Looking Inside Islam contests common stereotypes
Brittany Lane | Features Editor
Last Updated:11/4/09 Section: Features
Last Tuesday evening, in a packed Andrews 101, the documentary Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think premiered. Alum John Musselman ('03) introduced the documentary, which presents data gathered from the first and most extensive major opinion poll of Muslims worldwide conducted by Gallup. Musselman currently works for the Institute for Global Engagement and is the Project Administrator for Search for Common Ground-USA. He is pursuing his master's degree from Georgetown.
The data seeks to refute common stereotypes and misconceptions of Muslims and Islam as a whole. The film aims to present the data in an accessible and aesthetically engaging way. Several experts appear in the film, such as Georgetown professor John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. They declare their mission to inform the public and act as a bridge between the U.S. and the Muslim world. With empirical data, they want to show that the two worlds have similar concerns and values.
Research directors in most of the Muslim-majority countries of the world interviewed people face-to-face in the local language, observing local customs in order to build trust. They asked interviewees of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds questions, such as what they respected most about their own society, what they found lacking in their own development, what they did or did not respect about the West, the values they wished to teach their children, and general questions about marriage and relationships.
Once they gathered the data, they evaluated the responses under categories such as gender equality, religion, policy, and terrorism. In the film, Esposito stresses that the hard data should "speak for itself" in order to "deconstruct the cliché images" Westerners have of Muslims and vice versa.
For example, Muslims view Sharia as the rule of law much like the Bible represents core values for many Christians. While many non-Muslims think negatively of Sharia and associate it with the political doctrine of a "fringe minority" of extremists, Muslims see it as bestowing protections from God that no government can seize. The experts in the film note the role the media plays in exaggerating the population of those Muslims that resort to violence.
The data seeks to refute common stereotypes and misconceptions of Muslims and Islam as a whole. The film aims to present the data in an accessible and aesthetically engaging way. Several experts appear in the film, such as Georgetown professor John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. They declare their mission to inform the public and act as a bridge between the U.S. and the Muslim world. With empirical data, they want to show that the two worlds have similar concerns and values.
Research directors in most of the Muslim-majority countries of the world interviewed people face-to-face in the local language, observing local customs in order to build trust. They asked interviewees of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds questions, such as what they respected most about their own society, what they found lacking in their own development, what they did or did not respect about the West, the values they wished to teach their children, and general questions about marriage and relationships.
Once they gathered the data, they evaluated the responses under categories such as gender equality, religion, policy, and terrorism. In the film, Esposito stresses that the hard data should "speak for itself" in order to "deconstruct the cliché images" Westerners have of Muslims and vice versa.
For example, Muslims view Sharia as the rule of law much like the Bible represents core values for many Christians. While many non-Muslims think negatively of Sharia and associate it with the political doctrine of a "fringe minority" of extremists, Muslims see it as bestowing protections from God that no government can seize. The experts in the film note the role the media plays in exaggerating the population of those Muslims that resort to violence.
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