Media Religious-framing

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September 2014 – Are you hating, fearing, or discriminating against people because of media framing, selective coverage, and political rhetoric? The West often conflates a diverse global religion of ~1.8 billion people with extremism-lumping them all into the same basket based on clips of various cultures.

Professor Reza Aslan, a religious scholar from the University of California, responds to comments made by Bill Maher about Islam supposedly promoting violence.

Source: 30 Sept 2014
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Although I’m posting this video to help people become “less” discriminatory and be more conscious of media-framing of any kind of group, I still have to “fact-check” some of Reza Aslan’s claims because it is not entirely accurate, but don’t let my fact-check’s dissuade from the main message: you cannot lump an entire group of billions of people with the same claim.

I’m not the same as ANYONE in the town I live in, and if you look around your own neighbourhood, you probably don’t have the exact same values and practices as your neighbours either. His overall argument is valid: one cannot blame an entire religion for a practice that is cultural.

Transcript:

I like Bill Maher, I’ve been on a show a bunch of times, he’s a comedian, but frankly when it comes to the topic of religion, he’s not very sophisticated in the way that he thinks. I mean the argument about the female genital mutilation being an Islamic problem is a perfect example of that. It’s not an Islamic problem, it’s an African problem.

Wait, it’s because he says it’s a Muslim country problem. He says that in Somalia…

Yeah, but that’s actually empirically, factually incorrect. It’s a central African problem. Eritrea has almost 90% female genital mutilation, it’s a Christian country. Ethiopia has 75% female genital mutilation, it’s a Christian country. Nowhere else in the Muslim majority states is female genital mutilation an issue.

Female Genital Mutilation

Eritrea has reduced prevalence from 93% to 69%, Ethiopia from 77% to 47%, Kenya from 26% to 9%, and Tanzania from 17% to 4% over the last three decades. – UNICEF (2025)

Eritrea 

Ethiopia

  • Ethiopia: National data from the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS) shows that prevalence was 79.9% in 2000, 74.3% in 2005, and had declined to 65.2% by 2016. His 75% claim is right in line with the 2005 and 2016 figures. It is now officially illegal in Ethiopia, but may still be practiced. (07) (08) (09)
  • In Ethiopia, mutilating girls is practiced by both religious groups and spread across Northeast Africa prior to Islam and Christianity (the drivers are primarily cultural/normalized, not religious.) (10)
  • While Ethiopia is indeed a Christian-majority country, it has one of the largest Muslim populations in sub-Saran Africa (over 40 million).
    • Female Genital Mutilation prevalence is actually higher among Muslims (82.2%) than among Christians (54.2% for Orthodox, 65.8% for Protestants.) 

Practice older than the Religion

Female Genital Mutilation is Widespread

  • The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reports that the Arab States/Middle East and North Africa region accounts for approximately 50 million affected girls and women including Yemen, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, and Sudan.
    • Indonesia ~70 million affected; 46.3% national prevalence among women 15-49 (2024). Often performed in infancy (<1 year old); 50% of cases medicalized.
    • Malaysia ~7.5 million affected; 93% prevalence among Malay Muslims. National fatwa declares FGM obligatory; performed 7-14 days after birth.
    • Oman, Jordan 78% prevalence in sampled northern region (2014 data).
    • Iran 56% to 83% prevalence in different study areas.

But again, this is the problem, is that you make these facile arguments like that women are somehow mistreated in the Muslim world? Well that’s certainly true in many Muslim majority countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Do you know that Muslims have elected seven women as their heads of states in those Muslim majority countries? How many women do we have as head of state?

Woman political leaders

Benazir BhuttoPakistanPrime Minister1988–1990, 1993–1996
Khaleda ZiaBangladeshPrime Minister1991–1996, 2001–2006
Tansu ÇillerTurkeyPrime Minister1993–1996
Sheikh HasinaBangladeshPrime Minister1996–2001, 2009–2024
Megawati SukarnoputriIndonesiaPresident2001–2004
Roza OtunbayevaKyrgyzstanPresident2010–2011
Atifete JahjagaKosovoPresident2011–2016
Since 2014:
Ameenah Gurib-FakimMauritius President 2015–2018
Halimah YacobSingaporePresident 2017–2023
Samia Suluhu HassanTanzania President 2021–present
Najla BoudenTunisia Prime Minister2021–2023
Vjosa OsmaniKosovo President2021–present

But for the most part Reza, be honest though, for the most part it is not a free and open society for women in those states.

Well it’s not in Iran, it’s not in Saudi Arabia, it certainly is in Indonesia and Malaysia, it certainly is in Bangladesh, it certainly is in Turkey. I mean again, this is the problem is that you’re talking about a religion of one and a half billion people and certainly it becomes very easy to just simply paint them all with a single brush by saying, “Well in Saudi Arabia they can’t drive and so therefore that’s somehow representative of Islam.” It’s representative of Saudi Arabia.

Religion v Culture

  • He might be overselling the countries as “free and open”, but his core argument survives that critique: you can’t take Saudi Arabia’s driving ban (the only country in the world where women could not drive – until 2018) and blame Islam itself. (22)
  • Bangladesh was not “certainly” a free and open society for women in 2014 when 74% of girls were married as children and the government was actively considering lowering the marriage age to 16.
  • Christians in Ethiopia practice Female Genital Mutilation.
  • Hindus in India practice dowry killings.
  • Every major religion has cultural practices attached to it that aren’t in the holy books. The error is conflating the religion with the worst practices of some of its followers.

But hold on, I think that Bill Maher’s point is that these aren’t extremists, we often talk about extremists and that we should crack down on extremists and why aren’t Muslims speaking out about extremists. In Saudi Arabia when women can’t vote and they can’t drive and they need permission from their husband, that’s not extremists, why aren’t we talking more about what, that’s not extremists, that’s commonplace. Why don’t we talk more about the commonplace wrongs that are happening in some of these countries?

Saudi Arabia voting

It’s extremist when compared to the rights and responsibilities of women, Muslim women around the world. It’s an extremist way of dealing with it.

But it’s not extremist in that country in Saudi Arabia, that’s the norm.

I mean look Saudi Arabia is one of the most, if not the most extremist Muslim country in the world. In the month that we’ve been talking about ISIS and their terrible actions in Iraq and Syria, Saudi Arabia – our closest ally – has beheaded 19 people. Nobody seems to care about that because Saudi Arabia sort of preserves our national interests.

Saudi Arabia Beheadings

This is the problem is that these kinds of conversations that we’re having aren’t really being had in any kind of legitimate way. We’re not talking about women in the Muslim world, we’re using two or three examples to justify a generalization. That’s actually the definition of bigotry.

Alright fair enough, let’s listen to Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations today. “So when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas, and what they share in common, all militant Islamists share in common.”

The Bibi Files

  • All I can say about this Netanyahu statement… is watch “The Bibi Files”.
    • Leaked police interrogation footage of Netanyahu, his wife Sara, his son Yair, and billionaire donors Miriam and Sheldon Adelson.
      • Netanyahu’s government facilitated Hamas funding (approximately $35 million per month) as part of a “divide and rule” strategy to keep Hamas strong enough to prevent a legitimate Palestinian political movement 
      • Follow the money and follow the dude’s own survival agenda, he’s a wanted criminal with an active arrest warrant, and he lies.

So Reza, the question at the bottom of the screen that everyone is looking at, does Islam promote violence?

Islam doesn’t promote violence or peace. Islam is just a religion and like every religion in the world, it depends on what you bring to it. If you’re a violent person, you’re Islam, you’re Judaism, you’re Christianity, you’re Hinduism is going to be violent.

There are Buddhist, marauding Buddhist monks in Myanmar slaughtering women and children. Does Buddhism promote violence? Of course not. People are violent or peaceful and that depends on their politics, their social world, the way that they see their communities, the way they see themselves.

Buddhist Monk’s Slaughtering women & children?

  • Hmm, this looks complicated and looks like something you’d have to spend a lot of time understanding rather than believing the mainstream media accounts.
  • Seems like the Buddhist’s role was ‘Inciting” fear/hatred, and their authority created a climate where violence was conducted by civilians, but I would need more time and more sources to investigate and I want to move on. (32)

So Reza, you don’t think that there’s anything more, the justice system in Muslim countries you don’t think is somehow more primitive or subjugates women more than in other countries?

Did you hear what you just said? You said in Muslim countries, I just told you that Indonesia, women are absolutely 100% equal to men.

Virginity Tests

  • Note, since 1965, In Indonesia, virginity tests were performed as a requirement for joining the police and military (2 fingers up the clacker!)
  • They have since banned the practice in the military (2021), and it is no longer officially enforced in the police, it may still be performed in regional areas.
  • There’s also been recommendations to try to conduct virginity tests to students enrolling in high school (2010-2015).
  • So, not exactly fully-equal to men in Indonesia at the time of his interview, particularly in regions with Sharia courts. (33)

In Turkey, they have had more female representatives, more female heads of state in Turkey than we have in the United States. Stop saying things like Muslim countries.

Turkey Heads of State

In Pakistan, women are still being stoned.

And that’s a problem for Pakistan.

Stoning

  • Bible: Stoning by community until death is in the Old Testament for Adultery, blasphemy, idolatry, Sabbath-breaking, rebellion, witchcraft. (38)
    • Christianity: But not practiced in the New Testament, rather the opposite:
    • Judaism: Stoning is prescribed in the Torah for various offenses. However, Rabbinic Judaism effectively abolished stoning as a judicial punishment approximately 2,000 years ago. It has not been practiced by any Jewish court in modern history.
  • Islam: it’s not in the Quran, but it is in the Hadith and has been accepted by most schools of Islamic law. The practice of stoning as a form of capital punishment is currently only found in Islam. Even then, a sentence of stoning for adultery required a confession from the adulterers themselves or at least four male witnesses to the actual act.
  • Religious traditions have texts that have been used to justify this punishment, and are largely abandoned or restricted in modern times by the majority of the world… but the truth is hundreds of millions of people live under legal systems that permit stoning, and women are still being killed this way today.

Stoning is still a legal punishment in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Brunei, Somalia, northern Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar, Yemen, Mauritania, Sudan, and more. But that’s just the “official” law, and rarely enforced by the “state”…

Honour Killings

Honour killings – where families stone, shoot, burn, or behead their own daughters, wives, and sisters – happen in at least 54 countries across the Middle East, South Asia, Europe, and even in North America.

  • In Jordan, the penal code explicitly reduces sentences for honour killers. (40)
  • In Pakistan, judges let murderers walk free if the victim’s family ‘forgave/pardoned’ them; yet the family was often the killer(s) – apparently this loophole was closed in 2016.
    • It has the highest rate of honour killings worldwide. One in five homicides is an honour killing (lighter sentence/could walk free?)
    • Apparently women are perceived more as property, and honour is valued higher than health and wealth.
    • The numbers are estimated to be very high, higher than any reported, because socially/culturally, they don’t recognize the criminality of honour killings; they see it as deeply moral and honourable, particularly in rural areas. (41) (42)
  • In India, “people marrying without their family’s acceptance” is the main reason for honour killings. Khap panchayats (caste councils/village elders) order executions and the state does nothing. UN estimates ~1,000 honour killings annually. The true figure is widely believed to be much higher, as many cases are unreported, passed off as suicides, or termed “natural deaths” by family members. (43)
  • In Syria, there have been 185 documented honour killings since 2019, but some estimates suggest more than 200 honour killings occur every year. Honour killings also increased when “war rapes” increased. As well as a huge rise in child marriages. (44) (45)
  • Turkey has been nicknamed “Suicide City” as victims who are deemed to have “dishonoured” the family is ordered to commit suicide. Young boys are often ordered by other family members to commit honour killings so that they can get a shorter jail sentence (minors). A baby born out of wedlock was killed. A 16yo teenager was buried alive for ‘befriending boys’. Homosexuals are killed by their own parents. You can even be killed if you are kidnapped & raped. What a way to go. (46)

The United Nations estimates 5,000 women are murdered this way every year. The real number is almost certainly higher, because in most of these countries, the crime is written off as an ‘accident’ or a ‘family matter.’ Police stand by and watch or refuse to investigate. Laws may exist on paper, but honour killings are treated differently than normal murders.

No country should allow this.

So in other words, I just want to be clear on what your point is because I thought you and Bill Maher saying the same thing. Your point is that Muslim countries are not to blame. There is nothing particular, there’s no common thread in Muslim countries. You can’t paint with a broad brush that somehow their justice system or Sharia law or what they’re doing in terms of stoning and female mutilation is different than in other countries like Western countries.

Stoning and mutilation and those barbaric practices should be condemned and criticized by everyone. The actions of individuals and societies and countries like Iran, like Pakistan, like Saudi Arabia must be condemned because they don’t belong in the 21st century. But to say Muslim countries as though Pakistan and Turkey are the same, as though Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are the same, as though somehow what is happening in the most extreme forms of these repressive countries, these autocratic countries, is representative of what’s happening in every other Muslim country is frankly, and I use this word seriously, stupid. So let’s stop doing it.

I started on his side, and now I see both sides…

Anyway, I get his point, I do not disagree with his point, you can’t paint the entire religion for what is done in certain countries, but after looking into all the honour killings, I’ve shifted a little bit to the middle-ground.

I’m also seeing why religion might be seen by the West as the driving force behind why it’s seen as a religious problem instead of a cultural problem, because even though the “culture came first” before the “religion”, it seems to be embraced more by cultures with the Muslim religion, particularly Sharia law. Even in the West, the honour killings, seem to be committed by those who migrated from these regions.

Female Genital Mutilation, Honour Killings, and Stoning are cultural practices that predate Islam. Sure. But these practices are now overwhelmingly found in Muslim-majority countries or communities.

When honour killings have happened in the West – the killers were from Syria, Turkey, Pakistan, or Egypt.

I agree that you cannot blame an entire religion of 1.8 billion people for the actions of a few countries. That is bigotry, plain and simple. But after looking at the data, I have to acknowledge something uncomfortable. The countries where stoning is still legal are all Muslim-majority. The countries where honour killings are most common – Pakistan, India, Jordan, Turkey, Afghanistan – are all countries where Islam is the dominant religion, and in the West, when honour killings happen, they are almost always committed by families who have migrated from those same regions.

Netherlands757 honor-related cases (2025)34% Syrian families, 15% Turkish, 11% Moroccan
United KingdomRania Alayed (2013)Syrian-born husband
United KingdomTulay Goren (1999)Turkish Kurdish family
GermanyHatun Sürücü (2005)Turkish Kurdish family
ItalyHina Saleem (2006)Pakistani family
CanadaAqsa Parvez (2007)Pakistani family
United StatesAmina and Sarah Said (2008)Egyptian father

Does that mean Islam causes honour killings? No. Female Genital Mutilation and honour killings existed before Islam, but, it is also true that these practices have been absorbed into certain interpretations of Islamic law, or the religion has been used to justify/reinforce the culture.

And in the West, when people see a pattern: Muslim countries, families, perpetrators, etc. they are going to draw a conclusion. That conclusion is oversimplified, but it is not coming from nowhere. I thought that the Media Framing was targeting Muslims unfairly (and they are) but I didn’t expect there to be this many connections, so can I understand why they make the leap to calling it “Muslim countries”; umm, the honest answer is uncomfortable: these practices are cultural in origin, but they are now overwhelmingly found in Muslim-majority societies, the culture and religion seems to have become intertwined.

I guess, I am trying to look at it honestly, whilst still acknowledging his point. He sees it as culture-only which may be oversimplified (but I do agree with and accept his main point).

The West sees it as a Muslim problem, which is factually incorrect for the entire billion or so people who follow the religion, but I think that all of us need to confront the facts honestly, it’s not a “Muslim problem”, blaming all Muslims is wrong, but pretending there is no pattern and that there is not a religious connection in these areas is also wrong.

I also don’t want to oversimplify my interpretation, I get that things are way more complicated and that my knowledge is weak and limited. I do understand that even the honour killings is cultural; but I do acknowledge it’s difficult to separate religion from region/culture, when the region/culture is mostly that religion.

Like, I’m going to have to ponder this now and research a lot more, because when I popped this video in here, I expected all his facts to be easily citable, and it started off that way, most of what he claimed was mostly true, but when I got to the stoning’s, crucifixions, and honour killings, I was confronted with horrors that I wasn’t expecting and I’m sitting here pondering what I think about this now after reading through all that.

I acknowledge that he also condemned these barbaric practices, but I just didn’t know how prevalent it was, half a billion people live under that threat. That’s not a tiny number. Anyway, I’ll probably update this post in future, I need time-away from it to get my head around what I learned today.

But I do hope that his main message is still salvaged, that a sample size of one, or ten, or even 1,000 is not a statistical representation of 1.8 billion, and that we recognize the media-framing in other areas of our lives too. i.e. Do not judge the whole by the actions of a few.

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