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Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
Nazia
08/27/01 at 00:13:37
Assalamu Alaikum, Did anyone catch the [i]Beneath the Veil[/i] presentation put on by CNN?  Well, if you didn't, let me fill you in.  It was your basic anti-Islamic, anti-Taleban documentary panning to shots of poor children with tears in their eyes to those of mean Taleban men walking the streets of Afghanistan with guns--accompanied by your ever-present sad music of course. What I found most disturbing about this documentary was the narrator herself-an Afghani woman raised in the UK.  She walked into this third world, war-torn country and was surprised by the sight of poor women and children.  There were "no signs of jobs" she stated, as she drove through a portion of the city LEVELED during the Civil War before the Taleban took over.  "Nothing's been repaired", she confidently proclaimed panning again to shots of the homeless. But the scariest thing of all was that she was very convincing.  I took some notes of problems I found with the documentary, but I need more about the Taleban.  They spent a good 15 minutes talking about the massacres where hundreds of innocent civilians were killed by the Taleban.  This of course, seems unislamic and crazy---and it would be, if proven true.  The Taleban foreign minister however truly felt that this could not have been the work of his men because the Taleban are supposed to be religious and can only kill in times of war and similar situations--never innocent bystanders.  So it was basically the word of the people against the word of the Taleban, yet the narrator kept referring to all of the killings as the work of the Taleban, totally disregarding the statements of the foreign minister. Anyways, I was just letting you all know about the show--no need to rehash a "We love/we hate the Taleban" discussion :)  However do let me know if any of you plan on writing, I'd like to steal some ideas! ;) Alright, Take Care, Wassalam, Nazia ps--There is some more information on the CNN site:  [url]http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/presents/[/url]

Re: CNN: Beneath the Veil
se7en
08/26/01 at 23:27:21
wa alaykum as salaam wa rahmatAllah, I missed the first 10-15 minutes of it but I caught the rest of it.. pretty crazy.  It seemed like a propaganda piece for this organization RAWA.  Does anyone know more about them?

Re: CNN: Beneath the Veil
jannah
08/27/01 at 00:11:53
wlm, i don't think it was a very fair portrayal either..well actually that's an understatement :) i think the segement was designed to generate fear of the taliban and hatred for them as well...when someone calls a gov't tyranny they're making a judgement not a CNN "presentation". one thing i noticed was that she seemed to be blaming all these poverty problems.. ie lack of food, housing, hospitals etc on the taliban...bombed out buildings and gardens from the russian war are blamed on them too?? we never heard from any pro-taliban people...i guess they were trying to show that there weren't any... as for the killings etc... they showed it very dramatically to pull heartstrings but there didn't seem to be any hard journalism behind them and again i don't know how much we can trust western media to figure out what's really going on there.. i think that the most important thing this showed is that there's a major problem with people of the world understanding the islamic shariah system. we really need more muslims to go into islamic law and to write about it for the general populace in a way that doesn't make it seem foreign to people.. i mean the narrator says "the taliban have taken this soccer stadium and made it a place for public executions. the taliban kill their own people in public, etc etc" like duhhhhhhhh...... the US doesn't have capital punishment?? what's the difference between that and their showing someone being electrocuted on TV... not much if u ask me... maybe if they showed it we'd have less crime here?? anyways about the muslim women part, i dont know what the laws are there and i don't know what the realities are, but i do know that not allowing women to work period and not allowing education of women will almost certainly kill a civilization and is definitely not islamic... so just some comments about the show.. anyone else see it?

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
Nazia
08/27/01 at 09:15:44
[quote]one thing i noticed was that she seemed to be blaming all these poverty problems.. ie lack of food, housing, hospitals etc on the taliban...bombed out buildings and gardens from the russian war are blamed on them too?? [/quote] I know! I noticed that too!!  I mean seriously, she went to Pakistan too, didn't she see poverty and pollution there too?  Oh wait--she did, but she also went on to say, "You can see the effects of the Taliban, even here in Pakistan"  ??? ???  Then she went to a group of refugee kids and asked them how many of them lost a parent because of the Taliban.  Ok, some of these kids were about four years old and you could TELL they had no idea what was going on.  When the kids around them raised their hands, they did too, smiling and looking at the camera!  THEN she said very vaguely,  "3/4 of the Afghani children have lost a relative since the Taleban took over in '96"  Ask 75% of AMERICAN children and they'll tell you that they've lost a "relative" since 1996 too! Then they just showed that woman being executed as if its commonplay and women are executed for sport!  Afghanistan has LAWS and RULES just like America, if broken--people deal with the consequences!  They never said what this woman did--maybe she murdered her children, what do we know? She kept making evasive statements like: (paraphrasing ahead) "Questioning about about our camera crew ended for a few minutes as [i]the most feared men in the country[/i] stopped for their prayers" --as if implying these men were doing something dirty and deceitful before they pounced on their prey! when talking about a village killing, she asked RIGHT before commercial break, "was this story unusual for the Taliban, or was it just a piece of a string of atrocities?" Hmmm...I don't know, but if its not, you sure made it seem like it is! "Prostitutes and Homosexuals are executed" --she didn't mention that these things are AGAINST the LAWS OF ISLAM and therefore against the LAWS of the land!  People committing these acts are breaking the law just as someone in America does when he kills somebody! Ok, well I have to go, Take Care, Wassalam, Nazia

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
Yusuf
08/27/01 at 13:12:46
As salaamu alaikum - CNN thinks they can disguise their anti-Islamic agenda by producing a program yearly on the Hajj. They don't realize Muslims who are aware know not to trust news reported by non-Muslims. Another funny thing about the propaganda show was something to the effect of her saying 'they wear white and black turbans and have weapons' and it showed the "religious police" and played the dark spooky exotic music. Okay, um.. when they showed the Northern Alliance, who are the people really guilty for the crimes they pitted on Taliban, and tried to create compassion for even the war commanders.. they had turbans and weapons too? Any person with a brain realizes that a governement can't rebuild a country in 4 years after fighting for 20 years against a "Super Power" (Russia). If they take cameras to any country like Bosnia, Kosova, Bangledash, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Iraq, etc. they will see women begging in the streets and children starving. This is the result of war, at least Taliban is trying to do something. I've looked elsewhere on the web and It upsets me to see Muslims trust non-Muslim media and then judge their brothers and sisters in Islam. We need to be aware and realize they don't care about Muslims, they just want to produce shock-value entertainment to make you cry for an hour, hate Islam, and promote democracy and capitalism. O Allah, give success to Taliban and the people of Afghanistan and reward them in this life and the Hereafter. Ameen. Yusuf

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
se7en
08/27/01 at 17:33:15
Hey.. are you the Yusuf that was in the cnn chatroom immediately after the program was over?  If so, excellent job bro :) wasalaamu alaykum :)

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
Abid
08/27/01 at 21:19:03
Here is a link to a report about Taleban.... you can really feel the bitterness, this time by BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/from_our_own_correspondent/newsid_1508000/1508120.stm Look at how they portray that conversion to Islam is done. Wassalam

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
sakeena
08/28/01 at 01:05:15
salaamualaikum, I watched this show Sunday night, too.  It was disturbing to see some of that stuff.  I don't know a whole lot about the situation in Afghanistan, but I was skeptical watching the show since it was obviously from a Western perspective.  It's hard to believe that stuff like that goes on. It got me thinking then...why aren't we as Muslims, especially in the United States finding out the truth about what's going on and presenting it to the Western world or even to the Muslims?  I know we lack the resources and means to produce such shows to the extent that CNN does.  But all the information I've ever read or heard about Afghanistan comes from non-Muslims.  Why don't our national relief organizations ever mention or work on Afghanistan as they do Kashmir, Palestine, Kosova, etc?  Or maybe I've just overlooked it.  Why don't ISNA or other Muslim organizations educate us on this like at conferences?  I'd be interested in hearing the Muslim perspective and reasoning behind if any of this is actually being done in Afghanistan as it is being portrayed by the Western media. these are just my thoughts that came up after watching the show.  what do you guys think? wasalaamualaikum sakeena

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
Yusuf
08/28/01 at 05:54:02
as salaamu alaikum se7en yes it is me.. same person. jazakallahu khair

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
jaihoon
08/28/01 at 07:55:23
For the past two decades, the Muslim world has had a tradition of blaming the western media as 'propagandist'. It is true to a great extend. History has it that ever since the fall of Muslim Spain, the muslims have always found an excuse to escape from the troubles. But is it not time to come with an 'alternative' media than to blame the western media. Why don't the Muslims formulate their own global 'media formulae' to match the chicken noodle network? For how long will we keep ourselves on the receiving end? Kya duniya mein panapne ki yehi batein hain?

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
Yusuf
08/28/01 at 08:04:56
It is not about blaiming the kafirs or developing conspiracy theories. Allah tells us in the Qur'an that they plot and Allah plots, and Allah is best of plotters. Pharaoah plotted, Abu Jahl plotted, the Jews plotted to kill 'Isa. History repeats itself. This is the reality. However, I strongly agree with you. Muslims need to develop their own media, but this is just one of the many symptoms of the sick state we are in. May Allah give us success.

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
bhaloo
08/28/01 at 08:23:38
slm HEre was one brother's perspective: Only a journalist can understand the dirty trick CNN played in its attack on Taliban. 1. The people who put it together: i. Saira  Shah, an Afghan woman who grew up in England and is alienated from the Islamic way of life. ii. Ahmed Rashid, an anti-jihad, anti-Islam Pakistani journalist who has written consistently for years against the Islamic movement and who strives      to perpetuate the fear that the Taliban will take over Pakistan. iii. RAWA, a communist splinter group, which after the defeat of the Communists in Afghanistan has joined hands with the Zionist  media in USA to smear the Afghans. It has a web site which uses the "big lie" technique to defame the Taliban. (RAWA is a minority even among Afghan Communists and has no relevance to Afghanistan.) 2. CNN's BASIC SCRIPT CONTRADICTED THE PROPAGANDA ATTEMPT IT MADE. Basically what the program showed was that a woman named Saira Shah visited Afghanistan and was taken by the Taliban to Kandahar and Kabul. She was not mistreated in any way but she came back to help CNN make this propaganda program. CNN's basic script shows that Saira Shah DID NOT SEE ANY ATROCITIES OR MISTREATMENT OF WOMEN. 2a. In fact she was treated so lightly that when she decided to "disappear"      in Kabul and go meet her RAWA contacts,  no one bothered her or her associates. 2b. Saira did not realize this bag gap in her story that if Afghanistan is really a police state, her photographer would have been beaten to a pulp when she did her "disappearing act", to find out where she had gone. In fact nothing happened to her or to her photographer. What kind of "police state" is this in which a foreign woman can simply leave her team and go meet whomsoever she wishes? 3. SUPERIMPOSITION OF RAWA's PROPAGANDA VIDEO's ON SAIRA's STORY: The dirty game CNN played was to to take some of RAWA's propaganda videos (which no one knows when and where they were taken) and superimpose them. For instance we see Saira visiting the stadium where some convicted criminals were executed for violations of Quranic law. At that point, RAWA's video came in showing a man aiming a gun at the head of a burqa-clad woman. These were two separate items: Saira's visit and RAWA's video, but only an expert eye could see the trick. 4. Use of atrocity stories from opposition refugees in Pakistan. Saira is shown talking  to a man from Hazarajat who claims an atrocity by Taliban in  which a whole group of people were slaughtered. Later in the program, we are told Saira had met the man IN PAKISTAN. There are no graves, no bodies. We have only this man's translated word. The man's name is not given. (Later we see superimposition of a RAWA video which shows bodies in a pit. Only      careful viewing shows that those are NOT the bodies related to Hazarajat or to the man's story.) 5. SAIRA THEN VISITS NORTHEASTERN AFGHANISTAN and melds happily with the opposition which is being armed by India, Iran and Russia. Here a man gesticulates and shows her where 9 civilians were murdered by the Taliban. The gap in the story is that Muslims always rapidly bury their dead. There is      no sign of graves in the whole area shown. Again we have to take an opposition fighter's story at face value. 6. Saira visits some RAWA women putting on lipstick and rouge and we are told that this is a form of resistance to the Taliban! 7. CNN used "here comes dracula" and 'the killing fields' music repeatedly to      create the impression that Afghanistan is some huge land of terror controlled, in Saira's words by the "brutal, repressive" Taliban. Ruined buildings have existed in Kabul from before the Taliban take-over. WHAT SAIRA AND CNN LEFT OUT ENTIRELY: 1. Afghanistan gave a million martyrs to drive out the Russians. Almost every  village was destroyed by the Russians creating the biggest refugee population in human history. (It was not difficult to find bodies and atrocity stories and make doctored videos as  RAWA has done.) 2. Kabul was ruined because of fighting between PRE-TALIBAN groups. The Taliban took it by storm: Hence most of it is in ruins. This has nothing to do with Taliban rule. In fact TALIBAN HAVE BROUGHT PEACE TO 95% of Afghanistan. Hence Saira was able to travel without any problem in lands under Taliban control. 3. Much of the suffering in Afghanistan is owing to the destruction of its infrastructure and USA's persistent efforts to create destabilization through sanctions. 4. India, Iran and Russia continue to arm the northeastern groups while Taliban are cut off by U.S. sanctions. Thus, as in Sudan, the fighting is prolonged and peace does not come. WHAT CAN BE DONE?: All well wishers of Afghanistan should help to build hospitals, roads. clean water facilities, schools UNCONDITIONALLY. Out of all moneys going to Russia from USA, Afghanistan should have a primary share. There are many problems in Afghanistan. The Taliban, like all governments, have their weaknesses. Condemnation and isolation of these proud and brave people will not work. We must be their friends and show them that we can be trusted. THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS. Muslims from around the world should marry these women or help them get married. In such cases, polygamy is permitted by the Qur'an. ;========= Another brother commented on the above piece by saying: The RAWA videos shown were taken from the time of Rabbani and Masood's rule of Afghanistan and maliciously attributed to the Taliban. The bodies shown of supposed massacres from Hazarajat were of Indo-European looking Afghans. The Hazaras are Chinese in appearance (and in descent). There were numerous other inconsistencies which only someone familiar with Afghanistan would notice.

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
Anonymous
08/28/01 at 08:54:48
There is an article posts on Cyber Muslima, a popular website about women in Islam, that gives one perspective on RAWA: http://members.nbci.com/CyberMuslima/disdain.htm An Agenda of Disdain: Cultural Imperialism and the Western Media View of Afghanistan

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
Saleema
08/28/01 at 14:09:21
The bodies shown of supposed massacres from Hazarajat were of Indo-European looking Afghans. The Hazaras are Chinese in appearance (and in descent). Yep. That is very true. I can attest to that. [wlm]

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
eleanor
09/27/01 at 05:46:59
slm I'm so glad to have read this thread. Jazak Allah Khayrun! I saw the programme too, and having zero knowledge of Afghani history, I have to admit, I was sucked in. I'm relieved to read these responses and would also love to learn more about the "true" Afghanistan and the "true" Taliban for myself and for dawah purposes. I'd love to be able to defend Afghanistan and Taliban but I have no info. If anyone can forward me articles, or point me to a few good links I'd appreciate it. wasalaam eleanor

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
Ruqayyah
09/28/01 at 19:06:15
[slm] I echo Sr. Eleanor's words as well, when I say that I don't have very much knowledge at all about Afghan history. So many people have asked me about the Taliban and i just don't have the knowledge to accurately answer their questions.  and then there are always the anti-taliban forwards that are circulated around and the pro-taliban forwards circulated around- which do we believe? it's hard to know what to think when most of what we hear is from Western media, and we're not there to see it for ourselves. So what is the true story about the taliban? [wlm]

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
Kashif
09/28/01 at 19:28:59
assalaamu alaikum I think one good resource is the transcription of a lecture by Sayyid Hashmi, the Taliban Ambassador, which he delivered at the Uni. of South California. You can access this (or even watch it online) at: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/Taliban/TalibanIndex.html I also have some Afghani friends who have posted some excellent analyses of the Taliban and related matters based on discussion with their families who still live in the country, and from meeting Afghanis who have now and again visited places outside of Afghanistan. I'll post them as i find them in my archives insha'allah. Kashif Wa Salaam
NS

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
jannah
09/29/01 at 01:45:08
Please email them to whoever is interested inshaAllah, we do not want to jump back into a topic that is closed right :)

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
eleanor
09/29/01 at 10:58:14
slm [quote]Please email them to whoever is interested inshaAllah, we do not want to jump back into a topic that is closed right :) [/quote] While I appreciate your concern that controversial discussions may get out of hand here, I think that the current climate may well be suited to discussing the Taliban and showing them and proving them to be justified in their mission. wasalaam eleanor

Re: Reviews of CNN: Beneath the Veil
jannah
09/29/01 at 11:42:15
That's what was said before and we know the outcome. We shouldn't make the same mistake twice. Again if you're interested please use email. This thread is now closed.
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