Answer
Salam Dear Ario,
Thank you for your question and for contacting Ask About Islam.
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 answer, about the ‘War on Terror’:
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:
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.