What Ails Mainstream Journalism

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 22, 2007

Why do otherwise thorough reporters lose their professional skepticism when covering the Middle East and Islam? This peculiar journalistic phenomenon has puzzled me since I began covering the Middle East and Islam, in lieu of the investigative financial reporting work I had done for most of my career. Indeed, it largely motivated my personal professional shift.

An informal conversation with a part-time journalism professor recently gave me important clues. Our professional dialogue was private; therefore, it would be a gross violation of trust to identify this person in any way, excepting to note that the professor lived and reported from the Middle East for a time and now teaches how to cover current-day religious affairs and relations at a major university.

The professor’s classes often cover reporting on the Islamic community in the U.S. today. Therefore, I was keenly interested to determine the professor’s familiarity with sacred and historical texts that motivate modern Islamic activity and dogma.

In financial reporting, it goes without saying that one cannot write a major investigative piece on a corporation, industry or economic issue without first reading a great deal. For public companies, this requires extensive review of all Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings—recent annual reports (10-Ks, or F-20s for foreign firms), quarterlies (10-Qs), and changes to business strategy (8-K) or ownership (13-D). A good sleuth also consults the filings of major competitors and customers, in addition to interviewing as many of them as possible.

Only after laying this groundwork will the thorough reporter contact executives at the subject corporation.

A similar procedure—research first, interviews later—applies to private companies. Before 1995, Fidelity Investor chairman Edward C. Johnson III (Ned Johnson) rarely if ever spoke to reporters. Therefore before requesting an interview, I read everything available on the giant money management firm—and talked to more than 140 industry analysts, consultants, competitors, former and then-current Fidelity employees, and so on. The resulting September 1995 Institutional Investor cover story was subsequently emulated by Fortune, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among others.

Likewise, for a May 1989 Forbes report on the world’s largest private textile firm, Milliken & Co., which had never previously been profiled, before asking the secretive magnate Roger Milliken for an interview, I spent six weeks filling more than 12 notebooks with every shred of data I could gather from every available source. The late Senator Strom Thurmond, then 86, for example, sent me to Florida U.S. Representatives Sam Gibbons, who, in turn, described Milliken as “a protectionist hog, H-O-G.” And former President Richard M. Nixon replied to an interview request in writing.

Of course, not all my financial stories required so many advance interviews, but a large number did. This point is not boastful. Indeed, without intensive advance work, interviewing hard-to-get, controversial, evasive or famous sources would be wasted opportunities or completely fruitless.

Such exhaustive reportage has often helped to expose corporate, Wall Street or other financial corruption. Similarly, investigative journalists have similarly raked corrupt politicians over the coals.

But when it comes to interviewing Muslim community or religious leaders, mainstream reporters are little inclined to submit them to tough or probing questions. Frequently, the U.S. media present leaders of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim American Society (MAS), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), or Muslim Brotherhood (MB) as civil rights “activists,” “soft-spoken,” “regular guys” to be taken at face value, “moderate,” “really respected,” and so on. Continue reading “What Ails Mainstream Journalism” →

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The Meat Head Mufti

by Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine | Mar. 14, 2007

Far from bowing to rising clamor for his deportation, the controversial Mufti Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali is taking on the political establishment. Al-Hilali outraged Australians last fall by describing women as “uncovered meat,” and in January compounded their furor when he claimed that Muslims had more right to the country than the “Anglo-Saxon” heirs to Australia’s convict ancestors. On March 12, al-Hilali spokesman Keysar Trad brazenly baited politicians to stop using Muslims as a “political football.”

In October 2006, after al-Hilali’s misogynist sermon at west Sydney’s Lakemba mosque, Prime Minister John Howard criticized him and other politicians demanded his dismissal and deportation. Egyptian-born al-Halali has been in that position before, however: after spewing anti-Jewish hatred at the University of Sydney in 1988, deportation proceedings began. But under Muslim pressure, in 1990, Australia granted him citizenship.

Al-Hilali certainly follows recent radical custom. In Iraq, Islamic radicals have slain at least 20 women for living (and dressing) as liberated women. In 2005, a Spanish judge sentenced Mohamed Kamal Mustafa to 15 months in prison for writing, “blows [to a disobedient wife] should be concentrated on the hands and feet using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body.” And in March 2003, Saudi Arabian religious police trapped 890 girls and women in a burning school rather than let them out in “improper dress.” At least 15 girls died. Continue reading “The Meat Head Mufti” →

The Militarization of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

by Patrick Poole
American Thinker | Feb. 13, 2007

In late October, a series of exchanges here at American Thinker debated the extremism or moderation of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and oldest Islamist organization in the world and the de facto political opposition party in Egypt. Events a few weeks later in Cairo rendered much of that discussion moot.

The exchange was initiated by Alyssa Lappen’s article “Islam’s Useful Idiots”, which challenged the foreign policy realist view that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are political moderates and are committed to political reform in Egypt through peaceful means, notwithstanding their sometime-violent rhetoric and long history of using and supporting terrorism. In particular, Ms. Lappen took issue with statements delivered at a recent forum hosted by the NYU School of Law, where panelists represented the Muslim Brotherhood as “reformist” and “progressive”, and therefore, no threat to democracy in Egypt and a potential partner for peace for the US.

Later that week, Ms. Lappen’s article prompted strong responses from Nick Fielding and Alexis Debat – both of whom were panelists at the NYU forum noted by Lappen. Both accused her of misrepresenting their comments at that forum and reiterated that the Muslim Brotherhood was nothing to fear. In the spirit of fair debate, The American Thinker included detailed responses by Ms. Lappen to Fielding and Debat’s accusations.

In December, however, a militarized parade of Muslim Brotherhood youth cadres demonstrated with sticks, chains and martial arts displays at Cairo’s Al-Ahzar University, the most historic Islamic academic institution and one of the largest universities in the world, effectively putting the lie to contentions that the Muslim Brotherhood intends to pursue its goal of imposing shari’a law and instituting an Islamic government in Egypt through non-violent means (an almost ridiculous proposition on its face). Continue reading “The Militarization of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood” →

The Progress of Hassan al-Banna’s Vision

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
AmericanThinker.com | November 24, 2006

The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, whose disciples are now celebrating his birth 100 years ago, would have been ecstatic to witness their progress in implementing his plans to compel the world to submit to Islam. Radical Islam have made inroads in most countries with a Muslim majority, reached supremacy in several countries and its influence is steadily growing in western nations as well.

Petrodollars fuel this progress.

Evidence of Islam’s growing influence threatens every aspect of social, political and economic principles in the West. To shield his identity, a key prosecution witness in a Hamas financing trial, was forced to testify in disguise, under a “one name alias,” and under heavy protection. The defendants are Bridgeview, Il. grocer Muhammad Salah, 53, and former professor Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 48 from Alexandria, Va., alleged Hamas members charged with racketeering and bankrolling Palestinian terrorists. Salah, a Hamas member, was arrested in January 1993, for funding Hamas, and attempting to “take over the military wing of Hamas.” He served 4.5 year in Israeli prison.
Continue reading “The Progress of Hassan al-Banna’s Vision” →

Shariah rising in the West

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
Washington Times | November 23, 2006

The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, whose disciples are now celebrating his birth 100 years ago, would have been ecstatic to witness their progress in implementing his vision to compel the world to submit to Islam. Radical Islam has made inroads in most countries with a Muslim majority, and reached supremacy in several countries Its influence is steadily growing in many Western nations. Petrodollars fuel this progress.

Indeed, the everyday consequences of adopting the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Islam as a way of life” are felt in the United States and Western civilization in many ways. In many European countries, Islamists are staging demonstrations against legislators’ actions to ban veils hiding the faces of Muslim women. While the legislators seek to increase public security, the Islamists protest that the ban violates their “religious freedom.”

The Koran does not require that women wear a veil. Yet, the Doha-based spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yousuf al-Qaradawi, claims that banning the veil “is a glaring violation of both Islamic teachings and relevant international charters of human rights which regard clothing as a matter of one’s personal freedom.”

Increasingly, Muslim restrictions on alcohol and dogs also effect Western non-Muslims: Somali cab drivers in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., Pakistani minicab drivers in London, England, and Muslim taxi drivers in Melbourne, Australia, refused to transport blind passengers with guide-dogs only after the Saudi religious police issued a ban on dogs. They also refuse passengers suspected of carrying duty-free sealed alcohol bottles to avoid “cooperating in sin,” emulating Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahamadinejad’s well-publicized refusal to attend a lunch at the United Nations in New York because alcohol was served. Continue reading “Shariah rising in the West” →

Scribblings

Tzvi Fleischer
Australia/Israel Review | November 2006

The Political Horseshoe again

Antony Loewenstein, the anti-Zionist author who constantly pops up in the Australian media to complain about how he is supposedly being silenced by Zionists, rarely seems to miss an opportunity to declare that not only Israel, but anyone who disagrees with him about Israel, is racist.

Interestingly, after being endorsed by the Holocaust-denying Adelaide Institute last year, he has now yet again been coopted by genuine racists from the Australian League of Rights. The League has announced in their magazine On Target (Oct. 27) that they are selling Loewenstein’s My Israel Question from the League Book Service. The book is praised by League president Betty Luks because it “œtakes on the Australian Zionist lobby that … patrols the boundaries of public debate, aiming to silence anyone who occasionally strays from the accepted line.””

In response, Loewenstein predictably ran the same line as last year on his blog (Oct. 16): “A writer cannot prevent extreme groups latching onto his or her message and using it as their own. For my part, I can only categorically dismiss the rantings of groups such as ALOR.” Continue reading “Scribblings” →