“This is a time of giving and providing for those who cannot provide for themselves.” Not an uncommon sentiment over the Christmas season. Words you’re likely to hear in most church halls and sound bytes. They are the words of Islamic Society spokesman Saad Mohammed whom the Oklahoman interviewed on December 24th. “Our faith,” Imam Imad Enchassi elaborated on the same occasion, “teaches us to reach out to those in need.” On Christmas day, the two along with their co-religionists served a free meal and blankets to hundreds in need from the greater Oklahoma City region. It was not the only occasion of Muslims volunteering on the Christian holy day. The Montréal Gazette reported that dozens of Muslim denizens volunteered on Christmas at the century-old homeless shelter known as the Old Brewery Mission. In Detroit, the TV station WXYZ and Detroit News reported on a demonstration of interfaith co-operation when Muslims joined the twenty-year tradition known as “Mitzvah Day” — when Jews serve meals to the needy on Christmas. While much of the efforts took place on Friday to avoid the Sabbath, on Christmas day Muslims bore greater responsibility to allow Jewish adherents their day of rest.

Although many would profess that these stories are nice but perhaps a little mundane, they seemed all the more remarkable because it stands in stark contrast to the narrative about “Muslims” that we routinely receive from media outlets. One story in particular truly seemed aimed to ratchet up the rhetoric. In the week following Christmas, FoxNews featured an incendiary story: Christmas attacks at the hands of Muslims. The hyper-partisan blog New American broke the story broke under the headline “Nigerian Muslims Responsible for Christmas Attacks.” This blog, aimed at “freedom-loving Americans” and funded through the think-thank, the John Birch Society, delivered hyperbole apposite for the article’s acerbic headline. On the following day, FoxNews predictably picked up the story for its national news cycle. Although the rhetoric is toned down, it perpetuates the narrative of irresolvable “religious fighting” between Muslims and Christians, distilling the complexity of the strife in Nigeria from its political and socio-economic roots.

Not to dismiss the suffering of this conflict nor the religious element of the fighting, I still feel rankled when I see it prioritized in the national news. My objection arises when I regard it being utilized as a tool of propaganda, one to validate a false ideology at the risk of our domestic reality and what is in the best interests of the common good. To be clear, FoxNews is not the sole perpetrator on the national stage – only the easiest to pick on. Particularly these stories highlight the impact of the Fifth Estate in framing our collective identity and our moral imagination. This provincial exposure to Islam only exacerbates an already egregious case of “religious illiteracy” in the United States, about which Harvard professor Diane Moore argues so convincingly. Simply the majority of American cannot discern between the Islam and Islamic militias in Nigeria with Islam in America. As a result, it easy to carry on the subversive narrative that Islam is anathema to the American character and values. Examples are a plenty in recent memory.

That hysteria becomes fodder and goal of particular stooges in the politico-punditry industry. Of course, Rush Limbaugh has made it common practice to refer to Barack Obama as a liberal, un-American figure with the moniker “Imam Obama.” It was also a sufficient stage from which Glenn Beck could brazenly declare that 10% of Muslims are terrorists (it roused a swift and vociferous refutation from Fareed Zakaria). Regardless, the predominant view is that Muslims are a foreign element worthy of suspicion. In such cases, haggling over linguistics matter. As many pundits profess, “the Muslim problem” – that terrorists are predominantly Muslims — is an existential threat to the United States. One of the main proponents of this agenda, Bill O’Reilly has made it his  and affirms his stance with the assertion that 70% of Americans believe the way that he does. Logistically, these views limit the social context of Muslim societies. Clearly, this heightened rhetoric and distortion of the “threat” has plenty of implications not least of all is actually a foreboding threat for American Muslims.

Although little of this is news to any observer of religious matters in the United States, it should raise the question, “what is the best way to counter such propaganda and what is in the interest of the common good?” Furthermore, tactics to counter this narrative become even more important. Clearly, it is an ideological battle that FoxNews consistently engages in its news coverage. Of course in any journalistic or academic undertaking there is a political stake: what do you include? What do you exclude? Sympathetic with the work of Barbara Jeane Fields, I concur with her analysis of ideology which she developed in her studies of racial history in the United States:  paraphrased from her work, ideology amounts to illusion and it is that systematic worldview which collapses under the slightest logical scrutiny. Naturally, this ideology that depicts Islam is a singular tradition and system of thought and all Muslims like-minded is not new. Nor is it particularly uncommon in American history. Henry Louis Gates bridges these two phenomena — American racial ideology and Islamophobia — as he does in a September episode of On Point Radio when he takes exceptions with the attacks of Dinesh D’Souza and Newt Gingrich against Barack Obama’s “otherness” and its implications of his Muslim identity. Of course, we’ve seen it with African-Americans, Irish, Jews and Catholics, amongst others before when culture and religion essentializes individuals.

I realize however that the stories at the outset of this post also reflect my own political predilection. It’s true. Genuinely, I believe that the cultural and religious pluralism of North America not only is a reality, and a healthy one, and that objectively it is in our national interest to embrace multi-culturalism and religious pluralism. The challenge that I cannot help but confront when I juxtapose this position with that of FoxNews and its pundits is: at what point do I lose sight of objectivity and my own belief falls into the category of ideology? That is an ongoing struggle and process of self-evaluation, but it seems imperative for all interfaith advocates and defender of pluralism. Certainly pluralism has its own pitfalls and when we are blinded to those, we can neglect the actual differences that do exist between individuals and communities, as well as fail in providing real solutions for religious communities.