Yahoo Promoting Islamic Blog?
Posted on March 25, 2008
Filed Under Islam, Media, News, Religion
After we saw the latest online clash between those who defend the freedom of speech - democrats, conservatives, liberals and republicans alike - and those who are willing to bend the rules and basic individual freedom laws for the sake of political correctness - Network Solutions - here is another glimpse on online activism by the major Internet corporation. This time it is Yahoo!.
While browsing Yahoo! News, I found this article:
Qur’an (Koran) Argues Against Islamic Extremism in New Book
This weekend noted Islamic scholar S. M. Zakir Hussain released his proof against those who speak in favor of the Qur’an (Koran) in an extreme way. His careful reasoning is contained in the new book, “Secret Knowledge of the Qur’an” which has just been released by Cook Communication.. A summary of his argument is available on www.author-me.com. See http://author-me.com/nonfiction/islamicextremism.html.
Released his proof? As genuine and well-meant the argument of this Islamic scholar might be, how come Yahoo! decides quoting a media outlet that provided this story to Yahoo! News and determining this to be a proof? The story was contributed to Yahoo!News by PRWeb - the company that optimizes and distributes press-releases from business online.
If Yahoo!News indeed looked into the matter instead of just reprinting it, they would discover that there are plenty of other websites that are speaking about Quran from completely different point of view. Why adopting this particular one? And with all due honest respect to Mr. S.K. Zakir Hussein, there are bigger and more known and popular scholars in the Muslim countries, who preach exactly otherwise.
I would like to believe that the Yahoo!News editor/s simply overlooked this news feed by PRWeb, because if he/she/they didn’t, it would mean they have taken a side in the argument regarding Quran and other religious books.
If Yahoo! indeed wanted to be accurate and balanced, they’d dedicate equal amount of bits and bytes to those who claim Quran does preach violence and extremism. Someone like Robert Spencer, for example. And I repeat, my argument is not against the blog and its author. I don’t doubt the good intentions of this scholar who’s struggling to reverse a negative image his religious book has acquired (rightly or not it’s debatable). However, adopting the Islamic scholar’s point of view can hardly be qualified as an independent, unbiased and well weighed approach. It may well be that I have missed something in my understanding of Yahoo! News policies and intentions, but I am wondering, are we so tangled in the struggle between the desire to maintain the right for free speech and political correctness that we are resulting to media anarchy?
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