There is a lot of misunderstanding in the United States about Islam in general, Islamic Studies Chair Akbar Ahmed said during an American Forum Monday.
"We must be wary of joining terrorism with religion," he said.
Several experts on the panel debated whether anti-Americanism in the Arab world is as prevalent as "Islamophobia" is in the West in the years following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The term Islam or Muslim is used to modify terrorist [in the American media]," said Jane Hall, the panel's moderator and an associate professor in the School of Communication.
Liz Cheney, the former deputy assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter, said Al-Jazeera and other foreign media attempt to portray the United States in a certain way.
"To avoid the responsibility of objectivity makes Al-Jazeera much less credible," she said.
These issues of credibility and objectivity were what made the launch of the network ultimately a failure in promoting the transmittal of reliable information across the Arab world, she said.
"Al Jazeera was supposed to be different," Cheney said. "New and independent media."
Abderrahim Foukara, managing editor and New York bureau chief for Al-Jazeera, said the network is no less guilty of credibility issues as the U.S. media is and that his network's coverage is more in-depth.
While he admitted that coverage might have an anti-U.S. bias because it is connected to an "anti-American public," he said they did the best they could to present both sides of the story.
"I would be the first to admit that Al-Jazeera is an imperfect news outlet," he said. "But Al-Jazeera is also associated with a lot of credibility."
Peter Bergen, a journalist and a CNN terrorism expert, said the fact that Saudi Arabia and Iraq, two strongly Muslim countries, had banned Al-Jazeera was proof that the network was doing its best to provide fair and accurate coverage.
Al-Jazeera is not an anti-American monolith, he said.
The apathy of the American public towards world events is the bigger issue, according to Bergen.
"The American public tends not to be very interested in international news," he said.
Bergen called American media "a business," which means it has to sell the story - even if it means forgoing something like international affairs.
It is for this reason, according to Foukara, that Americans are exposed to so few new ideas or cultures and why so few really understand the Muslim world. "
There are a lot of good stories to tell in the Muslim world that just aren't getting covered," he said.
Ahmed said he questioned whether the lack of American coverage of Muslim issues was willful ignorance.
"If you have ignorance, you have arrogance."
Hall said that much news of the war in Iraq has disappeared from the radar screens of many media outlets. She cited this as evidence that many Americans are ignorant of the Muslim world simply because they have little reason to care.
"Americans aren't interested unless we have boots on the ground," she said.
