Editorial: The Daily Addresses the MSA Controversy

[Daily's response to their  previously printed article, linking MSA to funding terrorist organizations; for a full background on the issue please visit www.montrealmuslimnews.net]

Our treatment of the MSA’s accounting has, justifiably, sparked much anger and debate on campus. We took a simple story about a SSMU club’s financial accounting and spun it, by running a sensational cover, headline, and graphic, into an exposé that wrongly linked the MSA to terrorism. In so doing, we have contributed to a climate of suspicion and hostility post-September 11, 2001, one which has haunted McGill’s Muslim population, as well as Muslim communities worldwide. We acknowledge the systemic racism that people of colour are subjected to on a daily basis, and we deeply regret the contribution made to this by our coverage of MSA’s charitable donations.

The Daily would like to emphasize that there exists no connection between the MSA and terrorist groups of any kind, while acknowledging that this link may, unfortunately, already have been made in some readers’ minds.

The November 14 issue’s cover image, as well as the article’s accompanying map and leading headline, obscured, and at times contradicted, the facts reported. This was a serious error. We should have emphasized more prominently that the MSA’s money was indeed allocated toward relief efforts, that the MSA donated the money to Benevolence International Foundation long before the organisation was ever linked to terrorism by the US government, and that there is no link between the MSA and al Qaeda. While these facts were included in the story, we sincerely regret that our presentation of the issue obscured this information.

Throughout the mainstream media there exists a discourse of “terror,” one that obscures critical thinking and reduces complex and nuanced situations down to buzzwords and alarmism. Part of this involves blindly accepting the US government’s targeting of specific groups as ‘terrorist,’ classifications that presume guilt without due process. The power and meaning of certain words – including “terror,” “fundamentalism,” and “al
Qaeda” – must not be underestimated. Using these words is far too easy these days, a practice too simple to be accurate. On November 14, The Daily fell into this very trap, and this was a mistake, for which we apologise.

At this point, The Daily would like to reiterate our commitment to our Statement of Principles. At the heart of this statement is a mandate that involves the analysis of power relations and an exploration of uneven power distribution. Under the Statement of Principles, we also seek to empower and give voice to marginalized individuals and communities.

Therefore, The McGill Daily will take a number of compensatory steps, both to investigate our own error in judgment, and to ensure that similar situations never recur. First, we invite the Muslim Students’ Association to draft a response to the coverage in question, to be printed in The Daily’s Commentary section. Second, we urge individual Muslim students and students of colour to write in and share any experiences of discrimination or of being targeted, so as to bring attention to such incidents. Next, we will begin work on a feature article examining media portrayals of terrorism, Middle East issues, systemic racism, and the discourse of ‘terror’. We also invite MSA to attend tonight’s editorial board meeting, in order to open a dialogue and discuss these issues in greater depth.

We wish to remind all McGill students that The Daily remains their voice on campus – a means to publicize events, analyse the current political climate, and bring attention to inequalities or injustices. Please continue to use it.

Source: http://www.mcgilldaily.com/view.php?aid=974