I’m sure just by reading the title of the post, you know exactly what this is. It’s something we all notice but no one ever talks about. A white woman goes missing, it’s national news. A black woman goes missing, it’s not even local news. And upon looking further into this you’ll realize that the news media isn’t a medium aimed to spread real, important news but rather, it’s a medium for reporting entertainment stories. And If you want to know what Dave Chappelle has to say about this subject, keep reading.

Shelton Sanders, a magistrate’s son who worked at the University of South Carolina medical school, was on track for his degree when he disappeared in June 2001. To date, no metropolitan newspaper outside his hometown has written an article about him.

Missing persons is big news. So let’s say (la qaddar Allah) that you get kidnapped and no one knows of your whereabouts. And while you are distressed no one knows where you are, you have a little hope that the media will report that you are missing and they will find you in no time! But wait, before you get excited I have a checklist for you. If you meet all of these conditions then you can be certain your story will be all over the news:

1. You have to be a woman

2. You have to be white, (sorry Latinas)

3. It will help a lot if you are either pregnant or a child

4. You have to be beautiful

5.You have to be under 35 years old

6. You have to be of middle or high-class status in society (poor people, you’re out)

If you don’t meet these conditions then consider yourself forgotten.

So why is this interesting to viewers? After all, these stories are reported more for entertainment purposes and human interest stories, rather than to actually help the person get found (this is a secondary purpose). The reason it’s interesting is because it appeals to the whole “damsel in distress” story.

You’ve probably heard of one or more of these people:

JonBenet Ramsey, Elisabeth Smart, Lucie Blackman, Laci Peterson, Jennifer Wilbanks (”The Runaway Bride”), Natalie Holloway and Jessie Marie Davis – to name a few

What do all of these women have in common? They are all white. People go missing all the time, but why is it that these select girls get chosen to get covered in the media? To me it’s sickening that the news media blatantly is telling people if you’re ugly and if you aren’t white, you don’t matter and you don’t exist to us.

Here are the real stats for people who go missing:

The fact that most of us would be shocked to learn that there are more men that go missing than women proves my point.

I remember a couple of years back a Muslimah from New Orleans was 8 months pregnant when she was murdered. She was stabbed severely several times, and no one knows who murdered her. The story got no media attention at all. And this was after Laci Peterson’s death, who was also pregnant at the time she was murdered. The difference between Laci and The Muslimah from New Orleans? MWWS.

In my minorities in the media class, A girl showed this video about MWWS. I went on youtube to find the censored version. And this was as sensored as it gets, so I apologize because apparently the FCC doesn’t sensor all bad words. Any thoughts?

So yeah I just registered my new site. It’ll take me a while to redesign and change the header and some aspects of the template but I figured It’s best that I keep it up and running for now.

I’m becoming more interested in learning about NLP or Neuro-linguistic programming. Since my field and specialty is public relations, the art of persuasion is something that I continue to study and try to master in both my writing and speaking for dawah purposes. So by all means if any of you know any good books and videos on NLP, let me know.

Anyway, everyone knows Fox News brainwashes people. But the question is have you ever really analyzed HOW they do the brainwashing? In this video a guy knowledgable about NLP stops a short segment shown on Fox News and describes each time NLP is being used to brainwash not only the audience, but the person being interviewed. Keep in mind that this is only a short segment, and that Fox News is played 24 hours a day. Here are the three videos: (this’ll make you mad)

I don’t know about the whole 666 thing, with the mathematical equation and everything. But it’s still interesting nonetheless. WAllahu Alem, it could really be something used with sorcery.

So I’m no longer writing for Islamonline.net. I was fired hehe. They like to call it “Administrative Changes” I wasn’t very comfortable referring people to that site anyway because of the questionable material and fatawee they had. Why exactly am I not writing for them anymore? read on…

Here was my first (and last) article I wrote for them:
Seeking the Highest

And just to give you some examples of the problems I saw:

1. When I turned in my first article they took out about 4 or 5 hadith that I used to support what I was saying. They said that Youth don’t like a lot of Quran and Hadith because it’s “Preachy.” To be honest, that’s really sad. The people who go to read Islamic articles online, aren’t really the ones who are completely lost. Also it supported what I said, and gave my words more credibility. So that was strike number one.

2. The way they edited my article: I was not made aware of the changes they had made to my article until after it was published. There were a couple of things, but the thing that surprised me the most was this sentence: “If you work toward haram goals in this world, your ultimate goal is lost; the goal of attaining Al-Firdaws; seeking Allah’s grace.”

They had changed “Seeking Allah’s FACE to grace” hmm no, I specifically meant Face. (Jallah wa 3ala.) Which tells me there’s a little bit of denying Allah’s names and attributes going on there. Although there is nothing wrong with seeking Allah’s grace, I’d rather not have people edit my articles as such.

3. They tried to control all email content! (which is actually the reason I believe they let me go):
If you look under the articles they have a generic email address. I asked them how I can check the email that gets sent to me or where it gets forwarded to, and they told me that it’s policy that they don’t let their writers have access to the emails. Instead, they will forward the emails to the writer if it is addressed to them. They also mentioned that they like to “See the feedback, and see how their writers are doing.”

That was strange to me. I’ve never seen any newspaper or magazine or company in general monitor the emails.

If that wasn’t enough:

4. They made me CC them when I would reply to the emails that would be sent to me. It was like Big Brother. Why do they need to see the naseeha that I’m giving to the youth? They come to me for advice and I give it to them.

I kept questioning their policies. And apparently they didn’t like that

Anyway with that said: Me, my sister, and a friend of mine were planning on starting a blog for the youth. Just in Baton Rouge alone, we have around 30 girls that regularly come to the Youth Halaqa every Friday night at the masjid. However, I’d like to make this blog something for all youth. It’ll be awesome, inshaAllah.

More updates on that soon inshaAllah.