By accommodating violent threats from Muslims, the Western media diminishes itself and us

In the final part of this series (which was due to have been posted last week but was interrupted by the server attack), we examine the innately left-wing Western media and how it enables the rise of Islamism by choosing what you see and how you see it.

In a brilliant piece for the Jewish World Review from 2006, Washington Times writer Diana West, (much admired here at Un:dhimmi), explains how dhimmitude and pandering to Muslims is exacerbated by fearful and cowardly media.

I’ve written about dhimmitude periodically, lo, these many years since Sept. 11, but it takes time to sink in. Dhimmitude is the coinage of a brilliant historian, Bat Ye’or, whose pioneering studies of the dhimmi, populations of Jews and Christians vanquished by Islamic jihad, have led her to conclude that a common culture has existed through the centuries among the varied dhimmi populations. From Egypt and Palestine to Iraq and Syria, from Morocco and Algeria to Spain, Sicily and Greece, from Armenia and the Balkans to the Caucasus: Wherever Islam conquered, surrendering dhimmis, known to Muslims as “people of the book (the Bible),” were tolerated, allowed to practice their religion, but at a dehumanising cost.

There were literal taxes (jizya) to be paid; these bought the dhimmi the right to remain non-Muslim, the price not of religious freedom, but of religious identity. Freedom was lost, sorely circumscribed by a body of Islamic law (sharia) designed to subjugate, denigrate and humiliate the dhimmi. The resulting culture of self-abnegation, self-censorship and fear shared by far-flung dhimmi is the basis of dhimmitude. The extremely distressing, but highly significant fact is, dhimmitude doesn’t only exist in lands where Islamic law rules.

This is the lesson of Cartoon Rage 2006, a cultural nuke set off by an Islamic chain reaction to those 12 cartoons of Mohammed appearing in a Danish newspaper. We have watched the Muslim meltdown with shocked attention, but there is little recognition that its poisonous fallout is fear. Fear in the [US] State Department, which, like Islam, called the cartoons unacceptable. Fear in Whitehall (where British government offices reside), which did the same. Fear in the Vatican, which did the same. And fear in the media, which have failed, with few, few exceptions, to reprint or show the images. With only a small roll of brave journals, mainly in Europe, to salute, we have seen the proud Western tradition of a free press bow its head and submit to an Islamic law against depictions of Mohammed. That’s dhimmitude.

Not that we admit it: We dress up our capitulation in fancy talk of “tolerance,” “responsibility” and “sensitivity.” We even congratulate ourselves for having the “editorial judgment” to make “pluralism” possible. “Readers were well-served … without publishing the cartoons,” said a Wall Street Journal spokesman. “CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons in respect for Islam,” reported the cable network. On behalf of the BBC, which did show some of the cartoons on the air, a news editor subsequently apologised, adding: “We’ve taken a decision not to go further … in order not to gratuitously offend the significant number” of Muslim viewers worldwide. Left unmentioned is the understanding (editorial judgment?) that “gratuitous offense” leads to gratuitous violence. Hence, fear — not the inspiration of tolerance but of capitulation — and a condition of dhimmitude.

How far does it go? Worth noting, for example, is that on the BBC Web site, a religion page about Islam presents the angels and revelations of Islamic belief as historical fact, rather than spiritual conjecture (as is the case with its Christianity Web page); plus, it follows every mention of Mohammed with “(pbuh),” which means “peace be upon him” — “as if,” writes Will Wyatt, former BBC chief executive, in a letter to the Times of London, “the corporation itself were Muslim.”

Is it? Are we? These questions may not seem so outlandish if we assess the extent to which encroaching sharia has already changed the Western way. Calling these cartoons “unacceptable,” and censoring ourselves “in respect” to Islam brings the West into compliance with a central statute of sharia. As Jyllands Posten’s Flemming Rose has noted, that’s not respect, that’s submission. And if that’s not dhimmitude, what is?

The publication of the Mohammed cartoons solicited by Denmark’s Jyllands Posten was an act of anti-dhimmitude. Since no Danish artist would dare illustrate a PC children’s book about Mohammed for fear of Islamic law (and Islamic violence), the newspaper boldly set out to reassert the rule of (non-Islamic) Danish law. It’s as simple as that. And as vital. The cartoons ran to establish — or re-establish — Denmark as bastion of Western-style liberty. But in trying to set up a force field against encroaching sharia, Jyllands Posten and the Danes have showed us that no single bastion of Western liberty can stand alone.

So, how do you say solidarity in Danish? If we don’t find out now, our future is more dhimmitude.

And it’s not just the cartoons. Media dhimmitude is an ongoing practice, which infects the veracity of received information and distorts the perspective from which people view Islam and the threat it poses to Western life.

The employees of most Western media organisations lean very definitely left in terms of their worldview. This tends to colour how they report events – for example, the ‘Palestinians’ are almost universally presented as impoverished underdogs, with their ruthless overlords, Israel, launching massive onslaughts against them at the slightest provocation.

Yet the ‘Palestinians’ are part of an overwhelming 600 million vs 4 million (against the Israelis) Middle Eastern ‘neighborhood’, all of whom on the overwhelmingly Muslim Arab side of which are taught from birth to hate Jews as part of a standard Islamic education – and to seek nothing less than the eventual destruction of Israel.

Furthermore, the ‘Palestinians’ are not impoverished. They have been the recipients of countless billions of dollars of aid from the International community and wealthy Arab states.

Any poverty is self-inflicted – if the money was not squandered on buying weapons with which to attack Israel every day, the construction of tunnels in which to smuggle them and of the enrichment of corrupt Fatah and Hamas leaders, there would be no poverty.

Additionally, if ‘Palestine’ started to normalise relations with Israel (something Israel wants very much), untold commercial opportunities and benefits would enrich these people further still.

But you will rarely read of this perspective through the European and Anglospheric mainstream media – they are of one voice – Israel is the brutal oppressor.

Sites such as Honest Reporting, Biased BBC,  (The BBC is without doubt one of the worst offenders), hopefully ourselves and other sites in the blogosphere offer a truer picture – but we cannot hope to compete with the onslaught of misrepresentation and bias that floods the airwaves, newspaper pages and TV screens every day.

So what can you do to counter this overwhelming distortion of the truth?

Firstly, do not be a lazy consumer of this bias. Ask questions, challenge big media assertions and keep a keen eye on the best counterjihad sites (some suggestions in the blogroll on the sidebar of this page) to know what’s really going on.

Secondly, once armed with this new knowledge and alternative perspective, challenge the uncritical repetition of this bias by friends and colleagues in conversations and debates. Write correctives to newspapers, local and national politicians; comment on big media websites and call TV stations to make official complaints about their bias. Start your own blog too if you feel the urge!

We need to get the word out.

[Main story: Jewish World Review, 2006]

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