Book Highlight: The Muslim Next Door

I have been reading and enjoying the book by Sumbul Ali-Karamali "The Muslim Next Door"- Ali-Karamali is an American Muslimah who holds an Islamic law degree and J.D. The book covers various topics from Islamic law to Islamic history and modern events

One issue that really angered me was the information on how the biased media focuses on Islamic extremists while ignoring Christian extremists. A chapter on Jihad and Fundamentalism highlights the need to have a fair and balanced reporting of the terrorist acts of religious extremists. Western media focuses on those who terrorize in the name is Islam, pointedly mentioning that the criminals called themselves Muslim. However, when a crime is committed by a Christian criminal, the religion is not the highlight or even mentioned.

The Christian terrorists who were responsible for the religious genocide in Bosnia were never called such- the Serbians who "...with the blessing and support of Christian Church leaders...massacred village upon village of Bosnian Muslims, destroyed 1,400 mosques, mutilated children, and burned them alive, reaped women and children in organized 'rape centers,' and incarcerated civilians in 'death camps'..." (page 186, The Muslim Next Door) Christian terrorists did similar acts of violence in Russia to the Muslims in Chechnya. The Oklahoma City bombing by McVeigh was done in the name of the Christian Identity movement.

However, the media never labels these acts by the religion of the criminals. Islam is targeted and wrongly vilified. The Holocaust is highlighted as the worst religious terrorist offence while modern day 'holocaust's' are occurring today in Darfur and have occurred in Bosnia. The crimes in Bosnia touch me personally because I am married to a Bosnian refugee of that war- my in-laws suffered at the hands of terrorists only because they were Muslim.

I by no means want to target only Christian terrorism but want to stress that the media and the readers of the media need to provide and seek fair and balanced information, so the prejudice of one particular group will inshallah be lessened