IT was a hard decision for President Pervez Musharraf to assure cooperation to the Americans in their war against terrorism but needless to say it was under the circumstances the only viable course of action available to Pakistan. For little wonder he has been able to sell to the people the rationale for an otherwise unpopular choice. Siding with the Americans in any cause invokes instant suspicion among the people of Pakistan. The way we have been treated in the past by our erstwhile benefactor is a good enough reason for the people to suspect that perhaps we are once again being taken for a ride.

Nonetheless, saner elements could fully comprehend the consequence of ‘showing a red rag to the bull’, and the government was able to effectively put across the message that it was a question of safeguarding Pakistan’s national security. Why should we incur the wrath of an angry and furious superpower itching for revenge by acting brave was convincing logic.

Much water has flowed down the Indus since we were served with the ultimatum: ‘you are either with us or against us’. Pakistan has now been rehabilitated in the community of ‘civilized nations’. Its insolence to defy the nuclear non-proliferation regime has been condoned, and the seizure of power by the military is no longer an irritant. George Bush has been showering praises on Gen. Pervez Musharraf as a man of wisdom and courage whose regime, he says, should be strengthened and stabilized. Long-standing sanctions against Pakistan have been lifted and the remaining ones too are on their way out.

Taking their cue from Washington, America’s western allies have made haste to renew offers of friendship, cooperation and assistance to Pakistan. Ironically, British Prime Minister Tony Blair had no qualms about changing his opinion about a Pakistan under military rule. Last Friday he came calling and during his four-hour stay in Islamabad had dinner with President Musharraf even though Pakistan was still under military rule which had occasioned its expulsion from the Commonwealth two years ago.

The dramatic change in Pakistan’s isolation seems too good to be true. A section of the ruling elite in Islamabad is thrilled. The ‘godfather’ is pleased with us and quite prepared to generously reward us is how they look at the evolving situation. Needless to say, there is a sizable number of people in positions of authority and influence in the country who yearn for a return to the golden days of US patronage and benevolence.

They see no harm in complying with whatever demands the Americans may make on Pakistan in the context of the anti-terrorism drive. There is no half-way house in an alliance with the superpower, they argue. Fence-sitters will neither be here nor there. We will have to go along with the Americans all the way to establish our bonafides as a trustworthy friend and ally. The upshot of it all is that we should make virtue out of necessity, use our bargaining potential to the optimum, and join the American camp without any reservations.

There is indeed a ‘more royal than the king’ category of apologists for supporting the US, some of whom call it a moral duty to join the American-led crusade against terrorism. However, the most moderates among the opponents of cooperation with the Americans warn against going too far for too little. We should never lose sight of the fact that we may be getting into something we had not bargained for. The American designs, they argue, are not limited to capturing Osama bin Laden or neutralizing the forces which have been harbouring him and his Arab brigade.

It is a war against the ‘culture of resistance’ across the entire Muslim world. Any country or entity that refuses to fall in line with the US-ordained New World Order and subscribes to a different world view could come to grief. It could be Hizbollah, Hamas, or the regimes in Iraq, Libya, Sudan or Iran. From all accounts, the Americans will not be content with limited action against one or two sources of trouble. They seem poised to go the whole hog to sort out all the ‘irritants’.

On the face of it Pakistan has not given a carte blanche to the Americans. On the contrary, Islamabad has been exercising a moderating influence, counselling restraint to the Americans as well as the Taliban and making a last-ditch effort to avert military action against Afghanistan. It has not followed the Saudi lead to sever diplomatic relations with Kabul in order to keep a window open for communication and interaction with the Taliban. Nonetheless, things may change once the operation begins and Pakistan is required to fulfil its obligations as a component of the anti-terrorism coalition.

A US military delegation was recently in Islamabad to work out the modalities of promised logistic support for the US air operation. However, in whatever manner we facilitate the US military action we will have little opportunity to distance ourselves from what the Americans do to settle scores with the Taliban. And as the operation gets going the Americans are likely to be more and more demanding. It is therefore not surprising that many opinion leaders in the country are sceptical, fearing that Pakistan may eventually have to pay a very high price for joining the US-led coalition. The US has yet to clearly identify who and where bin Laden’s collaborators are. It may not be deemed necessary to establish their linkage with the September 11 terrorist attacks to indict them for practising terrorism as an instrument of political action and therefore guilty of the crime against which the US has taken up the cudgels.

At some stage Pakistan’s ‘jihadi groups’ could also come under fire. They are religious extremists, advocate crusade against the enemies of Islam in all parts of the world, and by and large are supportive of bin Laden as a role model. Islamabad may in due course be asked to crack down on them, more so if they are seen using the street power in opposing the US action against Afghanistan. Few will shed tears if the jihadi outfits were reined in, as it would largely be seen as a long overdue action against forces of bigotry, fanaticism and violence. The liberal elements in the country, haunted by the fear of Pakistan’s ‘Talibanization’, would welcome the opportunity as a blessing in disguise.

The best hope is that Pakistan will not compromise its sovereign right to deal with its internal problems as it sees fit without any dictation or undue prodding from any quarter. It would indeed be a dicey game to let the Americans meddle in this business. Let it not be forgotten that the Americans and their western allies have never been supportive of the armed struggle in occupied Kashmir. Although they have so far refrained from endorsing the Indian charge that Kashmiri freedom fighters were ‘terrorists’, trained, armed and funded by Pakistan, there is no guarantee that, in the new context, they will not, at some stage, turn their guns against the militant groups fighting in Kashmir.

The Indians have of late been focusing their propaganda on the so-called Islamic fundamentalist character of the resistance in Kashmir and its Afghan connection. The Indians may not have succeeded in gate-crashing into the coalition against terrorism, but they continue to nurse the hope that the US-led offensive will inevitably come into conflict with the votaries of jihad in Kashmir.

Incidentally, a British minister defending his government’s volte face with regard to Pakistan’s military regime charged the previous governments in Islamabad with failure to bring an end to ‘terrorism’ across the Line of Control in Kashmir. It would be naive on our part to infer from the rush of western support and help for Pakistan that New Delhi has finally failed to influence the course of the US-led campaign against terrorism. The Americans are not likely to dump their potential strategic partner for the sake of an expedient arrangement. The Americans are quite capable of turning their back on Pakistan once they have accomplished the mission for which they now require its cooperation. President Pervez Musharraf, it seems, is acutely conscious of the delicate balancing act he is required to perform in order to keep the Americans in good humour as well as save the country from the stigma of playing second fiddle to the US in the region. Needless to say, the imperative of safeguarding national security is not a licence for compromising national honour or country’s long-term interests. That Pakistan will not be party to an invasion of Afghanistan or a design to instal a puppet regime in Kabul is a categorical assurance given by the government.

Gen. Musharraf may be well advised not to lose sight of some crucial ‘do’s and don’ts’ in his dealings with the Americans. We should neither fully trust the vows of friendship by Washington, nor rely on its support for a just deal for Pakistan. We should consider our participation in the coalition a temporary, tactical arrangement, and not a long-term strategic relationship with the US.

THE war America is engaged in after the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon is a war for the hearts and minds of average Muslims around the world. Osama bin Laden, if indeed he is the mastermind behind the attacks, has set a trap for the US into which it must not fall.

By attacking the US as part of a jihad (“a holy war”), Bin Laden is in fact claiming to Muslims to represent their grievances and to represent real Islam. He is in effect saying: “Muslims, I share your grievances unlike your corrupt and authoritarian governments; I am the only one doing something about it. I have destroyed the symbols of American capitalism and stopped the heartbeat of world finance which the US dominates.”

The US as well as moderate Muslims the world over must unite and deny him this symbolic victory and must not accept to engage him in combat on these terms. We should not let him define the terms of our intellectual and symbolic battle. As a professor of Islamic law I have researched the law of jihad and can state unequivocally that the war Bin Laden has engaged us in cannot be labelled a jihad.

Furthermore, I believe a strong case can be made that he has acted contrary to the tenets of Islam and can be ostracized from the community of believing Muslims. Moderate Muslims will agree with me, certainly, as they are horrified by the Sept 11 attacks and are desperate to have these disassociated from their religion. The West must provide moderate Muslims a way out of Bin Laden’s trap.

According to Islamic law there are at least six reasons why Bin Laden’s barbaric violence cannot fall under the rubric of jihad: 1) Individuals and organizations cannot declare a jihad, only states can; 2) One cannot kill innocent women and children when conducting a jihad; 3) One cannot kill Muslims in a jihad; 4) One cannot fight a jihad against a country in which Muslims can freely practise their religion and proselytize Islam; 5) Prominent Muslim jurists around the world have condemned these attacks and their condemnation forms a juristic consensus (ijma’) against Bin Laden’s actions (This consensus renders his actions un-Islamic); 6) The welfare and interest of the Muslim community (maslaha) is being harmed by Bin Laden’s actions and this equally makes them un-Islamic.

Americans have been baffled by reports that Muslims do not like, and even hate the US. Muslims do not hate America. As proof of this we have: seven million Muslims living in the US; foreign Muslims, like many others around the world, clamour to obtain US immigration visas; Muslims consume American products and emulate American fashions (intellectual, social and sartorial); Muslims place the bulk of their money in US financial institutions; the list goes on and on. What many Muslims undeniably resent about America, however, are American foreign policies towards Iraq, Iran, Israel/Palestine and a complicit policy of supporting corrupt and authoritarian regimes all over the Muslim world.

Yet despite this resentment only 4,000 Muslims actively seek to destroy America. These 4,000 Muslims are Bin Laden’s foot soldiers. Let us remember that in 20 years of recruitment Bin Laden has only been able to recruit 4,000 men.

This group, otherwise known as the Arab-Afghans, have theological and legal beliefs that are at odds with the remaining one billion-plus Muslims in the world today. They are also at odds with those of their supporters, the Taliban, who, for their part, are fanatical Hanafis of the Deoband school. Surely, 4,000 men do not represent the entirety of the Islamic peoples — and we should hammer this point home continually. We should also deny Bin Laden the opportunity of feeding off Muslim resentment and his claim to represent them.

There are practical steps the US government can take that will take the wind out of Bin Laden’s sails and sidestep the trap he has laid. I will begin with the most obvious measures. They are:

1. The US or western troops and special forces should not be sent into Afghanistan with the aim of arresting or killing Bin Laden. He has thought about this scenario and desires it. A military attack on him would provide a double victory: if he is killed he dies a martyr and symbol of resistance to western domination; he also gets to kill a number of US soldiers and tarnishes the image of America in the minds of ordinary Muslims.

Afghanistan is the most backward and probably the poorest country in the Islamic world; the image of the most powerful nation stomping on it will be a public relations disaster and will destabilize Arab regimes.

The best course is to encourage Muslim countries to lead the fight against Bin Laden, to support the Northern Alliance who have 15,000 troops in Afghanistan and to work on the Pakistani moderates to get involved in the fight. If retribution, as seems to be the case, has to take place and America must feel it is the prime agent in the pursuit of justice, then no military action can afford not to involve moderate Muslim forces and their cooperation. This is not a plea for war, far from it: there is too much bellicose rhetoric as it is.

2. It is important to stop using inflammatory language, such as President Bush’s statement that this is a crusade. Such a word evokes monstrous historical memories in the minds of Muslims, namely barbaric Europeans rampaging through the Eastern Mediterranean. Furthermore, Crusade connotes Christianity versus Islam and this is not the right message. The infelicity of this locution has presumably been brought to the attention of President Bush.

3. Washington must publish a list of all the Muslims — men, women and children — who died in the WTC attack, since Islamic law categorically prohibits the murder of such innocents.

4. We in the US must engage our own Muslim community leaders here in the US, and, particularly, send the respected ones among them with these facts to the Middle East and South Asia to meet impartial and respected Islamic legal scholars, people who are respected by the man on the street and who are clearly not in the employ of their respective governments.

Scholars in Makkah, Madina and Riyadh will be central in this regard, as will scholars in India and Pakistan. These scholars must be convinced to issue fatwas (legal opinions) declaring Bin Laden’s teachings and actions illegal. Because it is prohibited by mainstream Islam, they cannot declare Bin Laden an infidel (a practice called takfir) and we should not expect this of them. These opinions will help bolster the consensus mentioned above and may convince the Taliban that they need to hand Bin Laden over for trial to for his alleged role in New York, Washington and other terrorist attacks.

I think if we take the steps outlined above we may be able to ostracize Bin Laden from the Muslim community and energize moderate Muslims to take centre stage again. America will win the war as will the vast majority of Muslims.

K.H. KHURSHID died travelling in a public bus to Lahore on a rainy night in 1988. What surprised everyone was not the accident that had killed him at a crucial point in Kashmir struggle for dignity and recognition but that the man who had been the Quaid-i-Azam’s hand-picked private secretary through the history-making years 1944 to 1947 was travelling, not in a black chauffeured limousine but in an ordinary bus with the same ordinary people who had made Pakistan possible.

In a way, it was a befitting place for him to die because he was the most modest of men and never spoke about his years with the Quaid and the intimacy he had enjoyed or the trust the Father of the Nation had reposed in him. Nor did he ever mention the great affection which the normally harsh Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah bore him. It was she who insisted, for instance, that he go to London to do law and she paid for it. Khurshid had no money then, and he had no money later. The fact was that he was not interested in such things. Lack of money or the absence of a home of his own did not matter to him.

Khurshid sailed through life keeping a low profile and never bragging about the historic events to which he had not only been a witness but in which he had also played a small part perhaps. The Quaid is once believed to have said that Pakistan was made by him, his private secretary and his typewriter. That private secretary was Khurshid whom the Quaid had picked up in Srinagar when he was barely twenty and who had never travelled outside Kashmir except once for a debate in Lahore and to attend the annual session of the Punjab Muslim Students Federation in Jullandhar as a representative of Kashmiri students.

The Quaid had inaugurated the session and that was the first time Khurshid had set eyes on the man who was to change his life and the life of the Muslims of India. As for the typewriter, when Khurshid joined the Quaid in Bombay, he did not know how to type. But he managed to deal with the Quaid’s personal and official correspondence with his two-finger method. It need not be stressed that the perfectionist that Mr Jinnah was, everything had to be letter perfect. One can go on wondering how the Quaid was able to achieve so much with so little.

Khurshid not only did not speak about his time with the Quaid but he did not even write about him. Once, when pressed, he said, he would write the truth about the Quaid when others stopped printing lies about him. He obviously had in mind Gen. Zia-ul-Haq’s strange claim that a hitherto unknown diary of the Quaid had been discovered which proved that he did not believe in parliamentary democracy.

All Khurshid said in a statement was: the Quaid did not keep a diary. The man who ruled Jinnah’s Pakistan for 11 years did not repeat the claim again. Once when in order to prove that he was the Quaid’s secretary, Sharifuddin Pirzada had a picture printed that showed his popped up head behind the Quaid and Gandhi, Khurshid remarked, “He can also use this evidence to prove that he was Gandhi’s secretary.”

After Khurshid died, the family came upon a couple of notebooks and papers in which he had recorded some of his memories of the Quaid and conversations about the Quaid with those who had known him well. Though the material was in the nature of a fragment, rather than a sustained account, it was valuable enough to make a book, though a slim one.

The book ‘Memories of Jinnah’ was published by Oxford University Press with help from I.H. Burney, one of Khurshid’s great friends. The first edition ran out and was not reprinted, because according to the publishers there was “not sufficient demand to justify the reprint”. It is only now that a second edition has been produced by Sang-e-Meel, Lahore.

When the Quaid came to Srinagar in the summer of 1944, Khurshid who was in college and also stringing for the Orient Press, the only Muslim news agency in India which ran a limited, almost primitive service. It became Khurshid’s norm to visit the Quaid every day and bring him what the Quaid called “the gup”. Off and on, he would ask Khurshid, “What is Gandhi doing?” Khurshid, of course, had no idea because the Orient Press did not have live wires abuzz with news.

One day the Quaid asked Khurshid if he would become his secretary, adding that he should not decide in a hurry. Khurshid could not believe his ears. A few days later when he said yes, the Quaid told him, “I will show you the world and look after you.” In Bombay, Khurshid stayed at the Quaid’s Malabar Hill residence and in Delhi at his 10 Aurangzeb Road residence.

Writes Khurshid, “Mr Jinnah was a stickler for routine and extremely punctual. Almost everything happened with clockwork precision. He was up at seven when his personal valet, the boy Phillip Mescarenhas, entered his bedroom with tea on a tray and the day’s newspapers. These Mr Jinnah scanned for an hour or so and then went to the bathroom. Phillip would lay out his clothes, having prepared his bath earlier. Promptly at quarter past nine, Mr and Miss Jinnah would come down by the lift and head for the dining room for breakfast, which was over by 10 o’clock. He would then start his day’s work.” According to Khurshid, “He (the Quaid) personally opened all the letters addressed to him. He personally received all the money orders and cheques, signing or countersigning them. He also received all the registered letters and signed for them. My first reaction was that perhaps he did not trust anyone. But as time passed, I changed my opinion. The explanation lay in his immense sense of responsibility. There were occasions during those years when the flood of correspondence became almost unmanageable. Miss Jinnah would then come to help and the two of us would open his letters and telegrams.”

Khurshid recalls that when Dawn’s first editor Pothan Joseph left, the Quaid was bitter. He said it was a pity that in the world of today, one could not trust anyone. Of Joseph he said, “He was in Madras wasting his time and drinking like a fish. I picked him up and made him editor of Star of India. Then we started Dawn and I brought him here and now, for only an extra two hundred rupees, he has gone over to the government.” Khurshid also recalls when he first met Altaf Husain, this newspaper’s legendary editor. The Quaid interviewed him personally and ordered his appointment.

Khurshid writes, “I felt that if Mr Jinnah appeared cold and cautious, it was because he had been let down often. He had trusted and been deceived. He had shown sincerity but had received scorn and now he treaded the ground with extreme caution, measuring every step as he took it, not once, not twice, not three times, but ninety-nine times perhaps. Mr Jinnah had no baseness in his character. He had chosen the middle course in dealing with people. He was trusting, but not too trusting; suspicious, but not very. This was his compromise.”

Khurshid explains what made the Quaid give up on Indian nationalism. “Young and enthusiastic, when he returned from Britain, he believed that India was a nation as Great Britain was a nation and, as such, worked for the abolition of separate electorates and for the establishment of Hindu-Muslim unity. But he soon discovered that it was not so.

“The closer he came to the Hindu nationalist leaders, the more familiar he grew with their ‘Hindutva’, that curious mixture of religion and politics ... Nationalism was Mr Jinnah’s first love and continued to give him occasional pangs until late in life, as first love does. Mr Gandhi was right. People were more Hindu or Muslim than they were Indian ... Since he was a Muslim, he argued, why should he not speak to his people as a Muslim? As an idealist, Mr Jinnah was a nationalist, but his nationalism died in its infancy.”

THE tragedy of September 11 casts a long shadow and spans new conflicts. Even as American anger threatens to become almost as dangerous as terrorism itself, one of the most obvious elements missing in global media is a strong Muslim dimension.

There are very few radio or TV channels, daily newspapers, magazines or news agencies originating from any one of the over 50 member-states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference that have worldwide recognition and a reasonable reputation for credibility broadly comparable to BBC, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Times of London, The Economist, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AFP or AP.

The West-based global media such as those named above are neither formally known as “Christian global media” nor are they always credible or balanced, particularly concerning the coverage that they give to Muslim-related issues. However, these West-based global media, notwithstanding their secular aspirations, are unmistakably shaped by a Jude-Christian ethos. At the same time, they enjoy high levels of viewership and quotable status in non-Judeo-Christian areas. This is so because they often also give the non-Christian, or the purely Muslim viewpoint or project comments critical of western policies in a way that very few media based in Muslim countries do about the policies of their host Muslim countries.

For example, during the 1990-91 Gulf conflict, the American-based CNN enabled viewers across the world to listen to “enemy” Saddam Hussein’s views for an extended duration uncensored and uninterrupted. No such facility would ever be considered by Iraq to be extended to an American president to address the people of Iraq, without censorship.

Going against this stereotype, it bears remembering that in the case of two countries whose electronic media remain under state control, such as China and Pakistan, President Clinton was allowed to address domestic audiences without censorship or interruption using national local TV channels during his visits to the two countries in 1999 and 2000 respectively. It is doubtful if American TV would reciprocate.

Taken as a whole, media based in the Muslim world tend to give only a “Muslim point of view” while excluding or down-playing views that are unsympathetic to the host country’s viewpoint. In contrast, the West-based global media, while preserving their covert bias in favour of a non-Muslim perspective, do consistently present two sides of a story. Thus, in the coverage of the Palestinian crisis, it is standard practice for the two leading global TV channels to juxtapose an Israeli comment with a Palestinian comment, spoken on screen by the representatives of the two sides. Whereas in the case of a Muslim TV channel such as PTV, one does not recall seeing or hearing (even when this writer served as information minister) an Israeli spokesman or leader at any length because the Israeli viewpoint is almost always paraphrased or summarized by a news reader.

To miss the element of Muslim media on a global scale is to ask for a minimal balance in media on a global scale. It is not to urge that a distortive, biased Muslim dimension be injected into media content.

To be credible and effective even while being shaped by a Muslim ethos, Muslim global media would have to possess the following features: 1. Be owned, or management-controlled by Muslims but be totally merit-based in staffing policy and engage professional individuals without regard to religion, race, gender or any such consideration; 2. Project contrasting or conflicting viewpoints on domestic internal issues of Muslim countries and on international issues in general; 3. Ensure accuracy, fairness and balance in content; 4. Assure a lively, alert, elegant and attractive style of presentation; 5. Represent true Islam by being moderate, tolerant and willing to challenge assumptions with questions and knowledge; 6. Be independent of governmental or partisan ownership and control; and 7. Promote peace and harmony between nations, religions and civilizations.

While acknowledging that the West-based media have an embracing global reach, it is also relevant to note that possibly as many as five billion people out of the six billion on this planet today remain uncovered — or unpolluted! — by the English language western media. This means that while the BBC World TV signal or the CNN TV signal may be available at the southern extremity of South America or in the heart of Africa or in the deep interior of China, the TV message may not be received because of the language barrier.

Though English is the standard language of international aviation and is the medium of CNN and BBC TV, it is spoken and understood by less than one billion people. Unlike the West-based global radio channels such as the Voice of America and BBC Radio that broadcast in local languages and reach larger audiences than English language TV, the five billion people, still largely beyond the pale of the West-based global media, comprise those whose principal languages are Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish, French, Russian, Urdu and others.

CNN has introduced an Espanol Channel in the US in the Spanish language for the large Spanish-speaking communities in Florida, California, Texas and elsewhere. In addition, in 14 other languages in some overseas countries, local TV channels reportedly dub the CNN English language broadcasts simultaneously into their local languages. But estimates of total worldwide coverage by CNN and BBC TV including non-English speaking viewers/listeners does not significantly exceed about one billion.

Yet the West-based global media have achieved a status of influence and the capacity to initiate word-of-mouth effects that are greater than the sum of their numbers. For example, leading Urdu or Sindhi language newspapers in Pakistan frequently publish front-page reports of what English language BBC, CNN, The New York Times or The Washington Post have to say about a given subject.

The hyper-active and hysterical tone of the West-based global media since September 11 has also highlighted the nexus between the media that claim to be independent and yet are virtual echo-chambers of the official policies and pronouncements of western governments. The capacity of the media to incite hatred, violence and tension is best illustrated by the hundreds of reports from the US about a new hostility against Muslim residents. It is creditable that, nevertheless, these very same media that have become indistinguishable from the governments of their host countries are sometimes willing to project viewpoints that question the obsession with Osama bin Laden and issues mostly ignored in the main content of these media.

We do have the reality of Muslim national media, as best personified by Radio Pakistan and PTV. We also have Muslim regional media in Arabic language radio and TV channels, newspapers and magazines. But such Muslim media are speaking to those who are already “converted.” The difference with the West-based, non-Muslim global media is that, in addition to reaching their own audiences that are already “converted”, they are also reaching out to non-converted audiences in the Muslim countries. Ironically, large audiences in Muslim countries prefer to listen to BBC and VOA radio broadcasts about the present crisis in their local languages rather than those of their own countries’ media because of the poor credibility of the latter.

Even though listening regularly to the western global media carries the risk of imbibing of the inherent bias of these media against the Muslim perspective, Muslim audiences still stick to the western media largely because their own media lack balance and believability.

Muslim countries have no one to blame but themselves for the absence of Muslim global media. They have the wealth and the talent to be able to create both print and electronic media that can achieve global status and international credibility. But the governments of these countries have simply not demonstrated the self-confidence and courage to conduct, or to permit full-blooded criticism of their own policies particularly on their own electronic media. If only a small part of the enormous wealth earned from the 1973 oil price hike had been invested in creating truly independent and credible global media of their own on the lines of BBC and CNN, perhaps today Muslim global media could have conveyed a fair, balanced and accurate version of events and of history to the non-Muslim audiences in North America and Europe.

We do have Muslim-related media in western countries today but these are relatively minuscule in coverage because they have been conceived as “ethnic media” aimed at Muslim communities in non-Muslim countries. In the independent print media in some Muslim countries certain newspapers and journals have earned high credibility and international respect. Yet in terms comparable to western global media, either their domestic audience is too small because of their being published in English, or their indigenous language prevents them from securing global recognition.

For instance, the world’s largest circulated newspaper is in the Japanese language at over 10 million copies per day. The largest circulated newspaper language at over 10 million copies per day. The largest circulated newspaper of India is in the Malayalam language — Manoranjan Manorama — with millions of copies per day. Yet, neither Pakistani media will quote either of these two media, nor do global media in general do justice to the actuality of indigenous language media.