After I read the tenth article and saw the eleventh news clip on the fundamentalist pastor in Florida who intends to burn the Qur’an, I wondered what my friend Safir Ahmed was thinking. When I wrote for The Riverfront Times, and he was the editor, he cautioned me more than once about spilling ink in the service of some extremist’s cause. I called him in San Francisco, where he’s now an independent book editor, and asked if he thought this issue qualified. Were the media just feeding the flame, so to speak?
I think there is a small part of this issue that does do that, not so much in the context of this particular pastor, but because you’re reinforcing the way he’s framed the issue. There is a way around that, though, and that is not to use his language.
A lot of politics comes down to semantics, doesn’t it?
It’s something I’ve been concentrating on lately. Don’t use the word “terrorist in the same sentence with “Muslims.” Just don’t. Talk about violent actions or bombings, use some other term. You create these frames when you have words that are so often repeated, with such emotional baggage attached to them. We no longer talk about terrorists in any other context. “Terrorist” by definition now means “Muslim terrorist.” The connotation is embedded.
So how do you talk about “Qur’an Burning Day”?
You don’t use that phrase! Talk about “burning books” or “burning holy books.” The point is to get away from letting the people you’re covering define the terms of the debate. That’s what we have to avoid doing, and that’s what the media does over and over again, and that’s why the entire discourse becomes inflamed. The terms are defined by the bigots.
Any other examples?
"Islamophobia," which is loaded, too. It’s a good term in the sense that it names a phobia, an irrational fear. But the place where I stop is, I don’t want to call Newt Gingrich an Islamophobe. He’s a bigot. There’s hatred and hate language, hateful terms, bigotry. That’s different than phobias.
Are most of the people who applaud the…er…holy-book burning “bigots” or “Islamophobes”?
It’s a good question. Sarah Palin just tweeted a Facebook post that said Qur’an burning was not a good idea. But in the same post, she implied the mosque in Manhattan should be moved!
This Saturday’s going to be tense, isn’t it?
The other complication, by the way, is that most Muslims in this country will be celebrating Eid, the end of Ramadan, on Friday, but a lot use a different calendar and will be celebrating Saturday. Eid is a festive day for Muslims; it’s like Christmas for Christians. So it will be a huge problem if these crazy Fox News types go to some place where Muslims are celebrating on 9/11. That’s my huge fear.
Not an irrational one. So, again, how does the media avoid feeding hatred?
By not repeating their frame, but instead using different terminology to get at whatever it is they’re doing. Don’t talk about “the Ground Zero mosque,” for example.
My husband gave me a lesson in history—or maybe in irony—the other night, about that great period of religious tolerance and openness among Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Spain. He said he assumes that's why the community center was named Cordoba House, and wondered why that hasn't that been emphasized?
The imam [Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative] who I know, just wrote an op-ed in The New York Times today, and he makes reference to that. But Gingrich said the opposite—that Muslims build mosques at victory sites—and that got a lot more play.
Covering this issue is not going to quell it or keep it from being over-exposed. It’s overexposed already. So you might as well try to inject a different version of the debate and at least change the terms of the discussion.
