Al Jazeera Spreads Message Of Terror

Slain WSJ reporter Daniel Pearl's father penned a thought-provoking op-ed in The NY Times today on the insidious dangers of Al Jazeera, the Muslim world's largest television network and greatest Anti-Zionist propaganda tool, which has now been extended to include an English broadcast, featuring famed correspondent David Frost.

Called Al Jazeera English, the network can be received via satellite or streamed over the Internet. It has bureaus in London and Washington, and has recruited such high-profile Western journalists as Sir David Frost as correspondents.

In part, this is promising. The Arabic version of Al Jazeera and its various spinoffs on satellite TV and the Internet are usually credited with having a positive influence on Arab society. True, Al Jazeera’s coverage has placed an emphasis on younger leaders, reformers and successful businessmen who may serve as role models for today’s Arab youth. And it has brought — as the press usually does — a degree of inquisitiveness and openness that could become a useful engine of reform in the region.

But what should concern Westerners is that the ideology of men like Sheik Qaradawi saturates many of the network’s programs, and is gaining wider acceptance among Muslim youths in the West. In its “straight” news coverage on its Arabic TV broadcasts and Web sites, Al Jazeera’s reports consistently amplify radical Islamist sentiments (although without endorsing violence explicitly).

For example, the phrase “war on terror” is invariably preceded by the contemptuous prefix “so-called.” The words “terror” and “insurgency” are rarely uttered with a straight face, usually replaced with “resistance” or “struggle.” The phrase “war in Iraq” is often replaced by “war on Iraq” or “war against Iraq.” A suicide bombing is called a “commando attack” or, occasionally, a “paradise operation.”