Top officials try to ban Medal of Honor
This is a story I wrote for Newsy.com and have gotten kind of attached to. The reason being the story required me to put quite a bit of attention to control my personal bias. Being a gamer myself, I believe that the whole thing is a pile of bull crap rotting in a land fill in the middle of Kansas. There have been movies that have depicted far worse and not word of criticism was raised against them.
With such passion for video games, you can tell it was hard for me to keep my script as neutral as possible. I was constantly talking to editors and fellow writers, none of whom are gamers, about what they thought of my script.
The other reason for me to be particularly attached to the story is that I didn’t want to do the story because of the simple fact that I am Muslim. In light of the recent Islamaphobia, I have been shying away from such sensitive topics, something that I said I would never do when I came to this country. It is the same reason why I don’t have many Muslim friends, because I have noticed ever since 9/11 the Muslim community in America has felt isolated and as a resulted has been indulging in a process to further isolating themselves.
If we are to remove this image of all be Muslims being psychotic-bomb-strapped American-hating maniacs, isolating ourselves is the worst way of doing it. I have actively avoided pitching story ideas about sensitive topics dealing with Muslims, such as the mosque in New York. By avoiding these topics I have avoided the possibility of injecting new and unique viewpoints into the media discussion of Muslim situation. Since at Newsy.com we are analyzing viewpoints of other media organizations, instead having one of our own, I could’ve found viewpoints that other people might have overlooked.
If you watch the story though, you will realize I have no such angle from say a Muslim stand point. That is because the story worked much better without one so I scrapped it and pulled out a pretty decent story.
The reason I like this story is not because I was able to “defend the reputation of Muslims everywhere!!!” but because it was the first step I took in finding the courage to challenge all this negative imagery of Muslims in the media. I hope, I have made the right decision by doing so.
