Hiatus

I have returned to this blogging exercise after several months hiatus, which I am told is a cardinal sin in the blogosphere. My excuses are the usual: time constraints, travel, business and family responsibilities, etc. All would be legitimate and all would be lame. The underlying reason for my silence was that I had temporarily run out of something constructive or insightful to say and the time to say it, and I have never intended for this space to be comprised of drivel or borrowed insertions as many blogs seem to be. A number of developments have brought me back to the exercise.

First and foremost is the economic meltdown we are all witnessing. I am not at all surprised by the current state of affairs. Indeed, I privately predicted something like this would eventually take place as a result of the demented neo-imperial military adventures of the neo-con Bush regime fueled by wanton corporate greed. The euphoric leveraging of America right under the noses of a witless and ill-informed electorate carried along by waves of news, commentary and reassuring presidential and congressional pronouncements - that things are going to change, that all is well, that we are winning the war in Iraq, that the economy is good, that America is the greatest country in the world - underscore the urgent need for a change in the way information is communicated. Media organizations have, like everything else in the 'developed' world, become corporatized. News has become info-tainment. Politicians absolutely must manipulate public opinion in the most cynical ways or they won't get elected.

Which brings me to the second reason for re-activating this blog: the U.S. presidential elections. I'll say right now that my vote is for Barack Obama because I firmly believe that Bush and his Republican base have led the country into a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. Bush has sent thousands of young, innocent American men and women to their deaths and severely damaged the lives of many thousands more, not to mention the horrific depredations inflicted on overwhelmingly innocent Iraqi and Afghan populations in the name of The War on Terror. Because Iraq and Afghanistan are 'Over There' and the public media largely censors the horrors for public consumption, the American electorate pretty much allowed the US administration to keep spinning tales of change, success and an eventual happy ending. However, anyone who reads history knows that the downfall of empires is almost always caused by over-extension; by waging expensive wars on multiple fronts. In another time, the media might have pointed this out but, even if wise commentators have done so, their warnings would have been drowned out in the perpetual nightly news circus that pitches opinion against counter-opinion with the result that all opinions cancel each other out and the hapless viewer is left none the wiser.

I am voting for Obama because the neo-cons have sold America down the river, have destroyed America's reputation in the world, have undermined the Constitution , and have taken away - temporarily, I hope - some of our essential freedoms, all in the name of The War on Terror. This has been accomplished with the complicity of a cowed and compromised media. I am voting for Obama because John McCain is way too old to bear the crushing burdens of the presidency. I have many friends around the same age who are in better health an more energetic than McCain and they are all slowing down. It is a grave mistake to elect a man of advanced age to the presidency. I am voting for Obama because he is a great communicator. In this day and age, the US president has to be able to communicate with the American electorate and the world. The most effective presidents - Jefferson, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, Reagan and Clinton, have been great communicators. We need a great communicator now more than ever before and Obama holds out that hope. I am under no illusions that Obama is some Robin Hood who is going to solve all the problems of Republic and restore the purity of America. He is a politician. To achieve his goal he has already made unpalatable and unpublishable compromises; of this I have no doubt. But he does represent change and the best hope to reverse the awful and catastrophic policies perpetrated on America and the world by the existing regime. Also and incidentially, I am voting for Obama because it is high time that a person of color should occupy the White House. It is long overdue.

By nature I am totally apolitical. Politics are anathema to me. But politics are now so intertwined with communications that I see no choice but to weigh in with comment, no matter how little weight my comment will carry.

The communications landscape across the Middle East and North Africa has changed radically since the first Gulf War in 1991 and this pace of change has been accelerated over the last few years with the unprecedented and sustained rise in oil prices (Thank you China! Thank you India!), which has fuelled an economic boom making the first oil boom of the 1970s and ‘80s pale by comparison.

MENA used to be a blank on most corporate site maps. Today this is changing. The sustained prosperity in the region combined with tangible reforms has encouraged more and more businesses to take the leap into the deep end and set up shop. The Dubai paradigm has made Arab governments more business friendly.

An estimated $2.5 trillion dollars of real estate and infrastructure developments are transforming Arab societies from the United Arab Emirates to Morocco. Gargantuan economic and educational developments are under construction, including, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the vast $26 billion King Abdullah Economic City and the revolutionary $10 billion King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, designed to be the first coeducational academic institution ever established in Saudi Arabia.

Telecommunications is becoming a huge economic and social force across the Arab world and the opening of stock markets and financial catchments like Dubai International Financial Centre have finally convinced the international financial community to put down roots in the region. The travel and tourism sector is thriving as never before with massive resort and mixed-use developments in almost every country in the MENA region.

Even the most introverted and protectionist Arab regimes are now encouraging Foreign Direct Investment. And, conversely, Middle East governments and entrepreneurs are venturing out well beyond the region to invest in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Gulf Sovereign Wealth Funds are going on mega-shopping sprees in Europe, America and Asia. Prince Waleed bin Talal’s global investments are now the stuff of legend. The Kuwaiti retailer Al Shaya Group has recently won the Starbucks franchise IN RUSSIA! And Dubai World’s failed attempt to take over New York Harbour (boy did they have the wrong PR agency) hit headlines around the world.

Not surprisingly, the media environment across the region has experienced a breathtaking transformation. Audiences throughout the Arab world, raised on state-controlled media designed to limit the inflow of information and manipulate public opinion, now have access to a deluge of information and entertainment opportunities that would have been unimaginable 17 years ago.

This region also has an exploding digital environment – some industry experts say it is the fastest growing on earth – in which social media has become the primary form of communications among young people in once isolated and heavily censored societies like Saudi Arabia and everywhere else in the region. Youth is a major driving force in all this change. The Middle East has an alarmingly young population with 40% currently under the age of 20 and 60% under the age of 30.

Impelling all this demonic hyper-activity, either overtly or implicitly, has been the tragic fall-out from 9/11, the rise of Islamic extremism and the equally extreme neo-conservative reaction that led to the awful and endless military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is now a virulent undercurrent of anti-Americanism (and, by extension, anti-Westernism) raging across the Arab world. What a change from when U.S. troops were seen as heroic liberators during Desert Storm!

The implications of all this for the practice of public relations are staggering. There is a desperate need for cross-cultural communications and interfaith dialogue. The process of privatization of once state-controlled enterprises has opened up a vast range of business opportunities for communicators. As governments become more open and responsive to the outside world and to their own people, there’s a growing need for public affairs expertise. Arab institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds need to allay deep-seated doubts, fears and prejudices as they venture into Europe and the U.S. The entry of new first time companies into the region demands experienced communications counsel. Better financial communications might have prevented or at least mitigated the effects of the 2006 stock market crashes in the Gulf.

For public relations companies to work productively and profitably in this dynamic, troubled and prosperous region, they have to change their approach. Most global public relations companies operate in the Middle East with neo-colonial fear, loathing and arrogance, bringing in pale faced ‘experts’, who are here today and gone tomorrow, to do the heavy lifting and using locals as token account handlers and translators. There has been virtually no genuine investment in PR capacity building. Very few international companies have made any attempt to seriously train local practitioners and build a local PR industry. ‘Think globally, act locally’ is a canard in MENA. Secondly, whereas in the West the practice of public relations evolved out of journalism, in the Middle East public relations emerged directly from advertising and the practice of PR is still perceived as advertising in sheep’s clothing. Most public relations agencies are no more than promotional press release factories. Many are corridor companies and ‘poor relations’ of big advertising conglomerates, living off their largesse. In consequence, few practices have made any attempt to demonstrate the possibilities of this rich and varied profession.

There is a lot of talent in the Arab world but it needs to be tapped and nurtured. Global public relations companies need to behave differently in the Middle East and North Africa, entering the market not only to build business and make money but to contribute to the societies in which they work through education and skills transfers to develop local expertise and capabilities. This takes commitment and a triple bottom line approach to our business. As a home-grown practice with a decade in the field I can tell you that this approach pays dividends and we have found a partner in Fleishman Hillard International Communications that understands this, has made the commitment and is working closely with us to train a generation of young Arab public relations practitioners who will be truly able to meet the growing and diverse demands for communications in this promising and challenging part of the world.

(First published in Frontline)

Diversity and Technological Innovation

As long as we live in a world with different languages, religions, cultures and geography we will always have a diverse and localized media. Technological innovations in the 20th and 21st centuries – the automobile, the telephone, television, cinema, computers, fibre optics, the Internet and on and on – have indeed contracted our world dramatically, and yet in many ways, the world remains as diverse and provincial as ever. In America, which is undoubtedly the most plugged-in nation on earth, only about 6 per cent of the population possess passports. So, very few Americans actually travel beyond their own borders to see the way other people really live. For all their varied and sophisticated media landscape, I would venture to say that the vast majority of Americans haven’t much more understanding about the outside world than people from other less media-rich societies.

When Johannes Gutenberg invented moveable type and the printing press in 1436, the face of media changed forever, yet the world remained pretty much the same and evolved over time, as a result of a complex combination of factors – social, political, economic, military, agricultural, etc. The printing press contributed to this evolution to be sure but the idea that a medium can totally transform society in and of itself is questionable to say the least.

The media acts as a mirror, catalyst and accelerator rather than as a transformer. In the best sense, the media takes what is already happening in the world and brings people together. The heartbreaking images of starving Ethiopian children captured by the late Kenyan photographer and videographer Mohamed Amin and transmitted around the world through the international media, produced a global outpouring of sympathy and aid which alleviated the affects of this tragic famine. The landmark “Live Aid” concert organized by Bob Geldof, was just one of the media events emanating out of Mohamed Amin’s images. Conversely media can reinforce divisions, xenophobia, and prejudices. Leni Riefenstahl’s astonishing documentary, “Triumph of the Will” celebrating Hitler and the Third Reich could be said to have galvanized an entire nation and helped set it on the road to war.

A quarter of a century ago, the French leftist intellectual Regis Debray said, “The single most significant political development of the post-World War Two era is the resurgence of Islam.” This was long before the media had even picked up on Islam as a force in the world. In our time, the rise of Islamic extremism may have been accelerated by the mass media, the Internet in particular, but the terrifying rift between the Islamic world and the non-Islamic world is the end result of a complex web of historical circumstances that can be traced back centuries. So I would say that we have to be careful not to overestimate the transformative role of global media in terms of actually shaping what is happening to our world. There can be a cross-cultural dialogue. There are sincere attempts at creating bridges of understanding through the media, but most societies are inward looking and too preoccupied to contemplate change based on a media opportunity.

While I’m not at all sure that global media has a direct, transformative impact on the world as a whole, I think one can safely say that in the Arab world the proliferation and diversification of regional media over the last 5-10 years has been a very positive force for change. In the Middle East, the media environment has already experienced a breathtaking transformation since the first tentative steps toward private sector satellite broadcasting and the advent of the Internet in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Audiences across the Arab world raised on state-controlled media designed to limit the inflow of information and manipulate public opinion now have access to a deluge of information and entertainment opportunities that would have been unimaginable 15 years ago. Broadcast media liberated from state control has an inherently democratizing influence on any society it reaches and this has been strikingly evident in the Middle East.

The overriding aim of setting up a business media enterprise in the Middle East, and, indeed, anywhere else, should be to provide information, insight and knowledge that can empower ordinary people and give them an understanding of how business and economics – which for centuries in our world has been the province of the elites – impacts on their lives. Information and knowledge can change societies by opening opportunities, stimulating entrepreneurship and raising awareness of vital issues that affect the way we live, from inflation and recession to investment and environment to development and innovation. Whether global media can affect change is a moot point at this stage but there is no doubt that regional media has and will continue to have a very powerful impact on the future of the Middle East.

The Role of Public Relations in Interfaith Dialogue

On September 12th 2006, Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech at the University of Regensburg, Germany in which he quoted from a mediaeval dialogue between Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an Iranian interlocutor on the subject of Christianity and Islam. The quote included a passage, which read:

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

This backward stereotype of Islam, which was the result of mediaeval Christian propaganda, has long since been refuted (although Muslim extremists today seem hell bent on reviving it). The Pope was unwise to quote from this obscure exchange to underscore the Christian belief in spreading their faith peacefully. His implication was that Christianity as a religion is more civilized than Islam even though there have been as many violent depredations committed in the name of Christianity down through the ages as there have been in the name of Islam. One cannot blame the Messiah or the Prophet Mohamed for the evils committed by misguided followers in the name of faiths they founded.

The statement elicited the usual backlash from Muslims around the world with the requisite rioting, effigy burning and other manifestations of impotent rage we have become so used to. Within 10 days the Pope issued a statement sincerely regretting offending Muslims without directly apologizing.

On October 13th 2006, exactly one month after the Pontiff’s Regensburg speech, a group of 38 Muslim scholars signed an open letter to the Pope in response to his controversial remarks on Islam.

The letter received no response from the Pontiff and made no public impact.

One year later, the Royal Ahl Al Bayt Foundation, patronized by His Majesty King Abdullah and led by HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal, which was responsible for organizing the Open Letter, issued a second message to the Pope, called ‘A Common Word between Us and You’, signed by 138 leading Muslims scholars, comprising a landmark statement of commonality between Christianity and Islam.

The letter begins as follows:

“Muslims and Christians together make up well over half of the world’s population. Without peace and justice between these two religious communities, there can be no meaningful peace in the world. The future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.

“The basis for this peace and understanding already exists. It is part of the very foundational principles of both faiths: love of the One God, and love of the neighbour. These principles are found over and over again in the sacred texts of Islam and Christianity. The Unity of God, the necessity of love for Him, and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity.”

The letter was sent to the Holy See. This time, however, to ensure that the letter would not be ignored, it was determined that a public relations campaign was crucial to its success and it was at this point that I was contacted and became aware of the initiative. The aim of the public relations program was to create public awareness of the letter and force a response from the Pope. The UK public relations firm Bell Pottinger stepped in to the breach and organized a campaign to build media awareness of the initiative. The program was an astonishing success, with worldwide coverage and commentary, not only in religious and intellectual journals but on the wire services, in the major American and European dailies and on television. In response to this campaign, 300 Christian scholars from across the US endorsed ‘A Common Word’ in a full page ad published in the New York Times.

On November 19th, a result of the worldwide awareness of the initiative, Pope Benedict XVI responded with a letter written by the Vatican Secretary of State:

Subsequent to this communication, the Pope invited HRH Prince Ghazi and a representative group from the signatories to an historic meeting, which is scheduled to be held during the first quarter of 2008.

We do have a role to play in bringing religions and cultures together and it is an important one. We need to take what we do more seriously and see that the disciplines we are learning are not just about promoting products or spin control but can promote understanding and reduce tensions that can lead to violence, war and suffering.

Cartoons and Chaos

In 2005 a Danish newspaper published a series of cartoons by various caricaturists depicting the Prophet Mohamed as a figure of fun. Several cartoons were deeply insulting, all were irreverent and, in any case, the act of visually representing the Prophet Mohamed in any form, even with reverence, is forbidden within Islam. Muslims in Denmark were understandably offended and staged protests to suppress the hurtful images. These protests were met with indifference and resistance. The publication of the cartoons was seen as an inalienable right to freedom of expression in Denmark’s democratic society and reflected the underlying post-9/11 perception of Islam as an alien and subversive force in European society.

Outraged, members from the Danish Muslim community took the issue on the road to Islamic countries to gather support for their protest, a tour which ignited a firestorm of controversy. Religious leaders in the Islamic world publicly denounced the anti-Islamic cartoons. Columnists editorialized against the religious bigotry of Denmark. A general boycott of Danish products was launched across the Islamic world. Riots, embassy burnings and flag desecrations hit the headlines around the world and one hundred people died in the melee. The Danish prime minister characterized the controversy as the worst international crisis in Denmark’s history since World War II. What had started as a low-key localized protest supposedly aimed at suppressing what were seen as blasphemous images had escalated into an international confrontation that ensured the offending cartoons were published around the world for millions and millions who otherwise would have never even known about them to see.

In the midst of this latest convulsion of anti-Western violence erupting in the Muslim world, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr. Ali Gomaa, who is one of the most respected and influential Islamic scholars in the world today, delivered a landmark fatwa (which is an authoritative religious opinion) published on the pages of Al Ahram, Egypt’s leading daily mass circulation newspaper, calling on Muslims to desist from protest and reaction, and supporting his opinion with, among others, the following Quranic verse:

So overlook with gracious forgiveness…. For We are sufficient unto you against the mockers. [Even] against those who adopt with God another god; but soon will they come to know. We do indeed know how your heart is distressed at what they say. But glorify your Lord with His praise, and be of those who prostrate. And worship your Lord until what is certain comes to you [the Judgment, or death] (15:85-99).

Did this remarkable fatwa have any impact? It had absolutely none at all. It was entirely overlooked by the media and the general public. Why? It was overlooked by the public because the opinion was delivered, in traditional fatwa form, after 8 long, expository paragraphs on the pages of a newspaper. In journalistic terms, the Grand Mufti “buried the lead”. It was overlooked by the press because there is not a single journalist in the Islamic world or anywhere else qualified to cover Islam or recognize a truly important Islamic news development. People lost their lives over this stupid and embarrassing protest. Images of angry, ignorant Muslim demonstrators calling for “Behead Those Who Insult Islam” on the streets of London were broadcast around the world, once again reinforcing the impression that Muslims are fanatical barbarians. And all these hysterical reactions were in violation of the Qur’an.

This pathetic interlude was a replay of the Salman Rushdie/Satanic Verses affair of the late 1980s. The Satanic Verses, which was a follow up to Rushdie’s Booker Prize nominated Midnight’s Children, featured a series of lurid and highly offensive dream sequences, depicting a character clearly modelled after Prophet Mohamed as a sleazy debauched drunkard, with the Prophet’s historical wives, who are considered to be saints in Islam, represented as whores living in a brothel. The Satanic Verses incited a violent pan-Islamic protest, culminating in Imam Khomeini’s notorious 1989 death sentence, which sent Rushdie into hiding and turned his book into a cause célèbre and phenomenal worldwide bestseller.

The liberal literary establishment turned Rushdie into an iconic hero but there were a number of influential writers, including John Le Carré and Roald Dahl, who came to the defence of the Muslim position and attacked Rushdie. Dahl dismissed Rushdie’s claims to artistic integrity as cynical self-promotion, writing that the author knew exactly what he was doing. Dahl said, ‘This kind of sensationalism does indeed get an indifferent book to the top of the bestseller list, but in my mind, it is a cheap way of doing it.’ The Satanic Verses was, indeed, an ‘indifferent book’ and would very likely have disappeared into literary oblivion had it not been for the spectacular public relations campaign it received from Muslim mobs, terrorists and Imam Khomeini. And I suspect Dahl was right about Rushdie. He thought he’d write something controversial to boost sales but badly miscalculated. It was an almost Faustian drama that unfolded. He became the most famous author on earth, celebrated and wealthy, but couldn’t enjoy any of it.

At that time there was no Islamic scholar of authority like Dr. Gomaa with the courage to counter the demagogues, mob rule and mass hysteria that made The Satanic Verses the international sensation it was. It was only when I read the Grand Mufti’s fatwa that I began to take hope and it was in the aftermath of the Danish Cartoon Crisis that I began advising him on how to communicate more effectively through the media.

Marshall McLuhan, who coined the visionary observation "The Medium is the Message", explained it by commenting: “This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of our-selves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of our-selves, or by any new technology.”

McLuhan also wrote: “As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.”

And finally: “Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be.”

WHEN THESE REMARKS were first published over forty years ago, they were surrealistic and unsettling. Today they’re simply documentary truths. We’re clearly living in an age where image has become substance, where technology shapes our perceptions and collective purpose, and where brand is a primary driving force in society. This is not encouraging.

The world has been fused by technology, not so much politically, socially, ideologically or intellectually but in relation to what we consume and how we perceive things on a macro-scale. The modern world is, indeed, increasingly a technological rather than social affair. The products we buy, the way we entertain ourselves and the lifestyles we choose or aspire to have been shaped by media technologies. As media expands globally and penetrates even the most remote societies, the resulting unity – if that’s what we want to call it – forces a kind of progressive over-simplification of communications into reductive, easy-to-digest packages which we have come to call brands.

For an entrepreneur – that is someone who transforms a creative idea into an expanding enterprise – brand-building is essential. However, there is a very real danger in all the focus on the branding process that the entrepreneur or organisation confuses hype with content, style with substance.

At the end of the day substance is what matters. It is, of course, necessary to get the word out, to deliver the message to your audience about whatever it is you’re offering but if you don’t have a good product or service that people want to use then it doesn’t matter what you do; you will not have sustained success.

One thing is very clear: media and communications technology have had a dramatic impact on human perceptions. Advertising has transformed the pace and style of many other media, particularly moving images. All you have to do is look at an old news broadcast or an old movie and you will see how slow and pedestrian everything seems. The intense, accelerated pace of television advertising has exerted a powerful influence on the way the audience processes information and images. Time is now compressed. Films and television today are written, shot and edited at a much faster pace. The eye of the audience is acclimatized to an unprecedented speed and visual complexity.

And now the power of advertising has been supplanted by the interactive power of New Media, Digital Communications, Seamless Mobility. There are those who say that traditional advertising, which depends upon a passive audience, is already dead. Technology has changed perceptions again.

At the same time, the understanding of media as an educational or informational tool has changed. A quarter century ago in developing countries media was used either as a form of collective mind-control or propaganda or as “an educational tool”. You had endless hours of talking heads or cultural performances captured by a static camera. The entertainment factor was almost totally absent. What has changed is that media throughout the developing world is finally catching up to the media in developing societies in the recognition that the presentation of information, ideas, education or diversion, must engage the audience, that is, must use the medium itself in an engaging way. The information and ideas must be clear and fluently expressed, education must attract the learner and diversion must amuse the audience. What was diverting and entertaining a half century ago may not be diverting and entertaining today whereas knowledge, information and ideas may have an abiding place in our lives. I’m all for brand-building. I’m all for the development and diversification of media. But content must prevail. Media and technology should provide the message delivery system for content. When the medium truly becomes the message, we’re in trouble.

Bringing Media and Religious Institutions Closer Together

In absence of a credible religious authority in the mass media, there has been what may be the most insidious development of the last half century: the rise of popular “Islamist” writers and journalists who are not qualified to interpret Islamic practice or law, yet who, through the power of words, have set themselves up as religious authorities and turned Islam into a seductive radicalized political ideology, more in common with Marxism than the Way of Mohammed, that has formed the foundation of the violent, heretical and extremist movements that have wreaked havoc across the world and turned Islamic states into outcast societies. The clash between institutions of information and institutions of religious learning has created a catastrophic vacuum and wave of confusion throughout Muslim populations that must be urgently redressed.

It is time for qualified scholars – and I don’t mean just academics with book learning but true ulama possessed of the knowledge of the heart and the hereafter and personal purity, wisdom and practice to back up their formal knowledge – to seize the authority that has been usurped by academics, extremists, “Islamic writers” and Islamic activists with no qualifications to guide people on the Straight Path.

To do this, they have to accept the fact that they live in a world inundated with media and they must enthusiastically learn how to use contemporary communications tools.

And it is time for the media in Islamic states to mature to the point that we have a body of journalists truly qualified to comment upon and write about Islamic issues. They have to stop giving voice to any Tom, Dick or Harry or, excuse me, any Osama, Ayman or Maulana Abdullah, to deliver extremist declarations and incitements.

It is time for Islamic scholars to come together to universally condemn terrorism and the murder of innocents and non-combatants – WITHOUT EXCEPTION. This failure to condemn terrorism as a community has become a major issue within western societies who are now afraid of their own immigrant Muslim populations and has led to racial profiling and other defensive measures and has marginalized Muslim scholars from mainstream thought.

The media should be free to report on, critique and make commentary on contemporary religious issues but by the same token they have the responsibility to make their reports and critiques from a position of knowledge. The responsibility of the media in Islamic states should be to report and comment on what is important not what is controversial. In reporting on Islam, the press needs to overcome its culture of controversy. Understanding and clarity should take precedence over sensationalism. They have to stop jumping on every emotional bandwagon that passes by.

We need to bring the media and religious institutions closer together. Scholars occupying public positions must be media trained and should be educated in both the diversity of media and the ways in which it can best be used. It is high time that we produce specialists in religious reporting. I recommend that major institutions of religious learning introduce courses on transmitting Islam through electronic, broadcast and print media taught by media professionals.

And finally, pious Muslims must overcome their prejudices against the two most powerful and influential media on earth – the cinema and television – and, as their forefathers did before them, use these extraordinary communications tools to capture the hearts and imaginations of new generations of young people for the sake of Allah and His Messenger. It can be done. It must be done.