Muslims urged to buy influence in world media

Muslim tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-Muslim attitudes around the world, ministers from Islamic countries heard at a conference in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Information ministers and officials meeting under the auspices of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world’s largest Islamic body, said Islam faced vilification after the September 11 attacks, when 19 Arabs killed nearly 3,000 people in US cities in 2001. Muslim stakes in Western media are minimal. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 5.46 per cent of media conglomerate News Corp, the Rupert Murdoch-run group behind the Fox News Channel. The US channel is generally seen as right-wing and no friend of Arab or Muslim interests. Washington’s response to September 11, invading Afghanistan and Iraq and tightening civil freedoms at home as part of a wider ‘war on terror’, has created a widespread feeling among Muslims worldwide that their religion is under attack. A row earlier this year over Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Mohammed deepened the sense of a divide between Islamic culture and the West. ‘Now more than ever we need a new Islamic media message that reaches all parts of the world, Egyptian Information Minister Anas el-Feki said in a speech. (Reuters via Media Network Weblog,September 15, 2006)

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