WaPo Managing Editor: Islamofascists Misunderstood, Media to Blame

Another Islamic apologist, this time with a twist:

The managing editor of one of the country’s biggest newspapers thinks news organizations ought to hire more Muslim reporters.

Philip Bennett, the Washington Post’s managing editor, said reporters often struggle with understanding Islam during a speech Monday at UCI about the difficulties of covering the religion.

Bennett’s speech focused on the media’s need to cover issues concerning Islam in an in-depth, long-term manner.

To illustrate this point he drew mainly from quotes of notable colleagues and statistical polls, rarely giving his own opinion directly.

“Six of 10 Americans, according to a 2007 ABC Poll, don’t understand the basic tenets of Islam,” Bennett said.

Oh, some of us do understand, Bennett. Aside from the doctrinal tenets of the Koran, there’s the prosecution of said tenets by the followers of Islam; beheadings, bombings, flying planes full of people into buildings, murdering Theo Van Gogh for his documentary, death threats against cartoonists and authors for criticizing Islam, and just generally committing atrocities in the name of Allah.

…..Zeyad Maasarani, 22, a Muslim reporter for California’s most circulated Muslim publication, Southern California in Focus, agrees with Bennett that terms like “jihad,” “madrasa” and “hijab” are a big source of the public’s misunderstanding of Islam.

“Jihad means holy war, which is the definition that most Americans know, but it also means struggle, and valiant attempt,” Maasarani said.

The “jihad” term is usually applied in the vernacular of Islamic homicide bombers…..in their ‘struggle’.

……Bennett said that in the period following 9/11 there was a lot of uninformed writing about Islam, and that “the best journalism fought against the tide of public perception.”

Link: http://www.dailypilot.com/articles/2008/03/04/religion/dpt-bennett03042008.txt

Uninformed? You mean we misunderstood all that celebration on the part of muslims after 9/11, the ensuing rhetoric, and the Osama Bin Laden video where he proudly described the attacks and took responsibility?

The WaPo is on a crying jag over the ‘misunderstanding’ of jihadists, which they now say they fostered.

That’s odd. All this time I thought the MSM has gone out of its way to manipulate public perception by blaming America, kissing the ass of muslim extremists, and imitating Al Jazeera, more than anything else.

Public perception is based on the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent tide of violence directed toward Western civilization by Islam.

I’m trying to understand the motivations and groupthink of media outlets like the WaPo. What is it that compels them to launch a public relations campaign for the benefit of a ideological theocracy hellbent on killing all the ‘infidels’? (Read: non-muslims)

And we’re not supposed to fight that sort of thing, kill them back, or call Islam the evil that it is.

Misunderstood, indeed.