CRIKEY: What a Muslim looks like, by the Daily Telegraph ...

An oldie but a goodie ...


Yesterday’s front page of The Australian carried a story headed “Muslim refugee home rental probe” about an investigation into the allegedly dodgy involvement of the Islamic Council of NSW in a NSW Department of Housing scheme for refugees.

People who engage in this sort of behaviour should be exposed regardless of their ethnicity or religion. The ICNSW is one of three competing Councils vying for representative status of Muslim New South Welshmen and women.

The story was repeated in The Oz today and also reported in the Daily Telegraph yesterday. The Tele’s website carried the following graphic showing a woman wearing a face veil:



What the …? A woman wearing a face veil? Was this a story about women? Or about belly dancers? Or about veiling practices? Not exactly.

The Oz for its part carried a photo of Ali Roude, the ICNSW vice-chair at the heart of the scandal.

You’d think by now that I'd be used to this kind of inane stereotyping. But this time it really got on my nerves. So I rang the Tele and spoke to their online editor Ricky Sutton yesterday afternoon.

The conversation started out OK. I asked Ricky why, of all the possible images he could put with the story, he used this one. After all, it was a story about the alleged abuse of community housing by two blokes. Here’s my recollection of how the conversation went:

RICKY: Look, it’s a story about Muslims and refugees and that. So we had to use a Muslim image. What’s wrong with that?

ME: What do women in face veils have to do with Muslims?

RICKY: Well, don’t all their women wear that kind of stuff?

ME: Really? And do you have any evidence to back it up?

RICKY: Listen, if it had been a story about a housing scandal in the Church of England, we’d have run a picture of a crucifix.

ME: So you’re saying that a woman’s head dress is the equivalent of a crucifix. Isn’t that a bit tabloidish?

RICKY: Now you’re the one doing the stereotyping. Are you saying the newspaper I work for is a tabloid?

ME: Well, yes. As a matter of fact, I am.

It all got a little Middle Eastern from there. I pointed him to each story and showed how each graphic made sense. A story about John Howard showed a picture of Howard. A story about the RAAF showed a picture of a fighter jet, etc.

It makes me wonder: how would you illustrate a story about The Daily Tele's approach to Islamic issues?

First published in Crikey on Wednesday 8 August 2007.

Words © 2007-08 Irfan Yusuf


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MEDIA/CRIKEY: FoxNews accuses Mattel of producing jihad doll ...

Prominent toy manufacturer Fisher-Price, a subsidiary of Mattel, is accused by some American parents of selling a baby doll that preaches an Islamic message.

One parent told a sceptical Associated Press reporter in this video that the doll is saying "Islamin is the light”.

I’d hate to think what it would say if played backwards.

FoxNews’ report ("Parents Outraged Over Baby Doll They Say Mumbles Pro-Islam Message") was less sceptical, making an issue of how the manufacturer ...

... didn't immediately respond to FOXNews.com's requests for comment.

Yep, immediate silence is guilt. As if worries over Matel’s share price were clearly less pressing for the company’s PR spin-doctors.

And how much does Mattel really care about FoxNews’ latest al-Qaida conspiracy? Type the word "Islam" into the press release search engine and find out for yourself.

First published in the Crikey daily alert on Monday 13 October 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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CRIKEY: New SBS show mired in muslim stereotypes ...

There’s more to the SBS documentary Embedded With Sheik Hilaly than just the documentary itself. The embedded person was 26 year old Dave Zwolenski from Brisbane. Yet Dave was drafted by SBS almost at the last minute.

The original star of the show was to be Melbourne stand-up comic and youth worker Mohammed el-Leissy, formerly of the Fear Of A Brown Planet fame and now about to launch an on-stage comedic gameshow called Who Is Abdul Smith at this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival. El-Leissy first heard about the proposed documentary via a social networking site. He applied successfully for a role starring in the show, and was flown upto Sydney some 4 times, including a 2-month stint during which he approached various Muslim sects and their leaders. He also visited Camden to visit local Muslims.

El-Leissy told Crikey he’d developed an extensive list of Sydney Muslim contacts which he handed to the producers. The original idea was for El-Leissy to embed himself with more radical imams such as Sheik Abdussalam Zoud.

El-Leissy was to "hang out with rough guys, go on jihad camps and similar stuff". On one occasion, the producers asked him to attend a male-only barbecue where he’d accuse Zoud’s crowd of being sexist before asking why no women were present. El-Leissy refused, believing such questions just played into stereotypes (heck, why can’t a bunch of Aussie blokes have a bbq without sheilas spoiling the fun?). He explained this to the producers, who said that if he couldn’t ask these questions, they had a non-Muslim guy who would. They then sacked El-Leissy.

As it turned out, their Brisbane chap also didn’t get a chance to even appear with Zoud, let alone ask these tough questions of his young male followers. El-Leissy says that Zoud’s crowd wouldn’t touch the show with a 10-foot barge pole.

Still, when you can’t convince anyone to participate in a caricatured picture of Muslims, you can always rely on human headlines like Sheik Hilaly and his interpreter. Their attempts to justify Hilaly’s catmeat comments were just painful to watch, as were the attitudes expressed by other more conservative Muslims on the show.

Narrator Dave said his goal was "to understand what being a Muslim is really like". In relation to issues like marriage and gender relations, I doubt any but the most conservative of culturally Lebanese Muslims would relate to what Dave discovered.

The Age reviewer wasn’t terribly happy with the show accusing its makers of “entrenching prejudices and ignorance”. The tiny number of Hilaly-lovers congregating on this online forum were much more upbeat about the show.

Words Copyright © 2008 Irfan Yusuf

CRIKEY: No prejudice at the Courier Mail, just bloody Muslims ...

On Saturday, the Editor of the Courier Mail David Fagan addressed a Brisbane journalism conference organised by the Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA). My notes from the conference show Fagan declaring that newspaper journalism consists of great pictures with good words attached. As if readers want the kind of stuff Little Golden Books were made of. Fagan also declared that his paper was not in the business of inciting prejudice.

On the same day, buried on Page 22 of the Courier Mail, was a story headed "Muslim game outrage". The headline on the online edition was "Anti-Muslim computer game stirs wave of anger". On the Saturday archive index, the headline is "Computer game riles Muslims".

Yep, no prejudice here. Just another story about those bloody Muslims yet again getting angry (and possibly violent) about being criticised. Heck, why be offended by a computer game where players get to engage in "modern religious genocide"? What's wrong with a game about "killing as many Muslims as possible, ranging from terrorists and civilians to Osama bin Laden, even the prophet Mohammed and Allah"? As if Jews or Christians would be offended by a game about massacring them.

But Mr Fagan will insist that the various headlines to this story weren't written to generate such responses. Try believing that once you've read the 100-plus comments left on the Courier Mail website, the bulk of which refer to Muslims getting unnecessarily sensitive, hating free speech, invading our country, killing us if they had a chance, why don't they get as angry as when one of them blows up a church? etc etc.

The game's developer describes it as intending to

... mock the foreign policy of the United States and the commonly held belief ... that Muslims are a hostile people to be held with suspicion.

In other words, it was all satire, a case of Team America becoming Game America. Just like the Lindsay pamphlet, only worse. At least one computing magazine disagrees.

The game's instructions made reference to the "Muslim race". The developer now says he doesn't believe Muslims have racial or genetic defects. I sure hope no one at the Courier Mail believes this either, even if their ultimate employer seems to.

First published in the Crikey daily alert for Monday 15 September 2008.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf