Salam, Ario.
Thank you for your question.
Before I come to the topic of the interpretation of the
Quran, I need to draw your attention to some of the aspects, which
are not so obvious, though related to the issues you have mentioned
in your question.
First of all, I would like to point out
that ours is an age of propaganda. It is an age, almost helpless
under the control of vested interests of big business. This
definitely includes the media industry.
In general, the
media have a habit of highlighting what is spectacular and what is
sensational. Media people sometimes do not analyze events to convey
the truth, but rather to confirm the prejudices of their target
audience
For instance, a few years ago, when the Oklahoma
City bomb went off, one of the newspaper -
The Today - wanted
to capitalize on the American bias against Islam. So, with a picture
of a fire fighter holding a dead child in his arms, the headline
read: "In The Name of Islam"!!
Time has - then - proven that
this bigoted assumption was incorrect. In fact, Timothy McVeigh - a
right wing radical - faced the death penalty for the crime.
Please refer to my previous answer, about the War on
Terror:
Supporting Terrorism?
In fact, the media failed to properly show how the war was being
fought against the people of Afghanistan. The impression given is
that all the Afghans are terrorists. Cluster bombs and food packets,
which were not easy to separate from external appearance, were
intermittently dropped on the starving people of that war-torn
country. The US media paid scant attention to such occurrence, on
the part of the civilized world. Yet, the BBC had reported it on
Thursday, 22 November 2001. Please check their report:
UN Wants End to Food Drops by Jim Muir.
Then, to speak about September 11th tragedy, TV showed the
gruesome details of the events continuously for many months. In
those attacks, less than 3000 died, though the figure had been
exaggerated earlier. Yet, much worse instances of massacres had
taken place in other countries, where the media was not equivalently
keen, in telling the world what was really happening.
Another example is Srebrenica in Bosnia. The Serbians
slaughtered about 8000 Muslims, in cold blood. This was with the
collusion of the Dutch peace keepers of the UN, in 1995. Please
read how David Rohde - of Christian Science Monitor -
uncovered the whole story in a path-breaking investigative
reporting:
The Rohde to Srebrenica.
Actually, there are many other examples of worse tragedies than
that of the WTC attacks. Yet, the world media would not care to give
the full story there. These stories simply belong to people, at the
receiving end, whom are from different cultures and climes.
When such stories disagree with the prevailing
impressions, the news of massacres and sufferings - inflicted on
certain groups - is darkened by the media. This is as well as the
positive aspects, which are obscured simultaneously.
The
point I need to stress here, is frankly speaking that the
American media are engaged in waging a relentless war against Islam
and Arabs. In fact, this is mostly influenced by the big business
that wants to make capital out of this war, as well as from the now
proposed war on Iraq.
Meanwhile, please understand that most
Muslims consider the Taliban as an extremist group, who have
deviated much from the true path of Islam. Noteworthy here, is that
this reasoning has nothing to do with judging the sincerity of this
group.
Still, we cannot say that they were the terrorists,
guilty of the September 11th attacks. In fact, their leaders had
condemned the September 11th attacks, though the US media ignored
the news. Misinformation, dear Ario, results not merely from
spreading lies, but also from hiding truth! Actually, under the
influence of the media, a large number of Americans are not accessed
to see the truth of the suffering of many humans, beyond the wealthy
American shores.
An example, worth mentioning here, is that
of a three Indian celebrities. In fact, they are well-known actors:
Kamal Haasan, Aamir Khan and Smyuktha Varma. They were detained on
three different occasions, for no reason other than the fact that to
the security personnel, they looked like terrorists! They were
harassed on the three occasions - for many hours - simply because
they looked Middle Eastern!
Actually, after reading the
news, one realizes why the civilized world leaders might never
succeed in stopping terrorism! For one thing, they do not want to
hear about the root causes of terrorism. Also for another, a
stupendous amount of their money, time and energies are wasted on
wrong trails; they are catching the wrong people, almost
everywhere.
I hope, dear Ario, that my answer satisfies you.
Please always stay in touch and provide us with any question you
have about Islam. Thank you and please keep in touch.
Salam.
Useful Links:
Islam: Is It a Religion of Terror?
The Great American Ignorance - by Chindu
Sreedharan.
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