How media trespasses selectively boundaries of free speech and creates new stereotypes / Dr. Sabine Schiffer

By Dr. Sabine Schiffer

The Role of Muslims in the German Media

If one recalls the cartoon controversy, the first thing that comes to mind are the key-words – freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Out of sheer solidarity and in order to set an example for press freedom and freedom of expression, the German “Die Welt” published some of the controversial cartoons. In doing so, the magazine fulfilled its informative duties: after all, we wanted to know what was going on.

But it is questionable whether such a signal for the freedom of expression was really needed if we look at the German and European publishing tradition from that angle.

Most of what happens does not get coverage. There are definite boundaries in western media as to the publication of materials with pornographic or paedophile contents, scenes of torture, or even once again anti-Semitic cartoons à la Stürmer. Do we have different standards when it comes to handling Muslim issues?

Various anti-Muslim websites on the Internet are currently warning us that not criticizing Muslims would amount to self-censure and knuckling under to them.

The existence of these websites which label themselves “Islam-critical” is evidence to the contrary. It is rather Islam and the Muslims who receive comments safeguarded by freedom of expression, which if directed towards other groups would quite clearly be exposed as racism. This is evident, for instance, when we talk of “lack of tolerance genes” with regard to Muslims, about their alleged wish “to drink the blood of non-Muslims”, or about a global conspiracy theory, which can be traced back partly to a fear of Islamization, partly to a fear of terrorism. (e.g. www.akte-islam.de)

Let us have a closer look at some examples of the way Muslims are depicted in the German media and allow ourselves some comparison for the sake of analysis. We draw our conclusions about the whole based on a small part, and that is always wrong. So watch closely, because I will do all the same now – I will show you some impressions by leaving aside many others!

Incidentally our image of Israel and that of the Palestinians are formed in much the same way: It is not the daily life of the people and the reality they live in that influences our selective perceptions and impressions, but rather exceptional circumstances, the abnormal, current events. That’s the way the mass media functions – it does have an educational mission to fulfil. Yet above all, it must be economically successful, that is, selling itself comes first. Evidently sex and crime sell better than the successful team work of an Israeli-Palestinian peace group. The things we don’t hear about are thus not part of our notion of reality. This strongly affects the Islamic world which currently is in the focus of attention yet at the same time only very narrowly thematized.

A subconscious pattern of perception called FRAMING is formed which is based in a tradition of fact selection. This mechanism leads to selecting the same motives – as we mostly tend to take notice of things that are in tune with our expectations. Examples contrary to our expectations need to be flagrant in order to be registered at all. If that is the case and if a frame is already strongly fixed, a reinterpretation reaction can be triggered. One tries to find an explanation for how to explain e.g. the image of a female Muslim lawyer wearing a head scarf and talking on the phone. It is quickly declared an exception and in that way we keep our image of “the Muslim women” intact/constant, so that there is no need to cross-examine long-accepted truths.

The consequences of this perceptual constriction can be seen on the cover of a Spiegel-special magazine from 2003 “Allahs bloody Country (Islam in the Middle East)”: All of the pictures depict facts and the way in which they are put together does not create a comforting image of the situation in the so called Middle East conflict. The arrangement of the scenes around the picture of the Kaaba in Mekka mirrors 1:1 the iconography of Islamist websites. One could argue, it is a way of exposing them and to a certain extent, it is. However, in so doing one adopts their perspective and abuses Islamic symbols in much the same way. To all intents and purposes, by adopting this representation, one justifies the Islamists. One offers Islam as an explanation for all wrong-doings. Such an increasing zeroing in that particular selection of motifs renders the Islamist point of view dominant and pertinent to all Muslims.

The same thing happened with the Muhammad cartoons, at least with the 4 problematic ones: an important Islamic symbol was decorated with the attributes of violence and evil. It is not the abuse of Islamic symbols by terrorists, their making reference to Islam and the Koran, that gets visualized, but a generalized upbraiding of all Muslims. The abuse of symbols probably becomes more explicit when we compare this iconography with that of an anti-Jewish cartoon in an Arabic newspaper.

A monster trampling over dead bodies is supposedly an Israeli politician, yet he does so with the use of Jewish symbolism. Whereas one may argue about the symbolism of the Star of David since it also appears on the Israeli flag thus acquiring a national meaning, it is still accepted above all as a symbol of Judaism. The general reference to “all Jews” however, becomes unambiguous through the allusion to the menorah in the devil’s fork. That kind of cartoons is currently having a heyday all the way to Japan – both anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic- and we may ask ourselves at this point if a certain degree of reasonable self-censure is not good after all.

In the past decades it has become routine to combine Islamic symbols with scenes of violence in connection with Islam and Muslims, an over proportional augmentation, so to speak, of this particular section of the so-called Islamic world, in that way applying it to all Muslims in general. If, in accordance with a year-long media practice, one only lets a woman wearing a head scarf appear on the screen when there is something horrible to report, that piece of attire can no longer be neutrally perceived. One of the “harmless” examples of the year 1998 shows a Muslim woman’s face with an eye-brow formed as a sword. These images resonate within the scope of the discussion as to whether head scarves should be allowed.

Another means of image distortion is adding Islamic prayer in the coverage of terrorist activities, thus modifying the meaning of images of praying Muslims (e.g. during the London attacks on TV). In this case one makes use of the psychology of entwined perception of stimuli presented at the same time, the so-called sense induction. It is mostly used by the electronic media where the most disparate images (as well as text and music) can be edited together. Their separate statements then influence each other, thus coming closer to one common subliminal message.

However such topic association implies interrelations, which in reality do not exist – there is no relation between prayer and violence. A lot of non-praying people are aggressive and many praying people are not.

Yet another Islamic symbol, the mosque, is in the same position. When brought in connection with kidnappings and horrible killings in Iraq, it acquires certain meaning-components (semantic elements) much to the delight of some extremists. Let’s consider the following image warning about nuclear weapons in Iran with an Arabic montage on the same topic with regard to Israel. In terms of iconography both apply the same work methods – one offers a mosque, one the star of David as reference-symbol. The only difference is that in the case of the Muslims we hardly take any notice, since it has become a tradition to combine the pertinent issues of the region with “Islamic” images. All of a sudden everything seems to find an “Islamist” explanation, whereas it must be possibly interpreted in social, world-political, or other terms.

One consequence of this long tradition of sense inductive coverage is e.g. the following headline of a report about Dubai: “The Other Islam”. Which other? Which is, according to this article “the normal” Islam? Incidentally, here again we don’t have an attempt to put together and bring out into the world the multiple facets of Muslim every day life. What we have is the creation of a consume-focused “good” Islam, in contrast to the “bad” Islam, which is supposed to be the “normal” one. Not a trace of normality high and low.

The following examples found in German newspapers during the Lebanon war of 2006 show how dangerous such symbol interconnections are. While a wide discussion is underway, suspecting a demonstration of new anti-Semitism in every criticism of the Israeli politics, these images were accepted without any comments. We have a cartoon, where the Star of David decorates bombs.

The next two pictures show Israeli soldiers in prayer outfits assembled out of military supplies. Why are such images problematic? They make it possible that the military invasion is looked upon as basically a “Jewish” act, as sense-inducing images of Jewish prayer are presented in the context of war and the military, just like in the case of the head scarves and mosque images that we saw earlier.

Now one could argue/object that the soldiers themselves have chosen that attire and that they really are praying Jewish soldiers. That is true. Why, however, were those pictures chosen for publication? What can they influence? They might make some feel obliged to stand by “the Jews”, in accordance to the conclusions drawn from the Shoa. But at what price? Because to many others it may simply occur that Jews are waging a war here. So again we have the potential of generalization. The implication is that the actions and politics of Israel are “Jewish” above all, which in turn gets mixed up with Judaism and its ethics worldwide. One crosses the boundaries of justified criticism of an Israeli government acting against the principles of human rights and international law, over to anti-Semitism, all that by inserting Jewish symbolism. Fatal mistake.

This mechanism of associative misinterpretation can be seen not only with regard to religious groups but also in connection with nationalities, phenotype and gender. A group characteristic is thus brought into the context although it is not relevant in these circumstances! When I say for instance, “The accident has nothing to do with the fact that the driver was a woman”… No matter what my personal stance in this case happens to be, the mere mentioning of an additional characteristic feature, gender or otherwise, implies a somewhat congeneric relation between the outcome and the fact that in this case it was a woman who drove the car.

That this is not harmless becomes understandable if we look at the news coverage back in the 19^th century. In the wake of an economic crisis in Germany, all participants in bankruptcies and speculations are being criticized. In the case of the Jewish Germans involved however, it is explicitly pointed out, using terms such as “fellow believer”, a person “of the Mosaic faith”, or directly referring to them as “Jewish”. Non Jews were in fact also criticised but without being labelled/marked as “Christian”. In the way one is left with the impression that the crisis had been mainly caused by the Jews. That’s how “harmlessly” anti-Semitism was promoted at that time. It was even earlier when Ludwig Börne made the point of the consequences of that kind of marking:

Some reproach me for being a Jew, others forgive me; still other even praise me for that; but all of them think about it. They are all like captured in this magical Jewish circle, none of them is able to get out.

As a result of the underlying FRAMING here, one is left with the impression that it is of some relevance whether something is done by a Jew or not, regardless of the fact that it is the same thing as in the case of a non Jewish person. We can see it does not suffice to simply report the facts in order not to promote discrimination.

The relevance of the presented facts in a case should also be examined.

As a result of marking and framing, one ends up applying double standards. Lion Feuchtwanger addresses this problem in his critical novel Jud Süß. We may not be able to imagine it, but it is a result of this marking-process/tradition that we’re concentrating our attention at Islam, nowadays! Acts of violence perpetrated by Muslims receive immediate and comprehensive coverage, whereas similar attempts in Latin America, suicide terrorist acts in Sri Lanka, radicalization in Africa, the failing Russian democracy… all get considerably less attention, unless of course there are Muslims involved. Through mutual labelling and self labelling (“western” and “Islamic”) we arrive at a point where long existent conflicts now appear to be “religious”, for instance “Islamist motivated”. Any ideology can in fact be abused, a religious just as well as nationalistic, a democratic as well as the Human Rights Charter in whose name injustice is done, too.

It would also be of importance to point out the usage of metaphorical concepts which dehumanise the opponent and thus render him illegitimate, an established practice in politics worldwide. That was also studied in detail by Daniel Goldhagen, within the framework of the anti-Semitic discourse.

e.g. “Jews are like a quickly growing weed still entwined around the healthy stem” – Pfaff/Schmidt-Phiseldeck (quote by Katz 1989)

Goldhagen sums up: If someone is referred to as a “dangerous parasite” threatening my life, it appears legitimate to me to destroy this opponent in order to protect myself.

This inherent logic is what makes such metaphors so dangerous. It also makes it necessary to detect them in our discourses. We know in regard to the Jewish group how such metaphors of alleged dangers and supposed powers seemed overwhelming, until Hitler proved the opposite. I would like to emphasize at this point: We must learn, in regard with all human beings that there can be no exceptions to the current rules and that it is alarming when dehumanising metaphors appear. This should always serve as a warning signal!

There are various active metaphors in Europe in connection with Muslims, of which the most “acute” are those related to diseases and ailments. Terms like “Islamic fever”, “contagiousness of Islamism”, “metastasis of Islamic cells” and “cancer” (all examples from the German and French mass media) suggest we should protect and defend ourselves against the Muslims.

However, the line between good and bad, dangerous or friendly does not run between Muslim and non Muslim. There are always such and such, everywhere.

The standardization of certain groups (declaring them more homogenious than they are) spread out by the media is always wrong – racist and ethnicist. There is no such thing as “the Muslims” as a homogenous group, just as there is no “the Jews”, “the Americans” or “the Germans” in that sense.

So instead of using such concepts to render homage to the myth of a “justified war”, which affects all parties involved, we should ponder ways to get out of this propaganda of discrimination – this is the opposite of total freedom of speech, where responsibility is required. This time around it is the anti Islamic trap we are in danger of falling into. We still have the anti Jewish one present and there are also indications of an anti Asian one taking shape.[1]