Foiled Plots Planned By Muslims Receive 7 Times More Media Coverage, Report Reveals

Foiled Plots Planned By Muslims Receive 7 Times More Media Coverage, Report Reveals

13 May 2018

Islamophobia Reports

"Foiled" plots by perpetrators perceived to be Muslim receive seven and half times more media coverage than those of their non-Muslim counterparts, revealed a report on biased media coverage and legal responses against Muslims in the United States.

According to the report published by the Washington-based Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU), the stark results showed how Muslim-perceived perpetrators received harsher legal charges and longer prison sentences and also had qualitatively different media coverage than perpetrators not identified as Muslim.

The ISPU study found that U.S. prosecutors sought three times the sentence length for Muslim perpetrators as for non-Muslim perpetrators for ideologically-motivated violence, while the comparison jumped to four times for attempted plots.

In the research, ISPU academicians divided their incident analysis into two categories, Muslim-perceived and non-Muslim perpetrators, based on media reports and publicly-available legal documents and databases. In the media analysis, the ISPU looked exclusively at coverage in The New York Times and The Washington Post from 2002 to 2015.

The report found that Muslim perpetrators received more than 7.75 times greater media coverage in The New York Times and The Washington Post in cases of violent ideological plots that were not carried out.

It also said that in a large majority of articles in Muslim-perpetrated incidents, offenses contained the terror-focused terms "terror," "terrorism," and/or "terrorist" while only a quarter of articles referencing non-Muslim offenders used such terms, despite both categories of offenders being alleged to have been ideologically motivated and primarily targeting civilians.

The ISPU study also found that the U.S. Justice Department was, on average, six times more likely to issue press releases about foiled plots of violence involving Muslims than non-Muslims.

The media, playing a significant role in developing and perpetuating social prejudices and bias, generates backlash against the Muslim community, fuels government reactions against the community and influences the legal ramifications of an individual case, the report said.

Dalia Mogahed, the director of research at ISPU told the Intercept that "at heart, there is a question here of what we as a society deem threatening, and what we as a society are afraid of. What you often find is that when a crime is committed by a member of the dominant, privileged group in any society, it's excused as an aberration, while crimes committed by members of an out-group are pathologized toward that group as a whole. This implicit bias finds its way into all our institutions, including courtrooms and the media."

Discrimination, intolerance against Muslims on the decline but general situation worrisome: OIC report

For quite some time, Islamophobia has been growing strongly in the West and has continued to take root through intensive campaigns and public discourses disseminating the fear of Islam, and through a significant number of incidents targeting Muslims, mosques, Islamic centers, Islamic attire, and Islam's sacred symbols. Reports and evidence reveal that negative sentiments toward Islam and Muslims keep expanding in the minds of mainstream Westerners, through mistrust toward Islam and its adherents. Particularly during the last few years, Islamophobia has reached an intractable point as it continues to grow, despite up-and-down indicators from time to time.

However, the 11th Islamophobia Observatory Report of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which covers the period from July 2017 to April 2018, describes a decreasing trend of Islamophobia, indicated by the number of incidents, which was much lower compared to those at the last trimester of 2016, or at the first trimester of 2017.

The report will be presented at the 45th Council of Foreign Ministers Conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh on May 5-6, 2018. The report highlights the trends influencing the decline of Islamophobia, intolerance, and discrimination against Muslims in the U.S. and Europe, which were always at the top of the Hotspot List— but are now moving towards significant improvement despite the remaining 'worrisome' overall situation.

This positive trend was assessed by the Observatory to have been driven mostly by four factors, namely: the failure of racist policy in the United States and the break-apart of Trump's far-right inner circle; the consensus and unilateral settlement of the 'Immigrant Issue' in Europe; the defeat of far-right political parties at European elections, and the growing trend of inter-faith Dialogue in Europe and the U.S.

The report also reveals manifestations of Islamophobia around the world, and describes a general trend of fear against Islam and its "attire", which is not necessarily regional or geographical in terms of character with particular focus on Islamophobic gestures and policies against veils, the hijab and burqa.

The 11th Observatory report equally highlights some 'Positive Developments' in terms of actions, attitudes, sentiments, initiatives as well as other steps and positions taken by governments or by non-Muslim individuals against Islamophobes.

The report also presents a set of recommendations that proposes some steps and actions to be taken by the OIC as well as by the relevant stakeholders including member states.

The report concludes that, despite its declining pattern, the overall situation of Islamophobia remains alarming. Hence, it requires serious actions at international and national levels. Collective and worldwide endeavor to combat Islamophobia is expected to minimize its negative impacts on social life based on tolerance and peaceful coexistence.

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