Faith

This weeks Godd Weekend Magazine publised an interesting profile hinged on the current fascination with Muslim women. The subject of the article ‘Faith’, Irene Khan, has been Secretary General of Amnesty International since September 11th 2001. The wrap shamelessly introduces the controversy of this article, in an abrupt manner that can not fail to prompt the reader to continue.

“A Muslim women took the helm of Amnesty International just as terrorists too out the World Trade Centre. Stephanie Bunbury talks with Irene Khan about human rights post 9/11”

The bulk of the feature provides a very interesting insight into Irene Khan’s career, it does not however step outside this into her personal life which leaves the reader wondering about this women’s deeper motivations.

 

 

The impression this article gives is that the interview was a defensive one. It seems the Jounalist, Bunbury, is struggling to get a more personal perspective on the life of a Muslim woman dealing with Human rights abuses. It is however clear that Irene gives little personal insight and sticks to the hard stuff.

 

 

“We stay right on message; her secretary sits in , recording the entire interview in shorthand”

 

 

The only point where the article seems to reveal something more of the personal qualities of the subject, feels a little forced:

 

 

 

“She read the Koran. She read, along with the rest of the Empire’s children, Enid Blyton. “That’s right!” she says, her face lighting up. “The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and all that!” It is a momentary glimpse of what I suspect is the at home Irene Khan, who likes to cook great feasts for her family and sit at the dinner table all night.”

Interestingly, Bunbury relies on multiple Bloggers for perspectives on Khan:

Legions of bloggers damned her as “witless apparatchik”, a “dime-a-dozen loon”

 

“Those issues, however, were not half as rousing as her “propaganda for al –Qaeda”, to quote another blogger.”

The feature lacks a real connection with Irene, she was obviously a difficult person to profile and not willing to give away to much of herself. As a result the article is interesting from a political perspective but not a personal one. There is little emotion in the article, which leaves the reader feeling a little isolated from the suject. What we do learn is that Irene Khan has a hard job, she clearly faces a huge amount of criticism and this in turn would make her relationship with the press and strained one.

 

“Amnesty… was an organisation that once knew the meaning of the word ‘gulag’”, wrote columnist Anne Applebuam in the Washington Post. “Amnesty also once knew the importance of political neutrality……I don’t know when Amnesty ceased to be politically neutral or at what point its leaders’ views morphed into ordinary anti-Americanism”. The widespread accusation was that Khan was predictably hard on Americans and soft on “her own kind”.

 

Khan is painted as an unfriendly interviewee; who speaks “crisply” and who could “roll with any number of punches, she is small, compact and resolute”