adequate job in reporting from the Middle East, it would not have been necessary for the Palestinians to resort to violence in order to present their cause." We fear what we do not understand. Understanding the motivation of others is the first fundamental step towards eradicating bias. For decades the question has been asked why oil- rich Arab countries have not vehemently fought the stereotype of the uncouth, uncultured, oversexed and overfed desert nomad? According to Gotfried Cheshire, New York Press, Arabs are "the only vicious racial stereotype that's not only still permitted but actually endorsed by Hollywood." For the first time in almost a century a strong voice is ready to counterattack with a subtle and gentle message to combat the prejudiced view of the ugly, Arab, Muslim, American. The image has grown even uglier in the last few years, as racial profiling has often condemned innocent Muslims, Arab-Christians, Hindus and other Middle Easterners. "When you vilify a people, the innocent get hurt," says professor Jack Shaheen author of Reel Bad Arabs (1984), a chronicle of a century of film that denigrates the Arabs. "In the last two decades alone over 900 films project Arabs as villains." Washington Post columnist Nicholas von Hoffman writes "No national, religious, or cultural group.....has been so massively and consistently vilified as the Arabs." With its link to politics, the image of the Arab has only worsened. Distorting the personality of ethnic groups is nothing new to the US media. At one time or another it has selected for denigration Japanese Americans, Hispanics, African and Native Americans, Orientals, women, Germans and Italians. These groups have fought back and dramatically altered the perception of the media to a fairer, more balanced image of themselves through the years. Not every German is a Jew-hating Nazi, not every Italian is a Mafia swindling crook, and certainly not every Arab or Muslim is a crazed, fanatic terrorist. A strong conscious or at best, subconscious vilification of Arab culture has prevailed. Hollywood has abused its charter, manipulating history and facts regularly, producing hateful images of groups who cannot easily respond to its vicious attacks. Don Brinkley, Hollywood TV producer conceded: "the depiction of the Arab on TV is generally horrendous." Hats off to those trying to correct this injustice. An appropriate villain for early simplistic Hollywood story-plots, changed faces and colours with each decade, but the negative portrayal of Arabs was seldom absent. From Rudolph Valentino's The Sheikh and Son of the Sheikh, and other films like A Café in Cairo and Desert Bride in the 1920s to The Siege, True Lies and Rules of Engagement in the 1990s, Arabs have been portrayed as thieves, charlatans, ruthless brutes and killers, an image that persisted throughout the 20th century. Their image has only hardened in the new millennium adding "militant", "insurgent", "extremist" and "terrorist" to their unsavoury, crooked activities. With a penchant for ugly stereotypes Hollywood cares little that they increase the levels of prejudice or promote hatred as long as they increase their gold chests. Film and TV reach hundreds of millions, so do their stereotypical, erroneous images of the world and its inhabitants. While helping most ethnic groups, "political correctness" has yet to help Muslims or Arabs. What is a good Muslim to do! With Bridges TV, new "hope springs eternal in the human breast". "No one is born hating another because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate........" writes Nelson Mandela, and they learn early with a media that controls lives from infancy to old age. Mandela continues in his book, Long Walk to Freedom, "....if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love." Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure. From Don Juan George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788 -- 1824) Peace. By all means peace -- man's hardest and finest message.
