Thank you, sir.
I don't think we can correct—if that's the word to use—the approach that mainstream journalists will take, because they themselves are very harried and very hurried these days, and, frankly, journalism becomes lazy under those conditions.
But what I can tell you is that the good news lies in digital media. For example, many people who are seeking to make positive change no longer rely on the journalistic masses to get their messages out: social media does that for them. In fact, when I had to make the several statements that I did in Indonesia, I never submitted a press release. I said what I had to say via Twitter and that was picked up by the media.
The other thing to point out is that encouragement and support of entrepreneurial reform-minded Muslims would be a great help. Let me explain what I mean by “entrepreneurial”. For example, you talk about Muslims with my values, and I'll quickly enunciate what those values are. We can get them on the record: individual liberty; freedom of thought; universal human rights, meaning not cultural relativism, but that every human being, regardless of what religion or culture he or she comes from, is entitled to a basic set of human rights, such as freedom from violence, for example, and freedom of thought; and finally, pluralism of peaceful ideas. Peaceful ideas.... Jihadism, I don't tolerate.
So with those values, my team and I at the Moral Courage Project are actually creating a web-based TV channel, in partnership with Google, to spread the message of moral courage by telling the stories in two-minute video segments—no more than two minutes—of individuals around the world, including Indonesia, who are exhibiting moral courage, the point being that if people around the world can see that somebody who sounds like them, looks like them, and lives in that part of the world is able to make change, they'll ask: “Why can't I? Why shouldn't I try?” That really is the multimedia approach that I think will effectively bypass those journalists who simply do not have the capacity and sometimes the interest to pay attention to different angles of the story.
The final thing I will say in response to this question—a fulsome answer, as you predicted—is that it's also important, as we are striving to be sensitive, as we are striving not to reinforce negative stereotypes of Muslims, to remember that positive stereotypes can be equally dangerous. By that, I mean what I hear so often in this country: “You know, Muslims are a peace-loving people.”
Well, for the most part we are law-abiding, but where are the moderates who are willing to stand up to their own imams to say that anti-Semitism can no longer be tolerated in our mosques, or who will ask why, in the 21st century, do we need to be dividing men and women in our mosques when racial segregation, we all know, is wrong? How does gender segregation differ?
Where are both Muslims and non-Muslims who are willing to ask these questions? Too often, we're afraid of being labelled bigots, racists, or Islamophobes for doing so, but I would argue that if we're going to achieve a deeper meaning of respect, then we can't be treating one another as children, as infants who will somehow melt under the spotlight of our questions, but rather, that we respect one another enough to treat each other as peers, as equals who are capable of handling challenging questions. That is what our freedom is all about.