'New Muslims face' discussed

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Published in the Home News Tribune 11/28/04By JERRY BARCA
STAFF WRITER FRANKLIN: Belal Khan has questions about the way Muslims are portrayed in the media.

Yesterday, the 19-year-old Paramus man asked and Muslim journalists answered.

Khan said media reports create doubt about Muslims and he wondered what was the best way to tell people the truth about Islam.

"We need to search for it as consumers," Anisa Mehdi, who has worked for PBS, ABC's 'Nightline' and CBS News. "The truth is a subjective determination."

Mehdi joined Hebah Abdalla, a producer for the Washington bureau of the Arabic news network Al-Jazeera, as the panelists in a discussion about "The New Muslim Face in the Media."

The discussion was part of the sixth annual Muslim Leadership Retreat, which was held at the DoubleTree Hotel and Conference Center in Franklin's Somerset section.

North Brunswick native Amber Malik Sheikh, 31, established the conference because her first few years out of college left her disconnected from the Muslim community she had grown accustomed to.

"I wanted to create a program in leadership training that also helped people in business networking and dealt with religion," she said. "I want (Muslim) people to be proud to be American and fit into the system now."

More than 100 people, mostly young professionals, registered for the three-day event, which concludes today.

Sheikh views her generation of Muslim-Americans as similar to previous waves of immigration where the first generation of U.S. born take up more community involvement than their foreign-born parents who focused on making it in a new country.

"To be a voice in the political arena is one of the biggest challenges," Sheikh said.

During the media discussion Abdalla was asked whether news reports by Al-Jazeera, a network mostly known in this country for airing Osama bin Laden tapes, are catalysts for Muslims taking the lives of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. "The idea Americans have is that Al Jazeera incites hatred and anger of Americans," Abdalla said. "We tend to show the horrors of war. People are maimed. People lose their lives. Innocent people die."

Mehdi pointed to the acceptance of war-time violence in movies like "Saving Private Ryan" and "Platoon."

"We can't deal with it when it's our reality," Mehdi said.

About 60 people attended the discussion. Women, mostly in hijabs (head scarves), sat on the left and men on the right. Some asked how they could break into the journalism business. Others pointed to a media agenda to "sell the war" and broadcast Muslims with "red (angry) faces."

The majority of queries dealt with concerns about the media giving inaccurate portrayals of Islam.

In answer to one of these questions, Mehdi told a story from her childhood about her father being interviewed about Israeli policy and a reporter asking him why he hated Jewish people.

"Evolution is a slow process," she said. "It is so much better now than when I was a kid."