Our newspapers regard Muslims, not as citizens with equal rights, but as visitors in 'our' country

A report from the Greater London Authority yesterday (discussed here by one of its authors) found that the media in the UK are overwhelmingly negative about Muslims. One week in May 2006 was chosen for detailed scrutiny and out of 352 articles referring to Muslims, only four per cent were judged to be positive.

By coincidence, I was also examining the British press coverage of Muslims early last year. I was part of an international research group looking at the coverage of the Mohammed cartoons controversy.

British newspapers, unlike others in France, Finland, the USA and elsewhere, decided not to re-publish these cartoons. Every British newspaper came out with a rather similar editorial in which it backed the right of the Danish paper to publish but stated that out of an innate sense of British tolerance and consideration for Muslims in this country it was not going to follow suit. A smug sense of superiority positively oozed from the pages.

But the ensuing press coverage and commentary demonstrated very clearly what Derrida meant when he said: "Tolerance is always on the side of the reason of the strongest ... which says of the other from its elevated position, I am letting you be, you are not insufferable, I am leaving you a place in my home, but do not forget that it is my home ..."

Our newspapers professed tolerance but our news coverage and our comment columns demonstrated just how conditional that "tolerance" is and just how much they regard Muslims, not as citizens with equal rights, and varying views but as "visitors" in "our" country.

Two things stood out most clearly from the research. The first concerns news coverage. Given that another poll (also released by the GLA yesterday) found an almost exact equivalence in concerns for democracy and law between Muslim communities and the general population, one might have expected that moderate Muslims, both here and in Denmark, would have been asked for their views on the dispute. News reporters in the UK and based abroad made practically no attempt to talk to what one might term "moderate" voices in the Muslim community. In the Guardian, Anjem Choudary from the extremist group al-Ghuraba had 18 name checks whereas Sir Iqbal Sacrani, chair of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, was quoted once.

There were three demonstrations organised in the UK by Muslims. The first, which was in fact peaceful and orderly but in which extremist placards were used, was massively covered in print and on TV and culminated in demands that the demonstrators be arrested or deported. When more representative Muslim organisations condemned the inflammatory placards they were quoted, almost as an afterthought, at the very end of articles that focused on the comments of MPs condemning the marchers.

The Times Leader of February 7 rather summed up the mood: "It has become depressingly routine for moderate Muslims, rightly endorsed by government, to denounce the excesses of extremists as un-Islamic."

When moderate organisations organised their own, un-confrontational, demonstrations against the publication of the cartoons they received virtually no publicity at all. For anyone reading British papers at that time it would certainly have appeared that al-Guraba and young men wearing bomb belts, were representative of Muslim opinion in Britain.

When it came to the comment columns one might have hoped for better. I counted over 80 comment columns over six British newspapers. The Times and Mail could not muster a single Muslim columnist to write about the events. The Telegraph had one Muslim voice on its comment pages. The Guardian and Independent on Sunday did rather better than that (indeed almost all the real debate was in the Guardian), nevertheless there was a very narrow range of Muslim views represented. Whereas in Sweden, Norway and France there were Muslim voices to be heard in the press calling for Muslims everywhere to stand up for liberal values and press freedom, it appears that in the UK, Muslims were all against publication with the exception of Nonie Darwish writing in the Telegraph.

It does seem odd that British Muslim intellectuals spoke in such unison and that the emphasis was so different from their counterparts in Europe. The comment columns gave the very clear picture of a community that has very different values from the rest of the country. To be sure the Guardian and the Independent on Sunday (and Ann Leslie in the Mail) came out strongly in defence of their right to have their views respected, but the overwhelming sense was of a community of "others" with views that are not like "ours".

My own conclusions from the research are that journalists right across the press, whether on liberal newspapers or more conservative ones, have a lot of thinking to do about issues of representation. Of course part of the problem (if it is considered a problem), lies with the very confrontational nature of British journalism. In Sweden, with an almost identical size Muslim population, journalists have taken on board criticisms of the way in which they represent minorities and a significant minority of the journalists writing in the comment columns were themselves Muslim. In France, although the cartoons were published, and Muslims demonstrated, the press coverage of their demonstrations was entirely positive. The press regarded it as a manifestation of the superiority of a political regime that allows freedom of expression.

One point that the GLA research of Muslims and the media makes is that Muslims are massively under-represented in journalism in the UK. Perhaps if this were not the case, coverage of sensitive issues such as the Mohammed cartoons controversy would be better handled. We might be reminded for a start that Muslims are as various in their beliefs and concerns as are Christians and Jews. In Pakistan right now there is a massive power struggle going on between those on the side of democracy, those who back the military and those who want a fundamentalist religious state. But they are all Muslims.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk

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