Zohra Yusuf’s article is not against religion but against the distortion of religion for various ulterior motives.
GUJRANWALA: This is with reference to Zohra Yusuf’s article “Media’s role in promoting religiosity” (October 19). As I see it, the writer is not against religion but rather against the distortion of religion for various ulterior motives.
The race for higher ratings, larger audiences and thus a bigger chunk of the advertising pie naturally means that programming will tend to become more sensational over time. Of course, this doesn’t account for the fact — and this point has been mentioned in the article as well — that there seems to be a misplaced sense of absolute moral authority with which some scholars make pronouncements on television.
If ignorance, intolerance, a lack of accountability of one’s own actions and an overbearing tendency to blame the rest of the world for our ills are our dominant traits as Pakistanis, then the last thing we need is the delusion that we have the answer to everything. If we are to be a model Muslim society, we will have to begin with a heavy dose of introspection.
Kamran Ashraf
Published in The Express Tribune, October 21st, 2010.
