Al Jazeera- a Western, democratic program or Islamist propaganda?
A friend recently said, in view of the bad geopolitical, increasingly depoliticized and primarily Eurocentric reporting of the public broadcasters and most Western news channels, which would be very biased, that Al Jazeera was a rather informative, critical, cosmopolitical and modern channel that, „although Arabic“, seems to be very Western. He is not alone in this opinion. It is correct that Al Jazeera reports on the political and economic situation of many countries, especially protests from almost all over the world from the USA, Latin America, parts of the Greater Middle East, Europe, Asia, Russia, Africa and lets them have their say and gives them a voice, reports on sexism, human rights violations, racism, social injustice, climate change, enviorment destruction and grievances in the West in detail and from many parts of the world, mostly has white western news anchor men and women and presenters or, in their program The Stream, a sympathic, trendy young black woman with a funny punk hairstyle who focuses more on youthful protest movements. So the appearance is thoroughly western and modern, the content is very diverse and cosmopolitan. At least that’s the first impression.
Nevertheless, you have to know that Al Jazeera is a channel from Qatar that is close to the royal family and supports them, Islamists, Muslim Brotherhood and Erdogan- Turkey as well as Iran, in enmity with Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Middle East, the USA and partly Europe, especially since Erdogan- Turkey also maintains a military base in Qatar as part of its emerging neo-Ottoman Empire. Qatar supports Islamist murder militias, jihadists and Islamist parties and groups in the wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya and in the entire Middle East North Africa (MENA region). Hamas and the Taliban also have liaison offices in Qatar’s capital Doha, and Qatar is a diplomatic hub for Islamists. The Gulf States and Saudi Arabia have therefore imposed a blockade on Qatar.
There is an Arab Al Jazeera TV program, of which former employees unanimously complain that it reports unilaterally in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists. As a martyr in his own right, the exact number of days of the imprisonment of Al Jazeera journalist Mahmood Hussein in Egypt is reported daily . The simple background is that, like Al Jazeera, he supports the Muslim Brotherhood, who wanted to establish an Islamist dictatorship under Morsi and General Al-Sissi does not want to wait until they try it again.
What you get to see in the West is the English-language channel adapted to the target group. While the rulers of Qatar are completely excluded from criticism, Erdogan-Turkey, Iran, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood experience consistently friendly reporting, the situation of the Palestinians and especially the ally Hamas is discussed and historical documentaries about the Middle East wars against Israel are aired. In this way it is reported passionately and in detail about crisis phenomena in the rest of the world, showing how bad things are there, what grievances and problems there are, what oppression and injustices. Now many people watch Al Jazeera because it is informative and allows many political movements to have their say and reveals grievances that western mainstream media and especially western public broadcasters do not even allow to get a voice and conceal many informations, but to conclude from it to say that Al Jazeera intends to be a modern, secular and democratic program is fundamentally wrong. It is very skilful Islamist propaganda that hopes reach and unite dissatisfied people from all over the world, to become the voice of the oppressed and to stir up sympathizers and supporters against the West or hostile governments. Much like Putin is doing with Russia Today RT.
The Qatar-Erdogan-Turkey-Iran-Muslim Brotherhood axis is not only making progress in terms of propaganda: in addition to the jihadist and military wars of conquest for its neo-Ottoman Empire in Syria, Libya, Iraq, in the Caucasus and the support of Islamists, Islamist murderer militias and Muslim Brotherhood in the Greater Middle East, Qatar is now driving a charm offensive via Al Jazeera and Erdogan and Katar pose as the Islamic Franz Fannon of all the oppressed on earth and a fighter against colonialism, racism and exploitation – despite his neo-colonial wars. Recently, his soft-power initiative, for which he also wants to rewrite history and Islamize it, is now also targeting the Black Live Matters movement, American Muslims and icons of the black resistance and former members of the Nation of Islam such as Malcolm X and Muhammed Ali . FOCUS reprinted a study by The Economist tracing Erdogan’s actions from the US to the Muslim nuclear-weapon state of Pakistan:
„“Erdogan is trying to attract Muslims in the US – but that doesn’t always go down well
Turkey also woos Muslims and black people in America. In addition to the usual – Erdogan has opened an Islamic center near Washington – the campaign has shown the unexpected. A foundation on whose board one of his daughters is a member recently bought boxing champion Muhammad Ali’s property in Chicago for $ 3 million and plans to convert the property into a summer school for Muslims.
A few years ago Erdogan met the daughters of Malcolm X, an African-American Muslim – thus another hero; a daughter is said to have said that the Turkish muscle man embodied the legacy of her late father. Shortly afterwards, Turkey renamed a street near the new American embassy in Ankara as „Malcolm X Avenue“.
But not everything went according to plan. Erdogan had to cut short his trip to Muhammad Ali’s funeral in 2016 after learning that he was not allowed to speak or put a piece of the cloth covering the Kaaba on the boxer’s coffin. And when he condemned the murder of George Floyd and tweeted his death as „one of the most painful manifestations of the unjust order,“ a socialist group of Black people told him (in non-printable words) to mind his own business.
Helpful analysts suggest that his message could be better received if his government stopped arresting thousands of people on flimsy terrorism charges and disenfranchising millions of Kurds by imprisoning their elected leaders.
Erdogan sees himself as the savior of the oppressed, but supports repressive regimes
None of this has dampened Erdogan’s global ambitions. Indeed, the Turkish President seems to see himself not only as the voice of all Muslims, but of the entire global South. His re-election in 2018, he said, was a victory for „all harmed people in our region, all oppressed in the world“. It is certainly to his credit that he has increased funds for humanitarian aid, invested huge sums in impoverished Somalia, opposed the siege of Kashmir by India and accepted almost 4 million refugees from neighboring Syria.
But his anti-imperialist crusade has also taken him to strange places. Erdogan has supported both Nicolás Maduro’s repressive regime in Venezuela – a relationship that is lubricated by the hundreds of millions of dollars in gold trading – and the genocidal regime of former President Omar al-Bashir in Sudan. Last month he congratulated the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko on his “victory” in the rigged presidential elections.
The charm offensive has had some success. In parts of Africa and Asia, Erdogan enjoys popular support. According to a poll published last year, around 75 percent of Palestinians and roughly the same proportion of Jordanians support his policies. So popular is his popularity in Pakistan that the country’s prime minister, Imran Khan, joked earlier this year that Mr Erdogan could safely win his country’s upcoming elections. Scattered evidence, Akgonul said, suggests that he may also be the most popular Muslim politician among young Arabs in Europe. The head of Turkey and his followers seem convinced that the old world order is crumbling and are looking for a role in the new one. Erdogan’s turn to the global periphery is divided by contradictions and hypocrisy, making it more hype than content. But she came to stay. „
Al Jazeera is informative, international and quite useful as a news source, but you have to consider and filter out this Islamist background. Even if numerous secular, democratic protest movements have their say, it is precisely the Islamist intention to rally the discontented on earth against the West. This also became clear in the reports by Al Jazeera on the Islamist terrorist attacks in France and the reports against the alleged Islamophobia of Macron, who only warned against Islamism and called for reform Islam, with Qatar and Erdogan spearheading the protests of the Islamic and also partly Islamist world against Macron and the EU. All those secular democratic movements and opposition activists who have their say on the state television of Qatar would end up in a prison or torture cellar in Qatar, an Islamist dictaorship of the Muslim Brotherhood, in Erdogan- Turkey or Khameini- Iran, and be immediately suppressed. The Me Too women who perform there would be pressed into headscarves and traditional female roles in this macho society and probably also subjected to massive sexual harassment. The enemy of his enemy is by no means the friend of the Islamists. Many Islamophile postcolonial, postmodern, gender multiculturalists have not yet understood this.