“What comes to mind when you see a bloke shrouded in black, masked, and machete in hand,” I asked my final year journalism students.  “What about these names - Daniel Pearl, James Foley, Steven Sotloff?” 

They sensed where I was leading with the question. When an Asian teacher, such as I, steer class discussions among an all-white student cohort to the reporting of race, religion and terrorism – we end with more unresolved concept questions than clear practical answers.  

Disregarding talk-back radio where ‘home-grown terrorists’ and ‘enemies within’ are freely spewed on air, my students see the difficulties that journalists face in interviewing, sourcing, framing and writing about suspect ISIS supporters since the Australian government raised the terror alert from “medium” to “high” (meaning ‘terror attack is likely’) in early September.

What students have been reading about the Islamic world in the post-9/11 climate is this: the West spreads democracy; Islam spawns violence. The West is predisposed to make peace; the Islamic world is predisposed to terrorise, to hate and to kill. The beheadings by ISIS psychopaths in Syria only serve to reinforce this media frame.

 

Although academicians, such as the late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, have repudiated the culturally patronising and contextually misleading Orientalist framing of Islam, these news definers are accepted as ‘commonsensical’ in the public mind – and hence, used as fodder by rightist politicians to reap the popular votes, and exploited by radical Islamists to stoke revenge and kill all who resist the ‘rules of Islam’. 

The many sides in a story

How then can journalists report on ISIS-related issues and not run the risk of adding fuel to simmering Islamophobia in the community?  “Research the facts,” I say to students while alerting them to the many sides in a story, and the multitude of conspiracy theories circulating on social media. “Read and cross-check what moderate Muslim scholars say about ISIS.”

“Understand the Sunni-Shiite divide, the diversity in Islamic thoughts and cultures. Talk to mainstream Muslims to understand their experience. Know your limitations as journalists reporting from the outside because a story is only as accurate and fair as the sources you access. Finally, report in context.”

This is where an open letter in Arabic to the IS leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi ( left ) by 126 international Muslim scholars provides a context. The translated letter of 24 summary points, endorsed by Muslim-American leaders in Washington DC on Sept 24, has this introduction:

“It is forbidden in Islam to issue fatwas without all the necessary learning requirements. Even then, fatwas must follow Islamic legal theory as defined in the classical texts. It is also forbidden to cite a portion of a verse from the Quran - or part of a verse - to derive a ruling without looking at everything that the Quran and Hadith teach related to that matter... one cannot ‘cherry-pick’ Quranic verses for legal arguments without considering the entire Quran and Hadith.”

Few journalists are completely familiar with Quranic texts. Which shows the complexities in reporting on ISIS-related issues with its religious underpinnings. The tried-and-true approach is to first gather the facts. Here are a few ‘facts’ drawn from a journalism class research on the chilling impact of ISIS expansionist mission.

The Middle East Media Research Institute, based in Washington DC, in its weekly ‘jihad and terrorism threat monitor’, noted that ISIS propaganda have spawned similar units in Egypt. The Jund Al-Khilafah Bi Ard Al-Kinana (The Caliphate Army in Egypt) had pledged to target Western embassies, nationals and other "cross worshipers'" (Christians) in Egypt.

In Algeria the Jund Al-Khilafah had released a video of a French tourist, Herve Gourdel, who was beheaded for France’s collusion with the United States in striking IS targets in Syria. In Sulu, Southern Philippines, Abu Sayyaf militants have threatened to behead one of two German hostages unless a ransom is paid by mid-October. 

ISIS recruits through social media in Malaysia

In Malaysia, ISIS had reportedly recruited through the social media 40 Malaysians – including some women - on ‘conjugal jihads’. 

The most prominent recruit was PAS member Lotfi Ariffin ( left ), killed in Syria on Sept 14. Could the surviving ‘jihadists’ easily slip through security checks when they return home through KLIA? I pray not.

Singapore’s Straits Times , quoting a study by the Institute for Policy Analysis and Conflict based in Jakarta, reported that Malaysian and Indonesian militants fighting in Syria have formed a unit to recruit new members, who could not speak English or Arabic, via Facebook.

The new recruits would be added to the estimated 15,000 foreigners currently fighting with ISIS, according to US intelligence.  

What drives young Muslims, who are living freely with equal opportunities in Australia, and enjoying special privileges in Malaysia, to leave and fight with ISIS? Chatting with a missionary friend who is completing a book on how to communicate across religious lines, we admit we have few clues. Just assumptions. 

We have never visited the Middle East nor have we lived with a Muslim family. Our knowledge of Islam, its theology and values, its history and culture, are limited to the Western media depiction of the ‘clash of civilisations’, and casual conversations with liberal Muslim friends we’ve made in our adult life. 

“Perhaps we can never understand,” my friend said. Perhaps. But we know that just as it’s misguided to associate KKK white supremacists with Christianity, it’s misplaced to associate ISIS thugs with Islam. The tiny minority of IS supporters caught in the pre-dawn raid in Sydney and Brisbane certainly do not represent the estimated 476,000 Muslims in Australia (2011 census).  

Beheadings carried out in Europe too

On the IS beheadings, I tell my students that gruesome and repulsive as they are, there’s a long history to this act of slaying the enemy since the beginnings of Judaeo-Christianity and Islam.  David beheaded Goliath after felling him with a stone, as recorded in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 17: 51-54). 

John the Baptist was beheaded and handed to King Herod on a platter, as recorded in the New Testament (Matthew 14:1-12). And, men from the Jewish tribe, the Banu Qurayza, were believed to have been beheaded in 627AD by Prophet Muhammad’s army, which some scholars say was a wartime practice in 7th Century Arabia, and which reflected the practice in the Old Testament days, as noted in the law of Moses (Deuteronomy 20:10-14).

In Europe, beheadings for treason were carried out from the 14th to 18th centuries. I remember my visit to the Tower of London, where more than 100 beheadings of those from noble birth convicted of crimes against the state took place until the mid-18th Century.

In Australia, there’s the enduring image of  Sergeant Leonard Siffleet being beheaded by a Japanese soldier in Aitape, Papua New Guinea, in October 1943. The photograph today hangs on the wall of the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.  

In Penang, I remember my grandfather’s story about how the Japanese soldiers struck terror in the hearts of Malayans during the Occupation in 1942-43. It was common then to see decapitated heads on stakes in front of the police headquarters on Penang Road. 

But the world has moved on to more humane capital punishment, but with similar outcome – the taking of another person’s life. Except in Saudi Arabia where Muslims and non-Muslims today are decapitated in the public square after midday prayers for crimes ranging from murder and homosexuality to drug trafficking and apostasy. 

This is where it gets the students. They know that the US has continued to support the House of Saud, and by implication, the kingdom’s violation of fundamental human rights, and practice of ultraconservative Wahhabi Islam, of which Osama bin Laden was a devout follower.

Why isn’t the US media reporting more on this blind spot, my students ask? Why indeed. That’ll be another class discussion for another day.

ERIC LOO left Malaysia for Australia in 1986 to work as a journalist. He currently lectures at University of Wollongong, Australia, and serves on the advisory committee of UPI Next , a journalism education and training platform run by United Press International. He edits a refereed journal Asia Pacific Media Educator and conducts journalism training workshops in Asia. Email: eloo@uow.edu.au