I couldn't help it...

Help what exactly? Well, joining the community of bloggers so that I can share my concerns, opinions, and ideas about an issue that has been on my mind for some time already - the portrayal of Muslims in the Western media, and its effects on the image of Muslims and Islam in general that the media audiences (nowadays these amount to more or less the entire society) come to create in their heads.

Gee... could I write a sentence any longer and more sophisticated? I promise I will try to make my further postings more intelligible ;-)

Anyway, why do I, a Caucasian woman from a country with a rather negligible Muslim population, care so much about how members of this religion are being portrayed in the media? There are many reasons, the most important of which I list below in a convenient-for-eye bullet point manner to stay true to my promise to keep my postings simple ;-)

• I care about the life of minorities within a community - both local and global one.
• I value justice and equality very high - stereotyping, scapegoating, double standards, racism, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, and the like annoy me.
• I see a great danger in the way media in many Western societies portray Muslims, especially then after the attacks of 9/11.

So, if you can associate or identify with any of the above reasons, or even if you don't, but feel like you would like to learn a thing or two about the issue, or if you just want to make me happy, please keep checking my post - I will do my best not to bore you, and hopefully we can enlighten each other ;-) Yep, I said "we" and "each other" - I would love for you to leave me some feedback!