ABC fakes Muslim prejudice, unsurprisingly finds 'Islamophobia' in America
By Warner Todd Huston
web posted March 3, 2008
Apparently to prove that the US is filled with Muslim hating Yahoos, ABC went on the hunt to find "Islamophobia" in America and the result is "Witness to Discrimination: What Would You Do?" Since they didn't really know where to find any, ABC News decided to create their own prejudice against Muslims by hiring an actress to put on Muslim dress and get "confronted" by a Muslim hating coffee store server — also an actor hired by ABC. Then, they rolled the cameras, opened the doors to the public and, viola, ABC "found" prejudice in America. How hard is it to "find" something that you invented in the first place? Let's find out…
ABC is "shocked" to find that their little manufactured moments revealed how some customers reacted. "Bystanders Turn Away When Muslim Actor Hired By ‘Primetime' Encounters Hostility," ABC proclaimed.
ABC begins their report assuring us all that "Islamophobia" is rampant in America.
The Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraq war and suicide bombings worldwide have changed not only the way we live but the way we look at those around us, especially Muslims. "Islamophobia" has entered the American vernacular, and the anti-Muslim attitudes and prejudice it describes remain common.
Prejudiced attitudes against Muslims "remain common"? Does it really? Is ABC telling us that Muslims are being widely discriminated against in this country since 9/11?
Well, ABC may be claiming this is so, but the FBI sure isn't. According to Investor's Business Daily, the FBI has found that anti-Muslim crimes in the USA is not so "common" as ABC wants to make us believe.
Not only are anti-Islamic hate crimes way down, but they're a fraction of overall religious hate crimes. The overwhelming majority of such crimes target Jews, something CAIR and other Muslim groups don't seem all that concerned about.
In 2006, a whopping 66% of religiously motivated attacks were on Jews, while just 11% targeted Muslims, even though the Jewish and Muslim populations are similar in size. Catholics and Protestants, who together account for 9% of victims, are subject to almost as much abuse as Muslims in this country.
So, how the heck did ABC find all this "Islamophobia" in America? They created it out of whole cloth and then stepped back to see people "react" to it.
ABC's production crew outfitted The Czech Stop, a bustling roadside bakery north of Waco, Texas, with hidden cameras and two actors. One played a female customer wearing a traditional Muslim head scarf, or hijab. The other acted as a sales clerk who refused to serve her and spouted common anti-Muslim and anti-Arab slurs.
ABC then filmed the outcome of their set-up, their entrapping situation, and reported that… gasp… there is prejudice in America. But, even at this they only found one guy that expressed any measure of support for the anti-Islamic sentiment. And even that lone guy was more in favor of a business owner being permitted to run his business how he wanted to run it.
What ABC apparently found most "shocking" was that most regular folks would simply turn away, essentially trying to ignore the situation. ABC seemed to read this as some sort of inherent racism on the part of the stunned customers.
Even though people seemed to have strong opinions on either side, more than half of the bystanders did or said absolutely nothing. This is a familiar reaction for many Muslims such as Javed. "I was shocked because when these things happen to me in real life … I never see what happens after I walk out of that store," she said. "I would try to justify … that they probably didn't hear it … when I watched it, I realized, no, they hear it and they see it and they're okay with it."
No, sir, they weren't necessarily "OK with it." For most people who aren't confronted with such situations on a daily basis, the shock of the altercation will leave them stunned, bewildered, and unable to act very quickly to such a situation. This is human nature, not any innate "Islamophobia." Most people just fear getting themselves involved in any sort of altercation. It's called the "flight" reaction. Many people just want to shrink from trouble and run away to preserve themselves.
In any case, even as ABC tried to pretend that everyone hates Muslims in America, even their own report revealed people who stood up for the young "Muslim" woman that they thought was being discriminated against.
So, in the end, what we have here is ABC sensationalizing a "racism" that doesn't exist at the sort of so-called high rates that they are trying to make us all believe it is happening. ABC wanted to find "Islamophobia" so it went out and created it.
No wonder they "found" it, huh? 
Warner Todd Huston is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.