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Muslims urged to buy influence in world media Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:12 PM BST169
RIYADH (Reuters) - Muslim tycoons should buy stakes in global media outlets to help change anti-Muslim attitudes around the world, ministers from Islamic countries heard at a conference in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.
Information ministers and officials meeting under the auspices of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the world's largest Islamic body, said Islam faced vilification after the September 11 attacks, when 19 Arabs killed nearly 3,000 people in U.S. cities in 2001.
"Muslim investors must invest in the large media institutions of the world, which generally make considerable profits, so that they have the ability to affect their policies via their administrative boards," OIC chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told the gathering in the Saudi city of Jeddah.
"This would benefit in terms of correcting the image of Islam worldwide," he said, calling on Muslim countries to set up more channels in widely-spoken foreign languages.
Muslim stakes in Western media are minimal. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns 5.46 percent of media conglomerate News Corp., the Rupert Murdoch-run group behind the Fox News Channel. The U.S. channel is generally seen as right-wing and no friend of Arab or Muslim interests.
Washington's response to September 11, invading Afghanistan and Iraq and tightening civil freedoms at home as part of a wider "war on terror", has created a widespread feeling among Muslims worldwide that their religion is under attack.
A row earlier this year over Danish cartoons that depicted the Prophet Mohammed deepened the sense of a divide between Islamic culture and the West.
"The fierce attack on Islam in the five years since the September 11 attacks has forced us into a defensive position on our faith and understanding of our tolerant religion," Egyptian Information Minister Anas el-Feki said in a speech.
"Now more than ever we need a new Islamic media message that reaches all parts of the world," Feki said, citing Israel's recent 34-day war in Lebanon as one issue where Muslims needed to make their views and influence felt.
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