It's interesting to me that this video is told in a very doom-and-gloom tone, as if foretelling the end of the world. The last line, "This is a call to action", encourages Christians to share the Gospel message, apparently to prevent Islam from spreading at this rate.
This video is inciting panic across blogs and being forwarded all over the place. My question is, why? And what have been the precipitating factors that make the spread of Islam something to fear?
Google "terrorist" and you get these images -
These images obviously reinforce the idea that terrorists are Muslims (and, implicitly, vice versa).
I googled "Muslim" and some of the first pictures to pop up (aside from half-naked Muslim Miss America contestants) included -
as well as many other pictures either satirizing or stereotyping Islam in some way. It's no surprise to me that this video incites fear, especially taking into considering the tone of voice the narrator uses to forecast doom, and these pictures that reinforce ideas of Muslims as radical, violent people.
It's so easy to forget the violent, sometimes tyrannical, nature of some of the more "normal" religions that people no longer think of as radical.
I Googled "Christian" and got lots of pictures of crosses and "Jesus is the Truth".
But let's not forget images like these that also came out of extremism -
So this Muslim Demographics video (aside from the question of whether or not its information is "true") - is it something to be afraid of? Is it something to panic about? Or not?
Your thoughts?
It's ridiculous that people are afraid of Islam. Yes, there are Islamic extremists, but what we don't see in the media is the millions of people who are not terrorists. The association of a certain religion with violence could be (and has been) applied to any religion. It just so happens that there is a lot of conflict in the middle east, which is why people are afraid. I think that the 9/11 situation has a lot to do with the fear in America. People are afraid of the unknown. Anyway, I basically think that it's not something to be afraid of at all.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Anne.. and like your inclusion of crusader images. But what gets me is the opening: "the global culture our children will inherit will be vastly different than it is today." Well duh!! The world changes and the things we know and love leave. Nobody's empire ever stayed the same.. So my advice for the makers of the video is to write a book to memorialize their world. Because they can't freeze-frame it.
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