Dear Sticky Wicket,
Why are Muslims whitewashed in the news media? Name one Muslim news anchor on BET, CNN, FOX, NBC, ABC, WGN or columnist at any major newspaper.
~Patrick Kuehn
Dear Patrick,
We spent days navigating various research engines, trying to locate any mention of a Muslim print or broadcast journalist employed at a major network. The result, we couldn’t find any.
The closest we found was that of Mnar AbuMayaleh, who was the first news anchor to wear a hijab (Muslim head covering) on UTVS—a Minnesota-based television news station.
By those accounts, your assumptions are correct. However, are you missing something, Patrick? How exactly did you define ‘Muslim’ for the purpose of your question? If journalists of Arab descent were the basis of your question, Newsweek columnist Lorraine Ali would qualify. But if Muslim journalists were your primary focus; the issue is a bit more, well, sticky.
It’s difficult to determine a person’s religion based on their ethnicity. Are all Latin’s Catholic? Are all Buddhists of Asian descent?
Only 22 percent of Muslim Americans are Arab, according to the Arab American Institute. Similar demographic studies commissioned by the Pew Research center produced similar results.
According to Pew estimates, 37 percent of all foreign-born Muslim Americans arrived from Arab countries. The remaining 67 percent of foreign-born Muslim Americans are from non-Arab countries including South Asia and other parts of Europe. What’s more, 38 percent of U.S. born Muslims are Caucasian, 26 percent African-American and 20 percent Asian.
What does all this have to do with your question? Making assumptions about a person’s religious beliefs based on their ethnicity breeds division. Forty-five percent of U.S. residents perceive Muslims as violent, according to recent polls — a likely product of a post 9/11 America. The Harris County Sheriff’s department in Houston, Texas, is under investigation after e-mails mocking Islam were found on several office computers.
The e-mails display a cartoon for “Preparation M, Islamic suppositories for prayer time relief.”
The cartoon is accompanied by a picture of a Muslim man’s remote control for his wife with buttons to ‘clean, feed camel and give me an AK-47.”
However, not all Muslims are terrorists, and not all terrorists are Muslim. Just like not all Muslims are Arab, and vice versa.