It is sad to witness how the media deal with Muslim-related issues, as the Canadian Islamic Congress indicated in its second annual "Anti-Islam in the Media" study.

Negative words are always used to describe them: terrorists, fundamentalists, fanatics.

You rarely hear these terms associated with any group other than Muslims. You will not hear the phrase Hindu fanatics, for instance, or Jewish terrorists - yet in each group there are bad people.

Mohamed El-Masry stated in the report, "Muslims are often portrayed as violent people and we belive that can lead to increased hate crimes against Muslims."

If a suspect of a crime is a Muslim, the media take the opportunity to bombard Muslims with all kinds of accusations. But when the suspect is not a Muslim, even if he or she belongs to a religious denomination, the action is associated only with the person and not the entire group to which he or she belongs.

Timothy McVeigh commited a horroific terrorist act on April 19, 1995, by blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma City, but this act was associated only with him. Why then do the media fail to use the same judgment when a suspect is a Muslim? Does that suspect represent all Muslims on the planet?

In Palestine on Feb. 25, 1994, a New York physician, Dr Baruch Goldstein, who belonged to a religious extremist group, opened fire on people praying at a Hebron mosque. He massacred 29 and injured many before he was killed. The crime was associated only with him and not the entire group to which he belonged. If he was a Muslim, the case would have been different. Is this fair judgment from the media or a double standard?

Associating an entire group with the actions of some of its members is unfair and unacceptable. In each group in society, there are good and bad people. The media should be cautious when playing with words because such words could create hatred among peoples.

Islam, like all other world religions, calls for peace and love and is against terrorism and violence. It allows the use of force only for two reasons: in self-defence and to resist oppression and tyranny.

(The Ryersonian, Wednesday, October 20, 1999)