by SULMAN BHATTI 

The problem that Muslims have today is essentially one of branding.” The  proposition sounds jocose at first, but Omar Amanat explains the idea with absolute confidence: “In business, part of what makes a brand successful is the story behind it. As Muslims, we have a compelling story to share with the rest of the world, but we’ve allowed other people to speak on our behalf. We’ve been reduced to looking at caricatures of ourselves. We need to reclaim our stories and have the courage to tell them.” Amanat is where entrepreneurial finesse meets the global challenge of raising a religious community by its boot straps.

A graduate of University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, Amanat is a pioneer and stalwart of the electronic brokerage industry. He is founder and CEO of Tradescape Corp., a company that — before being sold to online broker E*Trade for $280 million in 2002 — had its largest branch office on the 83rd floor of the World Trade Center. Struck, like so many, by the surreal events of the Sept. 11 attacks, Amanat devoted himself to discovering the roots of “Muslim rage.” He was looking for what was contributing to emotions of humiliation and shame dire enough to lead individuals to commit suicide or take innocent lives.

His research led him to Grier and Cobbs’ "Black Rage," a book that detailed the African American experience with extremism and violence, highlighting the critical role of the media in fueling it. “Would the Rodney King video have caused nearly as much destruction and anger if it was not televised? What if it was not even taped?” Sensing a parallel between the African American and Muslim experiences, Amanat argues that the media plays a germane role in crafting individual identity and affecting the self-esteem of each community. As a natural entrepreneur, this is where he hopes to add value.

For Amanat, the key is to harness the massive power of the media to create something that is distinctly in-house: derived from the stories, cultural traditions and experiences of the 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide. He envisions using airwaves to heal rather than humiliate, to inform rather than inflame.To promote this effort, he has created a $100 million Hollywood Film Fund and Production company dedicated to producing films that will “help tell the stories that need telling.” He also personally commissioned Harvard Medical School to research the physiological effects on minorities who watch images of violence being perpetrated on fellow minorities.

Amanat’s solutions may be unconventional, but perhaps this is precisely what Muslims of the media-saturated, 21st century need.“We’ve reached an age where Spielberg is more important than Stanford, where McDonald’s is more important than M.I.T. Millions of individuals take their behavioral cues from TV shows. Businesses and the media have an extraordinarily powerful effect on shaping individual preferences and perceptions. And perception is reality.”