Al Jazeera Messed up 'BIG TIME’ Here

Al Jazeera logo branded with emojis

Al Jazeera started up as a news outfit dedicated to telling the stories that affect Muslims across the globe particularly covering extensively the Palestinian struggle; this drew for them a lot of patronage from the Muslim world which largely saw it as the ultimate source of credible information on issues affecting Muslims. Al Jazeera also became a favourite for some westerners who had lost faith in the credibility of western media outfits like CNN and BBC. A great percentage of Al Jazeera subscribers still come from the Muslim world.

With time however, Al Jazeera has begun to tow the line of the west in certain aspects of society. On 26 June 2016, Up front host, Mehdi Hassan, attempted to stain the image of former Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammed, by asserting that the latter was anti-Semitic for his anti-Jewish stand.

This did not go down well with a lot of Al Jazeera fans as Mehdi Hassan and Al Jazeera were heavily lambasted on social media.

On 29 December 2017, Al Jazeera aired a documentary on India, the documentary was supposed to make a very good point but turned out to be a very devilish stunt.

India has one of the highest rates of honour killings in the world and it appears that there has been a spike in the rate due to the growing influence of western culture. Young Indians want to live like Americans and the Indian elders are bent on reminding them that speaking English and wearing jeans does not alter their Indian roots.

There now appears to be a group in India calling itself the ‘Love Commandos’ whose aim is to give western Indians the right to rebel against culture. The youths cite the fact that they are being forced to into marriage usually to people they ordinarily detested, but scenes in the documentary showed something else. The documentary featured scenes where unmarried youths were seen kissing and cuddling in public and the head of the so-called ‘Love Commandos’ calling it ‘freedom of love’.

The documentary also featured a scene in which an angry Hindu activist was seen saying, “If you want to kiss and have sex, do it in your room behind closed doors”, this definitely makes sense-right? The ‘Love Commandos’ branded these Hindu activists, ‘fundamentalist extremists’ and enemies of progress; Al Jazeera did not question the suitability of these epithets. This was the BIG TIME mess up.

The question then pops up, ‘Has Al Jazeera joined the vanguards of atheism and immorality?” Some might say it might have been a political move to get at the Indian government but to others, went off at a tangent there.

If Al Jazeera really wants to maintain its fan base among Muslims and people of reason, then it must stick to and only support rational views with sound intellectual, philosophical and spiritual depth.