Author: klbarlow

I took a second look at the Layla and Majnun story from earlier in the semester and the inspiration that it had in other creative forums. I think the story in itself is very nice for the reader to follow and relate to. I think we all want to find someone that we would do nearly anything for. In my opinion that kind of love can translate to potentially any culture or religion let alone Islam. I think as a result thats why we have seen artists like Eric Clapton take to other creative forums in inspiration of the story. The Crazy about “Layla” reading was very interesting. It was cool to hear the backstory of how he took inspiration from the story and wrote his song. The fact that he wrote the song to convince George Harrison’s wife to leave her husband was amusing and intriguing.

I did some further digging and found a Washington Post article from a few years ago called “Muslim journalists no longer as rare in US newsrooms“. I thought it was quite interesting given the topic and its relation to my major and our class. The piece covers a need for more Muslim journalists in U.S. newsrooms since the rise in Islamophobia due to events like 9/11 and the emergence of other Islamic extremism. It profiles writers like Rummana Hussain who was the metro editor and reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times at the time of the story being published. Her parents wanted her to be in the medical field, where Muslims are more well-represented, rather than a journalist. While an exact number of Muslims working in U.S. newsrooms is not given the piece does say that minorities make up about 13 percent of editorial staffs. The article says that hiring a diversity of faith in the workplace can be “problematic”.

Maria Ebrahimji, a journalist who began working for CNN in Atlanta in the mid-1990s, is quoted in the article and said that she has seen an increase in the number of young Muslims who are interested in journalism for a career. Ebrahimji talked about that fact that when she first started working she wouldn’t address her faith but over time she began to change and identify as Muslim in the workplace.

I found a very interesting interview on Soundcloud with Janet Steele, the Director of the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication. She was doing several talks at a few universities in Australia over Journalism in the Islamic world. One thing that I found most interesting from the 15-minute interview was Steele’s commentary on how basic journalism practices like truth and balance intersect with and diverge with the teachings of Islam. It comes at the 1:25 mark of the interview. She specifically references justice and how it intertwines with journalism and Islam and other religions. She says that “justice is a very important concept in Islam, much more important than freedom. So it was things like that, that got me to start asking journalists about the connection between journalism and religion.” I think this is a very interesting connection to make given how important bringing justice is to journalists around the world. I had never considered that relationship.

Here is the link for those that are interested in listening: LINK

There is also a transcript: LINK

Continuing today’s trend of journalism-related posts I decided to take a look at the top Islamic news sources in the world and what their impact is on their readers and the community around them. Given my earlier post about free-press in Islamic countries I was wondering how reliable the news sources in the Islamic world. My thoughts going into the research was that these sources are probably not very reliable and I was anticipating that most of them are probably state-owned publications. I found a very useful Lib-guide that lists Muslim news sources around the world.  Here are a few examples that I could find:

• Al-Ahram is the most widely circulating Egyptian daily newspaper according to the Lib-guide. I found that it is owned by the Egyptian government’s “Supreme Council of Press”. essentially the state owns shares of the paper. They view the journalists as “appointees of the state” so I found that the publication is not censored by the government because of this understanding.
• Donya-e-Eqtesad is one of the most widely circulated papers in Iran and it focuses on economic news. I found that it doesn’t currently have an affiliation to the Iranian government and it is often offers moderate criticism to it.

The list is obviously not limited to these two examples but this was still an interesting exercise for me as a journalism major.

I am a journalism major and I decided to do a little bit of research on how journalism is practiced in Islamic countries. As some of you may know the right to free press is not something that is guaranteed for everyone around the world. I found a “World Press Freedom Index” from Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit organization that safeguards the right to freedom of information around the world. The World Press Freedom Index ranks every country in the world based on how free its press is. I also found a list of the top countries in the world by Muslim population. From the top ten countries Nigeria, which ranks 115th in the world according to the site, has the highest free press rating. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world and it ranks 119th in the world. None of the other top-10 Muslim countries from that population list rank higher than 145th in the world.

From looking at the World Free Press Index the realization I came to is that most of the Islam world doesn’t have a very free press.  Roughly 21 million Muslims live in Niger and it ranks 57th in the world. If you made a list of the 25 countries with the largest Muslim population just three of those nations – Niger (57th), Senegal (47th) and Ethiopia (99th) – rank in the top-100 in the world by free press.

For those wondering, the United States ranks 45th on the list of free press in the world. Norway is No.1 in the world. Turkmenistan ranks 179th, the worst in the world.

I am a journalism major and I decided to dive into some research about how Western journalism and media impacts the way we view the Arab culture. I found a JStor journal article from the Middle East Journal called “Islam and the Western Journalist” and I wanted to share with you all. My takeaway was that the piece essentially argues the way western media portrays Muslim people impacts the reality of Muslim thought. The first portion of the article goes into depth about the basic practices of journalists and what they aim to do. The author defines journalism as “the production of general knowledge.” and that ” a journalist is someone who has to sift the particular knowledge and experience of individuals or groups of people, and to extract from it a message which larger groups are able to understand and willing to hear.” The article goes on to argue that there is a weakness in how western journalism treats the Islamic world. The author references a book called Covering Islam which argues that instead of understanding the Islamic world western journalists have simply “tried to explain them in terms of the peculiarities of Islam as a religion, or of Islamic languages and cultures such as Arabic and Persian, which are supposed to predetermine the course of Muslim thought.” The author argues that as a result western society has viewed the Muslim people as “irrational savages” instead of trying to sympathize with the various Muslim peoples. 

I wanted to comment on The Cairo House novel that we were to read earlier in the semester. I realized I never provided any commentary on what I took away from the novel and I wanted to share with you all: Much like he many readings for this course I felt that The Cairo House was a truly insightful and thought provoking texts. It really made me think about the storyline and want to care about the stories that were being told throughout. The life of Gigi was captivating and drew me in very easily. In fact, I was surprised at how enthralled I became with the story while I was reading it. As a result, the novel mad it very easy to learn about the culture and what the author was attempting to get across to the readers through the text. Although I have never been to Egypt the culture was portrayed in a way that made it easy to relate to the story as the reader. Despite the diverse pressures and experiences that she faced in the novel I feel like she was still a truly relatable character and as a result I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

I went back to our readings from the Qur’an readings we were assigned in mid-March. Coming from a family of Christian faith I thought it was quite interesting to read theological text outside of the Bible. Although I have had limited experience with reading the Bible I still thought this was a refreshing experience. From my readings of the Bible it was also interesting to find comparisons between the two texts. At a few points in the text it would probably be hard to differentiate between the two unless you were a devout Christian or a devout Muslim. In my opinion there were many key similarities to what Allah was asking to what God is asking. One example is how followers must treat the poor and underprivileged. My grandma is a strict Christian and she always preached that I should help others especially the poor. This text from the Qur’an sounds like a piece that would be something out of the Bible.

“Give to the near of kin his due, and also to the needy and the wayfarers. Do not squander your wealth wastefully; for those who squander wastefully are Satan’s brothers, and Satan is ever ungrateful to his Lord” 

Today I took a second look at the How to Perform Salah guide from earlier in the semester. I liked how it broke down what each process of prayer calls for. I think the most interesting part of this process is the fact that you have to make sure you are clean and in proper attire to pray. Males have to wear anything that covers from the nose to the knees and women must cover their whole body except for the face and hands. Christianity, a religion that may be more familiar to us in the United States of America, doesn’t normally require you to dress a certain way or follow a certain process to pray. Although many of my close relatives put on “church clothes” every Sunday to go to service I never really remember that being an absolute necessity for practicing the Christian religion. When you think about it, that concept from Islam makes a lot of sense. When you are preparing to pray it seems very symbolic for your body to be clean given that many people would view prayer as a spiritual cleansing. It seems like it would set you off on the right foot to be clean before you go to pray.