Getting the image we deserve
Al-Risala (English), January-February 1994, p. 29
By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan is named as the default author of the periodical; a piece that carries another writer’s byline is credited to that writer.
Getting the image we deserve
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1994 1-2 January-February 29 Getting the image we deserve (336)
When Cat Stevens, the well-known English pop-singer, was studying Islam, he was told, ‘By all means study Islam but do not, for the sake of God, study Muslims.’ He does not, however, seem to have been deterred by this paradoxical and clearly discouraging statement for he finally embraced Islam in 1977 in a London Mosque, taking the name of Yusuf Islam.
His views on this paradox were brought out in an interview which was published in the May-June 1980 issue of the London monthly Muslim. Asked what he thought would be a solution to the constant tirade of propaganda against Islam in the English press, he replied ‘People are not such simpletons that they would believe everything that is published in the newspapers. People do form their own opinions. However, if they found Muslims indulging in such evils as are mentioned, then it is quite possible that they would give credence to newspaper reports.’
Facts are facts, but newspaper reporting does not necessarily do them justice. It is, therefore, upto Muslims to demonstrate that their way of life belies the image projected by the media, No intelligent reader will then give any serious attention to what are clearly distortions of the truth. If, for instance, it were reported in the newspapers that the illiteracy rate is highest among Christians, that beggars are greatest in number among Parsis and that the Sikh nation is the most timid, readers would simply dismiss these statements as the crassest idiocy for they are so obviously contrary to known facts.
If Muslims’ conduct is good, deprecating remarks about Islam will fall on stony ground. When people find from their own experience that Muslims deal justly with others, refusing to be provoked at every turn, that they honour the life and property of other human beings and that, above all, they are great seekers after the truth, they will attach no importance to adverse statements in the press. They will consider such reports baseless and will not even read beyond the heading.
