One would imagine that someone so enormously wealthy, titled and the leader
of millions would come into South Africa in a blaze of glory and leave only
after doing the obligatory photo-shoot with President Nelson Mandela, a
walkabout through the portals of Parliament and a banquet with the rich,
famous and influential of the South African cocktail circuit. This did not
happen during the visit this month of the Aga Khan, who put in a Cape Town
pit-stop to address the world's media.
Delivering a keynote address to the Commonwealth Press Union Conference at
the Cape Sun, the eloquent and articulate leader complained that while
there
have been major strides to improve the level of journalistic education,
there still was a need for greater expertise, especially in an area close
to
his heart.
"I refer to the superficial and misleading way in which much of the world's
media treat the world of Islam." Muslims, he said, constituted a quarter of
the world's people and comprised the majority population in 44 countries.
Of
these, he pointed out, 435 million lived in the Commonwealth.
"If asked to characterise Islam, many non-Muslims would have little to say,
except perhaps that the world of Islam seems a distant and different world,
a strange, mysterious place, a world which makes them a bit uncomfortable,
and perhaps even a bit afraid."
The vast and varied group of Muslims is perceived by the rest of the world
"as a standardised, homogenous mass", the Aga Khan said. Taking it further,
he said, the cultural contexts in which one billion Muslims have been
reared
are not understood in much of the world.
"Even the most basic elements of 1400 years of Islamic civilisation are
absent from the curricula in most of the world's schools. The subject is
just not on the world's educational radar screen. And the result is an
enormous vacuum. When developments in Islamic societies break into the
headlines, few journalists - and fewer of their readers - can bring the
slightest sense of context to such news."
Muslims, he said, are reported in what he described as "crisis reporting",
which is the inclination to view news in an abnormal and disruptive way. He
likened this view of crisis reporting to an instance in the cat-world. It
is
the exceptional cat, he said, the one that climbs a tree and can't get
down,
that dominates our headlines; not the millions of cats who sleep happily
at
home.
"Most of the public, however, has no context in which to place the story
of
the exceptional cat that climbs a tree. And without that context, the
casual
reader or viewer, never hearing about the cats that stay home, come to
think
of all cats as tree-climbing pests who forever impose on the fire
departments of the world to bring out their ladders and haul them to
safety."
The fact is, he said, that what the world thinks about Islam has been the
result of crisis reporting. He took his illustration further. "When terms
like Shi'a and Sunni first entered the world's vocabulary, it was in the
emotional context of revolutionary Iran. Similarly, recent press
references
to the Shari'ah, the traditional Islamic system of jurisprudence, are
illustrated by its manifestations in Afghanistan."
Journalists learn to use these words, but how many really grasp their
essential meaning, he asked? "How many of them understand, for example,
that
the Shari'ah is seen by most Muslims as a changing body of law, subject to
what we call the fiqh, the capacity for evolving interpretation. How many
are aware of the selective and moderate application of the Shari'ah in the
legal systems of Islamic countries which do allow its application? How
many
know that Arabic translators of the Old Testament used the word Shari'ah
to
designate the Torah, underlining a shared perception of the Divine Law
that
governs the spiritual relationship between God and His believers? How many
are knowledgeable enough to appreciate the Shari'ah's illuminating
qualities
in civil law?"
The Cape Sun audience listened quietly. Some shuffled their feet nervously
as the Aga Khan continued his verbal assault. Included in the audience
were
London Fleet Street's top media moguls, senior international political
figures and writers.
It was little wonder that "those exceptional instances of Muslims
theocratising Islamic politics" are mistaken as the norm while the
humanistic temper of Islamic ethics is overlooked, he continued.
"Among some observers, there is even a tendency to see political violence
as
a function of the faith itself - when in fact nothing could be further
from
the truth." He said it was questionable whether there were media offices
which included people who could recognise the distortions he enumerated or
whether they had the ability to set the distortions right. "When the
educational background is so barren and when the rhythm of our learning -
as
reporters and readers - is so often that of crisis, crisis, crisis, then
deep misunderstanding will be the inevitable result."
He said he was not suggesting every journalist becomes an expert on Islam.
"But it would help greatly if more journalists were at least aware of
them,
and where they need to turn to find out more."
Through an air of nervous guilt that permeated the air, the Aga Khan
received a standing ovation.
_____