Posted on 01/17/2005 3:11:22 PM PST by dennisw
Fox Cuts Out Anti-Muslim Scenes from “24”
“We thank Fox for the opportunity to address the Muslim community's concerns,” a CAIR spokeswoman said.
WASHINGTON, January 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The Fox television network has decided to remove some stereotypical aspects about American Muslims from its action drama “24” thanks to immediate action from community leaders.
“We thank Fox for the opportunity to address the Muslim community's concerns and for the willingness of network officials to take those concerns seriously in an atmosphere of mutual respect and cooperation,” Rabiah Ahmed, Communications Coordinator of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a press release e-mailed to IslamOnline.net Saturday, January 15.
Following a January 12 meeting with representatives from CAIR, the largest US Muslim civil liberties advocacy group in the country, Fox officials promised that the popular series will be balanced in its portrayal of Muslims.
“There aren't any positive or even neutral portrayals of Muslims on TV,” the BBC quoting Ms Ahmed as regretting.
“When Muslims or Arabs are portrayed, it is always in a stereotypical way.”
Premiered on January 10, the drama portrays a Muslim family as a terrorist “sleeper cell,” who are plotting attacks inside the US.
A young man is seen helping his parents mastermind a plot to kill as many Americans by launching an attack on a commuter train.
The drama showed the mother poisoning her son's non-Muslim girlfriend because she poses a threat to their plans.
The US secretary of state is also seen taken hostage by the “Muslim terrorists.”
It climaxes with the defense secretary shown on an Internet video tape like those coming out of US-occupied Iraq.
Pro-Muslims Ad
Fox further decided to distribute a CAIR public service announcement (PSA) to network affiliates to be aired in proximity to “24.”
CAIR's 30 and 60-second PSA feature American Muslims of European, African-American, Hispanic, and Native American heritage.
Each person in the spots states how he/she and his/her family have served America and ends by saying, “I am an American Muslim.”
“What we are hoping to do is to try and mitigate the damages of the stereotypes because it can bring real-life consequences on American Muslims and their lives here,” Ms Ahmed said.
“When average Americans don't have any personal interaction with Muslims, whether it be at work or at school, they base their perception of Islam and Muslims from what they see on TV.”
CAIR urged State Department officials in a meeting on January 13 to issue a report on Islamophobia across the world.
CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad presented in the meeting -- attended by Assistant Secretary Patricia de Stacy Harrison, Assistant Secretary Richard Boucher and Ambassador William Burns -- a proposal for cooperative efforts to challenge both Islamophobia and anti-Americanism.
A recent nation-wide poll, conducted by the Cornell University, showed that at least 44 percent of the Americans backs curbing Muslims’ civil rights and monitoring their places of worship.
A May 2004 report released by the US Senate Office Of Research concluded that Arab Americans and the Muslim community in the US have taken the brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers applied in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Congratulations, Fox. Your willing acceptance of Dhimmitude just showed that the French have lost the title of World's Biggest Cowards.
Mmmmm...will TV soon decide not to show old movies about WWII because they're "anti-German" and "anti-Japanese"?
Turning Fox off right now.
Forgive me, but doesn't this sort of gut the premise of the series - concerning who abducted the SECDEF?
Who is 24 going to have responsible for the kidnapping and violence - the Teletubbies?
Disgusting cowardice.
Caving in to CAIR? Slime who didn't even denounce what happened on September 11?
ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Only white Christians can be stereotyped and get applauded for doing it.
ping
Just because this mooslim says this doesn't mean it is true.
Remember CAIR's view:
“Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.”
This was the sentiment of Omar M. Ahmad, the Chairman of the Board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR, as told at an Islamic conference held in Freemont, California, in July of 1998.
Fox is pathetic. I hope the entertainment division is completely, 100% separate from the news. If not, I'm turning off Foxnews as well.
I wonder if we can bootlegged versions of the uncensored episodes....
This is like when Hollywood made the terrorists in "The Sum of All Fears" be from Russia, when they were Arabs in Clancey's book.
I hear that Jack Bauer is going to announce he's gay next season, and his always-in-trouble daughter is going to try to foment marxist revolution in Chile.
This kills the series.
Who wants to watch a neutered series?
CAIR is just another arm of the islamofacists. The entertainment industry is just too PC to realize they are just useful idiots.
Hey, I just started watching 24 this season. I want some serious muslim bashing or I'm gone.
How can we contact Fox to let them know our disgust.
If they have changed the show I for one will stop watching it.
And CAIR really cares about how Americans are portrayed
on Arab TV? I bet there is more ugly stereotyping over
there. We just never see or hear about it.
Just because something is stereotypical doesn't mean its not true.
Oh come on, you guys, FOX isn't going to cut any scenes from this season's 24. That's pure speculation from the muzzy press. The only thing they have agreed to do is to air the CAIR propaganda commercials. Just watch 24 tonight at 8 EST and you'll see fiction remarkably like the truth.
askfox@foxinc.com
I would let FNC hear about it also.
CAIR seems to have gone to the Rev-a-rund Jesse Jackson School of Spin....If ya can't shake 'em down, make the world think you're right anyway.
Russian Mafia, KKK, White Supremecists, the list of offendable groups dwindles.
Exactly...the story that I read concerning this was that Fox gave the info to its affiliates, but did not make any demands as to when or even if it should be shown.
CAIR has a habit of stretching the truth to make itself appear stronger and more influential than it actually is...standard technique of propoganda fare...
Fox should require that a CAIR representative read this statement, then they would get their airtime:
"CAIR rejects any violence or intimidation done in the name of religion. Anyone who harms another person in any way in order to advance their religion is an apostate and is not a Muslim."
That ain't gonna happen.
CAIR should be required to run a disclaimer of their affiliation and support of such organizations as Hamas each time they are in print or broadcast media.
I will watch the show for myself but if this is true, I will watch Fox for football and that is it.
Brit Hume's Grapevine is the "most intriguing 2 minutes of television", and well worth watching.
“When Muslims or Arabs are portrayed, it is always in a stereotypical way.”
Maybe WE have ream's of History to look upon ? The proclamations of Muslim terrorists are always larded with a pathetic kind of obstreperous pomposity -- the linguistic signature of an invidious hatred born of a really bad inferiority complex. Witness the audiotape that turned up recently, apparently made by Osama bin Laden's right hand man, Ayman al Zawahri.
"Bush, strengthen your defenses and your security measures," warns the Arabic voice, "for the Muslim nation which sent you the legion of New York and Washington has determined to send you legion after legion seeking death and paradise."
Oh... ok ... All the 2,800+ innocent "civilian" deaths and destruction back on 9/11 ??? One BIG misunderstanding ??? Ya, wouldn't want to have an "inaccurate" portrayal !
Immediately after September 11, 2001, CAIR put a "donate to help the victims of terrorism" link on its website. The picture was of the WTC towers. But rather than send the money to the victims of Muslim terrorists, the money went directly TO Muslim terrorists. It was used by Hamas, for which CAIR is a front group, to finance bombing attacks in Israel.
CAIR is the 21st-Century version of the old Italian-American Anti-Defamation League, which was run by Mafiosi Joe Columbo and used to sue anyone who suggested that there was such a thing as a Mafia.
Of course, CAIR's friends have committed, and are committing every day, more horrific crimes than all the mafiosi in the bloody history of La Cosa Nostra.
There is a reason that Muslims are stereotyped as terrorists. For every Muslim that takes his life in his or her hands by denouncing Muslim terror, tens of thousands are terrorists.
Including the entire organization at CAIR. Wait... is that CAIR denouncing beheadings... nope. It was just crickets. CAIR speaking out against the kidnapping and murder of innocent civilians? Mutilation of bodies? Nope. Crickets again. CAIR supports all those crimes (and as the three CAIR executives in crowbar motel attest, sometimes participates). CAIR never condemned the murderrs of Theo Van Gogh, but they condemned him when he was alive -- and the Muslim theses that were nailed to his chest with the murder weapon could have been culled (and maybe was culled?) from CAIR's own press releases. CAIR has never spoken up about the savage, inhuman treatment of captives by its Hamas wing, bu you can hear CAIR complain bitterly about their terrorist pals being (gasp) draped in the Israeli flag or stripped naked at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo. Meanwhile from the other side of their mouth they praise terrorists for suicide bombs, beheadings, and other things that -- in their view -- bring the glorious day of a whole world in Islamic slavery closer.
Anything CAIR opposes is probably good.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Ah yes, the Ostrich Reflex, we know it quite well...
Geez, I'm so glad they are censoring the show. I mean, I might get the impression that radical islamists are out to kill Westerners if I watched it.
I guess I'll just forget about that family that might have been murdered by militant Islam in NJ today.
Now there might be a disclaimer at the beginning or end of certain episodes which contain extradordinarily graphic scenes, but that's not unusual. However, I doubt seriously that the producers of 24 (one of Fox's most watched shows) would cave in the way described above.
We don't need to watch "24" to see Muslim terrorists. We see Muslim terrorists 24/7 on the news.
Bass turds....can't leave well enough alone.
I've read articles about this from sources not named "islamonline" and NONE of them say Fox is changing anything. Fox announced it would distribute warm & fuzzy public service announcements about Muslims to its local affiliates--who could then air them if they wanted to. That's it. You guys are making much ado about nothing.
The real problem here is the courts. Fox would get sued to kingdom come if they kept moving forward and in todays legal system probably loose.
Without the lawsuit threat Fox would probably be running more spots.
Its all tied into the PC bs that will get us all killed in the end if we don't undo it.
Exactly right.
I suggest a stereotypical approach to such groups, namely the reciprocal one.
Their activities should be allowed when, if and to the same extend that the activities of Christian civil liberties advocacy groups are allowed in Muslim countries.
Fox can't/won't reshoot the whole damn series either, so I doubt CAIR's complaints will have much impact, or result in any significant changes. If any.
I wonder if Al-Jazera TV is thinking of portraying Christians and Jews in a positive or neutral way...
Screw that! Even if Fox didn't cut their series to the tastes of Bin Laden's groupies, CAIR, they still have agreed to run advertisements promoting/defending Islam. Is that something they'd ever do when they launch any of the billions of attacks on Christianity? Fox is a cowardly, money-grubbing haunt of demons, which shells out huge bucks to promote Democratic candidates. They carefully cultivate a conservative image, and then whenever the chips are on the line, they use every dirty tactic to undercut the Republicans that they can. Remember the November DUI surprise? I'm sick of Fox, Greta Van Susteren, Geraldo Rivera, Bill O'Reilly, "Who Wants to Marry Their Own Daughter?," and the rest of the incessant parade of depravity.
(Incidentally, the only network which does not shell out big bucks to Democratic candidates is NBC, the new home of Brian Williams.)
Who is 24 going to have responsible for the kidnapping and violence - the Teletubbies?"
It will be re-written as a group of right-wing, Christian extremists who are getting revenge for Waco.
CAIR urged State Department officials in a meeting on January 13 to issue a report on Islamophobia across the world.
Here is the final report:
"Islamophobia is the fear that Islamic fanatics desire the destruction of the free world. Islamophobia is alive and swelling."
End of Report
ping!
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