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Honoring Muhammad
September 15th, 2012 Posted in Policy and PoliticsThe thing is, I didn’t know we’d all gotten together and decided to officially call this guy “the Prophet Muhammad.” I know that’s what he is to 2 billion or so Muslims, but that leaves around 5 billion of us who are undecided on the matter.
It seems to be the case, however, that major news outlets have begun using the honorific title far more frequently. I don’t think that’s very good journalistic practice. I mean, to 2.2 billion Christians, Jesus Christ is “Lord Jesus Christ”—but we don’t expect The Washington Post to call him that.
I decided to do a news search, a very basic one, using Google and some simple filters. Basically, I wanted to see whether mentions of Muhammad have changed in six major news organs: CBS, NBC, ABC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. I began my search in 1998, in order to include a period when Muslim terrorists had begun more noticeably killing people worldwide, but before 9/11 and the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl.
The challenge is that there seems to be a rule that if you are Muslim, you need to name at least one of your sons Muhammad. So a news search for articles that refer to a Muhammad, but don’t call him “Prophet Muhammad,” will turn up Muhammad Jones, who robbed a liquor store in Detroit, or the handful of Muhammads who have played for sports teams, the many Muhammads who run Middle Eastern countries, and all manner of Muhammads who have beheaded Jews or blown up school buses or sniped motorists in the name of Allah.
So I added some terms to screen out the lesser Muhammads, essentially by identifying only articles that mention Muhammad as well as Islam and religion, in order to do a better job of isolating the articles that are most likely talking about the main guy.
Not a perfect screen, but it rules out a lot of chaff, and allows us to examine changes in the variable we care about, provided major news mentions of Muhammad the religious founder didn’t become significantly more likely to talk about him without mentioning the words “religion” and “Islam,” which is a scenario that seems unlikely.
I also used two major spellings, “Muhammad” and “Mohammed,” which tend to be the ones used by news outlets.
And as you can see, between 1998 and 2011, major news outlets tended to give Muhammad the honorific “Prophet” title less than 10 percent of the time. So far this year, however, around 67 percent of the time they call him “the Prophet.”
Again, this is imperfect, dependent on Google’s filters, and at the mercy of the steady stream of garbage and good stuff they have to sort through each time they return results for one’s search. There are plenty of articles, for example, where the journalist doesn’t label Muhammad “the Prophet,” but quotes someone who does. But the only way those articles could influence the overall results is if a much higher percentage of journalists now, in their articles about Muhammad, are quoting people who call him “the Prophet.”
In short, barring some tremendous error or spurious correlation I’m missing (certainly a possibility), there seems to have been a massive shift in major news discussions of Muhammad.
Now, there’s more sophisticated ways to go at this, and I’d love to see someone do it. But for now, the point I want to make, cautiously and judiciously, is WTF.
W.T.F.
Update:
Several people have rightly noted: “Wait a minute, dumbass — “Christ” is an honorific. The implication, of course, is that if the media have been calling the Nazarene “Jesus Christ” all along, and are only now getting around to calling the Meccan “the Prophet,” then maybe this is just leveling the playing field between two heavy-hitting religions.
Curious, I ran some numbers for just this year, and found that the same news organs in the foregoing analysis refer to “Jesus Christ” (as opposed to just “Jesus”) about 19% of the time. In other words, Mohammad is over three times more likely to receive his traditional honorific in a major news account than is Jesus.
A cursory look-through indicates many of these are articles talking about the religious figure, but once again, someone would need to do some serious digging and counting to ensure that this result isn’t biased by cursing (as in: “Jesus, Tony, don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”).
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[...] Tony Woodlief performs a back-of-envelope calculation of trends in the way major media outlets address Muhammed/Mohammed [...]
Tony,
Really interesting. I came across an article at American Thinker which asks whether there had been changes in the various media style guides.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/nyt_and_wapo_muhammad_is_the_p_1.html
I don’t know how such a large jump in such a short period of time could be accounted for, but perhaps major news outlets have had more pieces in which Islamic scholars or clerics are interviewed. Also, as the old arguments against American imperialism have waned (still there but we don’t hear about how they hate us because we want their oil or because of our freedom), it seems that our supposed degradation of Muhammed has taken greater prominence in their rationale for attacking our troops and embassies.
Possibly journalists consider ‘prophet’ to be more secular than ‘lord’. One definition of prophet is non-religious. They also might be worried about being blown to smithereens.
[...] TONY WOODLIEF CRUNCHES THE NUMBERS: [...]
Well, I spell it Moo-ham-n-ed, wherein is embedded a cow’s ass, a pig’s hock and a talking horse. So the Moo-slims can just go pound sand. Political Islam delenda est!
I’d be fine with the “Muslim prophet Muhammed”
But if newspapers refer to Jesus as “Jesus Christ,” they are referring to him by his title. It’s just that it comes after his name instead of before it.
i think the next step is for the media to not only refer to him as prophet but to add the honorific suufix PBUH after naming him as is common in the islamic world.
So let it commence
The Prophet Mohammad, Praise Be Unto Him
I mean really- why stop at half measures
if you is gonna be a suck-up—- be a complete suck up
Looking at your graph it sure does look like this began when Obama was elected. When the president bows to the king of Saudi Arabia, waxes sentimental about the accomplishments of Muslims, never says the word Koran without the word holy before it, remembers how he used to wake up to the beautiful sound of the azan should this be a surprise?
Why not try a run with Joseph Smith and the Prophet Joseph Smith. That will be an apple to apple comparison of two religious founders.
Chuck, that’s something worth exploring, to be sure. A casual perusal of articles indicates there’s a lot of titling by the newspapers themselves, in a manner they didn’t do before, but one would have to be more systematic in his examination before he could say with certainty that your hypothesis is valid.
Tony -
You seem to be laboring under the impression that Christ is Jesus’s last name. Christ means ‘Messiah’. So our media tend to use an honorific with Jesus too.
When speaking of various figures in the Hebrew Scriptures it is common to use the term Prophet just as many Greek Scripture figures are known as Apostles. Both terms are used commonly within our media (the Prophet Daniel, the Apostle Paul). Muslims accept and use those terms as well while adding one more, Muhammed.
The idea that using a simple honorific when referring to the holy figures of various faiths is some indication of impending dhimmitude is silly. We all use the term Dalai Lama instead of Mr. Tensin Gyatso or Pope Benedict instead of Joe Ratzinger.
Extending common courtesy should not be controversial.
If a descriptor or title is required, it would be appropriate and accurate to refer to him as The Alleged Prophet Mohammad.
Wfgodbold: great point. Just for kicks, I did a quick search of the same news organs for 2012, comparing how often they mention “Jesus Christ” versus simply Jesus without the Christ. The numbers I got were 3,840 for the former, and 16,200 for the latter, or about 19% conferring the honorific. Of course one would have to comb through the results to see if there’s just lots of articles cursing, or talking about accomplishments by other dudes named Jesus.
With all due respect… there are 13 million Jews who call these men Muhammad and Jesus. Period. One is not our Prophet and the other is not our Savior.
Seems to be what started all this mess to begin with.
Sorry.
Brian,
Your comment loaded as I was typing a response to someone with a similar point. I hear your point about honorifics coming with the territory in some cases, but I think what’s interesting is the relatively recent epiphany that this should apply in Muhammad’s case. I suspect if one were to dig in, he would find that the other supposed prophets are not accorded the same respect so readily. And for whatever it’s worth, Wikipedia, at least, suggests that this kind of thing doesn’t belong in an impartial discussion of the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Islam-related_articles
Bill,
I’m inclined to thank you for the one, at least. But thanks for the apology all the same!
1) “Christ” is Greek for “messiah,” which is Hebrew for “Anointed One,” i.e. the Savior of all mankind.
2) How would you label the Hebrew prophets in an article? “The Hebrew *writer* Jeremiah? Ancient Hebrew *author-activists* like Amos and Hosea?”
Tony -
I am surprised that it took this long to start adding ‘Prophet’ – as you’ve said, nearly every Muslim family has a Muhammed. It makes it easier to differentiate. I wonder if the use of standalone ‘Jesus’ will go down as the Hispanic use of the name is increasingly widespread.
Now, if they start putting PBUH after the name, I will concede you’ve got a point!
Hmm: It would be interesting to see how journalists would handle these other prophets, were they in the news more. My point is simply that there’s been a substantial shift, which makes one mutter, well, your handle here.
As someone else once said (or something close to it): “Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.”
One other thing to screen out, “false prophet, Muhammed”. There are quite a few people who think that, though most of us realize it’s picking a fight to go out and say so.
I plan to have a ham sandwich tomorrow
Have to use Prophet Mohamed. Otherwise, you could be talking about a billion different Mohameds. “That guy Mohamed, he thinks heard demons telling him what to do.” No one will know whether you are talking about their prophet, the guy who shot up DC a few years ago, or the CNN reporter.
I am not undecided. Muhammed is no prophet.
I like to mess with the Mohammedans by using variants of the “(PBUH)” they add after Mo’s name, whenever I mention him in comments sections, etc. My favorites are PB&J, PTUY, SBUH (think about it), PWTF, PBBW … chime in with your own!
“Christ” is certainly a title. But I suspect most in the media don’t know that. And so when they use it, they may not realize they’re using a title. Accordingly, the 19% almost certainly overstates media’s self-conscious usage of an honorific.
I just crunched some numbers of my own. Did you know that this post has as many comments (including this one) as your last eleven posts combined? Why does Islam touch such a nerve?
I enjoy the ideas that you share and the thoughts that those provoke; you are a gifted writer. So why the profanity that didn’t seem to enter into your writing so much before?
Adding the honorific is fine, but consider that he condoned and performed deliberate acts of violence. He condoned and preformed deliberate acts of thievery. So perhaps he is a prophet, but of whom?
Lorna,
That’s a fair question. The first time I wrote a curse word—a really good one, one that they wouldn’t allow in a Disney movie—on this site was January 31st this year. It was a reflection on Ray Bradbury (http://tonywoodlief.com/2012/01/31/almost-the-end-of-the-world/), in which I did that thing I do where I end up talking about something else, which in that case was Louis Farrakhan.
The thing is, every time I’ve thought about Louis Farrakhan, I’ve thought to myself: “That man is batshit crazy.” Only I could never write anything like that on my blog, because church people read my blog, and my mother reads my blog, and somebody will get offended. But THEN I remembered that as part of the unwritten agreement that is essential to any divorce, my ex-wife got all our church friends, and that my mother loves me no matter what I say, and I thought well hell, if I can’t say that Louis Farrakhan is batshit crazy on my own blog, then what, really, is the point, because there is no other description—go on, try to think of one—that will do quite as nicely.
Then in March I wrote “goddamn,” because that really seemed to fit (http://tonywoodlief.com/2012/03/04/listing/). I also used the word “bastards.” So that was a twofer.
I have written the word “shit” in essays for Image—the first time because I was quoting a movie (http://imagejournal.org/page/blog/frozen-heads-and-riven-hearts), and the second time because it fit, and because a nice lady had written in to say that she would love to share my essays with people at church, but she can’t because sometimes they have bad words.
I remember seeing a Bill Cosby routine, in which he talked about how his friends were encouraging him to use drugs. “Bill,” they said, “you’ve got to do this. It enhances your personality.”
“Yes,” he replied, “but what if you’re an asshole?”
“Asshole,” I will submit, was precisely the right word for Bill Cosby to use then. Were he someone who cursed all the time, of course, it would have been dull.
The point is, I guess, that sometimes, for me, right now, a curse word is just right. I don’t mean to offend you, however, and so I hope you’ll keep reading even if, just every once in a while, there’s a little coarseness.
Just for the record, PBUH is not for Praise Be Unto Him. The Qur’an explicitly affirmed that Muhammad was just a man and not divine, and was appalled more than anything else at the prospect of anyone praising anything or anyone other than God. PBUH is for Peace Be Upon Him.
I’m hearing “the prophet” attached to Mohammed’s name by BBC cable tv reporters. But wait, there’s more… CNN International cable’s Jim Clancy referred to the pope a few days ago as “the Holy Father”. So much for “objective journalism”…
[...] might remember my previous posts on the use of Prophet Muhammad. It all stemmed from Tony Woodlief’s observation that the use of the term had spiked in news articles and reports from a group of high profile media [...]
[...] Sand in the Gears: [...]
[...] interesting the various semantic decisions that the press makes. Rather suddenly, Muhammad became Prophet Muhammad. My guess is that it has to do with the commonality of Muhammad as a name. If Jesus were common [...]