Muslim leader killed in US raid

The FBI raid against Abdullah and his followers was in response to a series of criminal charges The leader of a Sunni Muslim group advocating Islamic rule in the US has been shot dead by federal agents during a raid in the city of Detroit, authorities have said. Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, was killed on Wednesday during a shootout with officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at a warehouse in Dearborn, the US attorney's office said. The FBI was pursuing Abdullah and 10 followers on charges that include conspiracy to sell stolen goods and the illegal possession and sale of firearms. A court document said that Abdullah - also known as Christopher Thomas by the authorities - was an imam of a group whose mission is to establish Sharia (Islamic law) within the US. Exchange of fire "At one location, four suspects surrendered and were arrested without incident. Luqman Ameen Abdullah did not surrender and fired his weapon. An exchange of gun fire followed and Abdullah was killed," the FBI statement said. Abdullah regularly preached anti-government rhetoric and some of his supporters had converted to Islam while in prison, the FBI said. Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Affairs, said that members of the Muslim community were "shocked" at Abdullah's death. "He was well-known and respected. No-one that I have talked has said that he was linked to any sort of extremist groups, overseas or here at home," he told Al Jazeera. "I do not have any knowledge as to the veracity of the allegations [against Abduallah and his 10 followers] but if the allegations are true, what does that have to do with Islam or Muslims? "The charges that have been filed against the 11 suspects have no relation or linkage to their religion - they are gun charges. We resent the fact that the FBI has linked religion to these gun charges." Source: Al-Jazeera

Muslims in the media: Representation of Muslims in a Malaysian English daily after the 7/7 London Bombings

by Hishamuddin Salim

Presented at the International Conference on the Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media 2008. (ICORM '08).

ABSTRACT

Muslims have been making the headlines ever since the 70’s mainly due to the Iranian Revolution and of late, the September 11 attack in 2001 on the New York World Trade Centre. After the 9-11 attack (as it is famously known), the number of hate attacks on Muslims have increased worldwide. One of the reasons this happens is due to the negative representation given to the Muslims by the media. This study investigates how the media represents Muslims in a Muslim country like Malaysia. One might presume that Muslims would be represented in a positive manner in a country where they are dominant. However, it should be noted that most of the foreign news in a country like Malaysia is obtained from western-based news agencies. Bearing this in mind, the
researcher employed various instruments under Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) which
goes deeper than the surface level of language use to find out whether this negative representation occurs in the Malaysian media. This study gathered data from the New
Straits Times in a two-week period after the 7/7/2005 London bombings. This comprised
36 news reports, 4 opinion articles, 2 feature articles and one editorial using various theories in Critical Discourse Analysis. The findings showed that while trying to be neutral in its reporting, the newspaper did publish opinion articles which gave negative representation of Muslims. This study also shows that even the print media in a Muslim country might contribute to this negative representation of Muslims. This is due to the fact that the language used in articles carries many underlying meanings which sometimes is overlooked by the untrained eye.