This job has taken me on a considerable journey

Most of the Muslims I speak to say they love Australia, are grateful this country took them in and gave them freedoms - including religious freedom denied them in some Muslim-majority countries - and are happy to call it home. Many of these are devout, some are fundamentalists. I ended by suggesting that to combat alienation and terrorism and to help new communities adjust, we dont want less Islam but more. So here is a mainstream newspaper running something positive about Islam and about religious Muslims, and separating fundamentalism from extremism, two separate characteristics that are often automatically linked. That doesnt fit the media stereotype. Now naturally I have presented material I hope makes me appear to advantage. But I didnt start in this enlightened state. This job has taken me on a considerable journey. When I began I knew hardly any Muslims, now I know hundreds. I did not know that the Muslims living in Melbourne came from some 70 different ethnic groups, sometimes with little in common but their faith. A profound lesson for me came when I wrote what I regarded as an important story about the persecution of Sabean Mandaeans by Muslims in an Australian detention centre that led to improved conditions for the victims. I was horrified to find that article in a university booklet as an example of how NOT to report on Islam because I had treated the persecutors as typical Muslims. Of course I didnt say that, but nor did I properly differentiate. I thought hard about that, and learnt a lesson. And now the care I take not to present all Muslims as one homogenous group is automatic. But my hurdle was not bias or disdain for Muslims, it was sheer ignorance. And for most of the media, that remains the case. When I entered journalism there was considerable hostility to religion among Canada Goose Jakker journalists; now there is mostly ignorance. Is that preferable? You choose. The point is, you shouldnt always see a conspiracy in reporting that you dont like. It is more likely to be ignorance than malice, more likely to be a cock-up than a conspiracy. Sometimes, too, the media does not create, it simply reflects. And, of course, in reflecting, creates. But we do not invent this discourse. In Islam and the Australian News Media, Sarah Smiles Persinger asks are individual journalists entirely to blame? How much of the coverage of Islam in Australia is shaped by other factors, such as fierce competition between media outlets, the space constraints in telling a story, back-biting within the Muslim community, and more generally, post-September 11 public discourse about radical Islam and terrorism propagated by the political elite? In other words, often journalists are simply quoting politicians, which is our job. Politicians have not been above playing on, even building, fear and suspicion of Muslims. Perhaps the most cynical example is the Lindsay election pamphlet in which unauthorised Liberals led by the husband of MP Jackie Kelly distributed a fraudulent flyer. It purported to be from a Muslim group thanking Labor for promising clemency to terrorists and to build a mosque in the electorate. But Im sure Muslims would recognise other examples of playing this racereligion card. Let look briefly at four stories of varying importance from the past few years that all reflected negatively on at least some Muslims.

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