Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long discounted the existence of Islamophobia. In a September 2021 post, for example, Kyle Drennen complained that on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, "MSNBC decided it was a good time to remind viewers how racist America has supposedly been toward Muslim citizens since that horrific day" by interviewing "a panel of six Muslim Americans, many of whom were longtime left-wing activists." He called one panelist's claim that anti-Muslim sentiment has increased since then a "wild assertion," but he made no effort to actually disprove the claim.
After the war between Hamas and Israel started, the MRC again felt the need to downplay Islamophobia. A Oct. 13 post by Alex Christy complained that a fact-checker wanted to separate Muslims as a whole from alleged Hamas atrocities:
Former Al Jazeera producer turned Snopes fact-checker Nur Ibrahim warned on Thursday that discussions of Hamas beheading Israeli babies should be taken with a grain of salt and that “people should be wary of claims that echo Islamophobic rhetoric.”
[...]
Ibrahim was just getting started, “People should be wary of claims that echo Islamophobic rhetoric, or statements that compare the violence in Kfar Aza to ‘ISIS-style’ killings — i.e., beheadings that have taken place in a different context and were committed by a different group. Such rumors that emphasize specific, unverified acts of brutality against infants and that attempt to connect them to patterns of violence carried out by unconnected Islamist groups have the potential to become dangerous propaganda.”
How in the world is being outraged at beheadings “Islamophobic”? And what “context” is Ibrahim referring to? Terrorist beheadings are terrorist beheadings; it really is that simple.
Christy, however, wouldn't explicitly state that Hamas shouldn't be lumped in with Muslims as a whole; instead, he whined about "the hair splitting that seeks to discredit Israel and silence its supporters by crying Islamophobia by differentiating between different types of baby murder is appalling and no one should accept it." Christy sure seems to want to accept Islamophobia, though.
IN an Oct. 17 post, Tim Graham insisted that Islamophobia was a "narrative," not an actual thing:
After the shock of 9/11 wore off, the American media turned toward their natural disposition of worrying about Muslims being discriminated against -- and brutalized -- by ignorant Americans. Now, after what some call Israel's 9/11, we've reached the phase where the media turns once again to that American Islamophobia narrative.
One sign was Palestinian activist Rula Jebreal being invited on Jake Tapper's CNN show immediately after a story on the vicious stabbing death of a 6-year-old Muslim boy outside Chicago, now being investigated as a "hate crime." They want to blame it on talk radio.
Tapper explained it was an important time for Americans to distinguish between Hamas and all Muslims:
JAKE TAPPER: How important do you think it is for people in the media, for our political leaders, religious leaders to make this incredibly important distinction between Hamas, and not only the Palestinian people, but Arabs, and Muslims, all other people who somehow might unfairly and wrongly be lumped in with us?
Is that really a question? How important is it that we make this incredibly important distinction? It's a prompt.
Graham, of cousre, hasno interest in not acknowledging that the vast majroity of Muslims are not violent terrorists, because that doesn't fit his narrative.
Curtis Houck served up his own whine that Islamophobia was acknowledge alongside anti-Semitism in a Nov. 3 post:
This week on NBC’s Today, they went through quite the transformation from caring about anti-Semitism on college campuses (with only passing, almost faux attempts at bothsidesism with Islamophobia) to Thursday creeping toward bothsidesism to Friday pouting with pro-Hamas students being identified in public as terrorist sympathizers.
[...]
Reporting from Emory University, correspondent Blayne Alexander said she had “spoken to a number of students who say they have experienced a range of actions from chants being shouted across campus to troubling social media posts, even the defacing of a poster with Israeli hostages”.
Alexander then introduced bothsidesism (even though it’s only one side where students are being assaulted, chased, and signs being torn down):
Houck further complined that "The rest of the story painted Islamophobia as an equal problem," though he offered no evidence that it wasn't.
Clay Waters ranted in a Nov. 5 post that it was "offensive moral equivalence" to acknowledge that both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia exist:
Thursday’s PBS NewsHour indulged in offensive moral equivalence, pretending that Islamophobia in the United States was as big if not a bigger threat to public safety than the current wave of violent anti-Semitism hitting progressive big cities and college campuses, while also sliming Fox News hosts as endangering Muslims.
Host Geoff Bennett’s segment led with “Islamophobia,” even while Jews are under attack in America.
[...]
The White House’s warped priorities neatly cleaved with the bizarre news emphasis of tax-funded PBS. Not even a month after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the left is chasing the convenient phantom of “Islamophobia” to attempt to change the subject from anti-Semitism in the streets.
The idea that Islamophobia is "phantom" and can be ignored because there is also anti-Semitism runs counter to another MRC narrative -- that of making a point of denouncing late-term abortions even though there are so few of them. For instance , when one commentator pointed out that "third-trimester abortions are vanishingly rare," Brad Wilmouth huiffed in a Nov. 11 post that "the fact that Democrats support abortion at any time for any reason is a fact they can't acknowledge is real, or that it matters." If late-ter, abortion matters even though there are so few of them, Islamophobia should matter as well though there is allegedly more anti-Semitism.
But, of course, that's not the way the MRC thinks -- Muslims exist to be hated for a partisan agenda, after all -- so it continued to whine about Islamophobia being discussed. Graham returned for more complaining in a Nov. 12 post:
CBS News can often be described as a megaphone for the Left. But some times, it gets incredibly lazy. On Thursday afternoon, CBSNews.com published an article that can only be described as a press release for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim lobbying group that's been attached to Hamas. The headline was:
"Unprecedented surge" in anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bias incidents reported in U.S. since Israel-Hamas war, advocacy group says
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CBS and its reporter/repeater Emily Mae Czachor made no attempt to seek an opposing view on Islamophobia, or how it compares to the surge in anti-Semitism everyone can see in big cities and leftist college campuses. Is every "request for help" or "report of bias" taken at face value?
Graham didn't explain what kind of "opposing view" he was after -- is it a fellow Islamophobe to claim all this anti-Muslim hate is "phantom"? Of course, Graham himself made no effort to disprove anything in the report despite suggesting it was false.
A Nov. 29 post by Waters actually seemed to argue that not hating Muslims means you're "pro-Hamas":
Who had Parents magazine on their bingo card as running one of the most one-sided stories on the Israel-Hamas war? The magazine of child-raising tips, online-only since 2022, has grown-up to be a home of ignorant rants like a smear against Moms for Liberty, “How 'Klanned Karenhood' Is Infiltrating Schools.”
Contributor Syeda Khaula Saad didn’t try to disguise her slant in “How To Talk to Kids About Islamophobia.” The sub-head served as a sample of Hamas-denial: “As attacks on Palestine intensify, anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence have increased worldwide. Here's some guidance on how to explain Islamophobia to children.” It’s a clumsy piece of pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli propaganda under the guise of one of those sensitive “how to talk to your children” pieces.
Saad led with dubious statistics from one of the most notorious Islamic pressure groups, the Hamas-linked CAIR.
[...]
Saad skipped right over the terrorist attacks of 2001 to get to the true victims: Muslims in America. Not even comedian Amy Schumer was spared in her ridiculously thin and tiny roundup of Islamophobia from celebrities.
Waters not only made no effort to back up his assertion that the numbers from CAIR were "dubious," he didn't explain why we are apparently supposed to hate all Muslims because of Hamas and deny that Islamophobia even exists.
