I just wanted to bring to everybody's attention about the theme of Muslim bashing in the media and journalism. Isn't interesting and appaling that one ever Muslims do anything, it is automatically front page news. If people of other religious groups do anything out of the ordinary, nobody really cares. Let me give you an example. Indian filmaker Parvez Sharma has just made a film called "Jihad of Love," which examines the lives of gay and lesbian Muslims, and you can bet the Western media is making a big raucous out of it.
Now, I am not saying that homosexuality and lesbianism do not exist in Islamic countries, of course they do, as do many other vices like adultery, alcohol consumption, and pornography, but why is it one vice goes on in the dar ul islam, people jump to make a big issue out of it.

In India, vice and corruption go on all the time. Israel it is pretty much the same thing. Before the war in Iraq, CNN did a piece on "Inside Saudia Arabia,"
but nothing on what goes on inside Israel, and believe me alot of shady things go in the Jewish state. In India, young untouchable girls are forced to be prostitutes in the Hindu temples, but I don't see Hollywood making a film about sexual exploitation in India. Gays and lesbians are to be found in huge supply also in India, but no word on that. The West, in general, is preoccupied will villifying Islam and Muslims. On Hollywood, we are terrorists or wife beaters. Our men are sex-crazed fiends after blondes, according to the media. When will this madness ever stop.

All religions get bashed at some point in time; sikhism, judaism and christianity have all had their period of mass bashing though in christianity's case I'd say the bashing did a significantly larger amount of damage to its reputation.

It's now Islam's turn. Not exactly the nicest thing to hear but once you study how humans work you will find that we require an amount of conflict - physical or mental - because we have elements of sado-masochism, in addition to superiority complexes (of course, the extensity of these two vary considerably between person to person). It just so happens that society has Islam on their radar.

How to deal with this? Practice Islam properly through your actions with people - day to day basis etc. This will work in the long term as people will gradually realise that muslims are indeed awesome but some are a little looney. Most people have this perception already but as is usually the case in mankinds history, the people who have the right words to say don't always have the loudest voice - irony at its finest. Similarly, not everyone wants to listen - ignorance at its finest.

You mean 'Sardarji' jokes? True. (also, I apologise if that 'S' word is offensive, I'm not sure if it is or not...)

Yeah, the subcontinent contains some extreme racism. Pakistani and Indian people tend to be extremely racist/intolerant towards:

a) people of other religions in general (especially Sikhs and Jews)
b) people of other ethnic groups (especially black people, for some bizarre reason)

In that kind of social climate, you're not going to see a mainstream Indian film dealing with the darker side of Indian life.

And before people get all offended and stuff - my parents are Pakistani, so be quiet. If you're Asian, you know that everything I said above is true.

True. Of course, such liberal-minded folks (but I prefer the term 'proper Muslims', heh) should be sure to present the proper picture of Islam, and contrast it with the nutters, so as to clarify in the minds of the audience where their sympathies lay.

People will say, 'oh, you're just being politically correct. I mean, you don't have to show both sides of the coin when you're showing a psycopathic Catholic priest, people know the makers of the film in question aren't painting all Catholics with the same brush. Give the audience some credit!'

To which I would reply Islam is a different case. It is not well understood in the Western world, and so efforts must be made to present as balanced a view of it as possible - one cannot rely on audience knowledge and understanding in this case.

anything they say about Islam especially the negative, make Islam and muslim stronger and stronger day after day...

and the media today is on jew's hand, so they insult islam and muslim, so we need to have islamic media, to share our voice and thoughts to the world...and give em the right info bout islam...

About Indian prejudice against Black people, that one person replied to. Your right and it all goes back to the period when the Aryans invaded India and imposed their rule on the darker-skinned Dravidian peoples. Actually, Indians
for thousands of years have had this hung up about characterizing Black people as inferior.

Now, how this relates to Muslim bashing is quite evident. Some Hollywood films like "Mississippi Masala" deal with racism from the Hindu angle, but everybody in the entertainment business seems to be more worried about Islamic fanaticism. The Hindu fundamentalists, who were all great admirers of Adolf Hitler, are just as intolerant and bigoted, but why doesn't Hollywood make a movie villifying them. Afterall, India is the second most populated country in the world.

What a funny thead.

You have to OP complaining about Muslim bashing in western media and how its one-sided. Then you have responses making the same broad generalizations about other groups.

Hi-larious!

And as usual there empty accusations and nothing to back it up.

A month ago or so, someone make the statement that when a Muslim committed a crime, they would mention his religion even it had nothing to do with the crime. After I challenged her, she promised that she would provide an example next time a person’s religion was mentioned when it had nothing to do with the story.

I'm still waiting.

Homosexuality among muslims is progressing. That means not , it never existed, but just, more and more muslims get the guts to speak it out. They are so many, that the media now get new headlines. Specially, almost everybody knows, muslims go for every little stupidity on the barricades. Easy prey for media, IMHO

The media sensationalizes everything, especially the 24 hour news channels. To keep stories on the front burner, they will infuse a good bit of drama and doomsday scenarios to everything.

That being said, the actions of Muslims will remain newsworthy. Al-Qaeda and the others inspired by them who have carried about horrible acts of butchery in the name of Islam have made sure of that.