Islamophobia in the media

Islamophobia in the media refers to the occurrence or perception thereof that several media outlets tend to cover Muslims or Islam-related topics in a negative light. Islamophobia itself is an irrational or unreasoned fear of Islam and Muslims. "Since media coverage of Muslims and Islam is likely to shape the opinions of those who have limited or no contact with this religion and its people, it is important to analyze the potential associations these media portrayals might have with people's attitudes toward Islam in general and Muslims in particular."^[1]

Causes

Some researchers point to the Iranian Revolution in 1979 as a starting point for Islamophobia in the United States. It may be due to the growing influence of political Islam around the same period. In his book, The Modern Middle East, author Mehran Kamrava notes that the "rise in the popularity and spread of political Islam can be traced to the 1980s and even earlier, when a general trend in the politicization of Islam began sweeping across the Middle East following the Arab 'victory' in the 1973 War and the success of the Iranian revolution."^[2] Others find Islamophobia present in the United States far earlier and argue that Americans were using the fear of Islam as a unifying concept in defining America. Regardless, negative media images of Muslims in the 1980s and 1990s were compounded by reporting on Islam and Muslims that relied on Samuel Huntington's 1993 idea of a "clash of civilizations"^[3] for their framework; one that "the American media were all too ready to embrace after the fall of Communism in the late 1990s."^[1]

In 2011, the Center for American Progress published "Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America".^[4] The goal of the report was to expose the organizations, scholars, pundits and activists that comprised a network dedicated to the spread of misinformation and propaganda about American Muslims and Islam.^[5]

The report found that seven charitable foundations spent $42.6 million between 2001 and 2009 to support the spread of anti-Muslim rhetoric. The efforts of a small cadre of funders and misinformation experts were amplified by an echo chamber of the religious right, conservative media, grassroots organizations, and politicians who sought to introduce a fringe perspective on American Muslims into the public discourse.^[5]

Fox News

In 2009, Fred Vultee (PhD, University of Missouri) released an analysis^[6] of Fox News which sought to explore the media outlet's practices through the prism of Edward Said's concept of Orientalism; the practices "create an ideological clearinghouse for a uniquely menacing image of Islam." This image is one of a rational, progressive West at constant and irreconcilable odds with an irrational, backward East. In his study, Vultee asserts, "The discourse Fox creates with its audience helps to set a foundation for polarized commentary and to legitimize support for a limitless war on the unknown." As part of his investigation, Vultee analyzed the contents of foxnews.com from 2007 to 2009. According to his research:

A visit any day to the website of the Fox News Channel is likely to offer yet another piece of a sinister puzzle: the looming threat of Islam to everything the West holds dear. There is an armed threat, of course, in Afghanistan and Iraq and possibly as near as the shopping mall. But there is also a cultural danger that menaces all of Europe, that stalks coffee shops and classrooms, that endangers individual children and entire health-care systems with its irreducible demands, that hates Barbie and Valentine's Day and even the Three Little Pigs. And even as the West watches, they have overtaken us as the world's largest religion.^[6]

Fox News does not necessarily create the pieces of this puzzle. Much of their content and coverage comes from the Associated Press or is attributed to one of the newspapers belonging to the British arm of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp—The Times, The Sun and The Sunday Times. "What Fox does is act as a collator—a clearinghouse of unrelated and often quite unremarkable developments that, taken together, create a clear ideological dialogue with its audience about how to relate to and interpret the Islamic world."^[6]

In the February 2014 issue of the International Communication Gazette, Christine Ogan (PhD, University of North Carolina) and her colleagues published an article, "The rise of anti-Muslim prejudice: Media and Islamophobia in Europe and the United States."^[1] In their analysis of various polling data, the researchers note:

Empirical evidence for such a possible interaction between media coverage and latent anti-Muslim feelings is mounting. One study that analyzed Fox News viewers' anti-Muslim feelings reported, for example, that 60% of Republicans who most trusted Fox News also believe that Muslims were attempting to establish Sharia law in the United States. And as we reported earlier, those trusting Fox News the most also tend to believe that Islamic values are incompatible with American values (68%). That percentage is lower for those who most trust CNN (37%) or public television/new [media] (37%).

Portrayal of Muslims

Peter Oborne of The Independent wrote that newspapers such as The Sun tend to highlight crimes committed by Muslims in an undue and disproportionate manner.^[7] According to Nathan Lean, editor-in-chief, Aslan Media and a researcher at Georgetown University, the media play a major role in promoting Islamophobia across the world.^[8] Professor Humayun Ansari said that politicians and the media are still fuelling Islamophobia.^[9] Shafi Khan, a friend of the murdered students at the 2015 Chapel Hill shooting, said that politicians, such as Bobby Jindal, and the media were responsible for the death of his three dead friends.^[10] Vox Mediaeditor Max Fisher claimed that Fox News is only a small component of the Islamophobia on U.S media.^[11]

An American protester self-identifying as Islamophobic.

Fox News has also had to retract false claims about Muslims.^[12]

Media bias

According to Elizabeth Poole in the Encyclopedia of Race and Ethnic Studies, the media has been criticized for perpetrating Islamophobia. She cites a case study examining a sample of articles in the British press from between 1994 and 2004, which concluded that Muslim viewpoints were underrepresented and that issues involving Muslims usually depicted them in a negative light. Such portrayals, according to Poole, include the depiction of Islam and Muslims as a threat to Western security and values.^[13] Benn and Jawad write that hostility towards Islam and Muslims are "closely linked to media portrayals of Islam as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist."^[14]

Double standards in terminology

Egorova and Tudor cite European researchers in suggesting that expressions used in the media such as "Islamic terrorism", "Islamic bombs" and "violent Islam" while not using the same terms relating to non-Muslims have resulted in a negative perception of Islam.^[15] John E. Richardson's 2004 book (Mis)representing Islam: the racism and rhetoric of British broadsheet newspapers, criticized the British media for propagating negative stereotypes of Muslims and fueling anti-Muslim prejudice.^[16] In another study conducted by John E. Richardson, he found that 85% of mainstream newspaper articles treated Muslims as a homogeneous mass who were imagined as a threat to British society.^[17]

Disproportionate coverage

In 2009, Mehdi Hasan in the New Statesman criticized Western media for over-reporting a few Islamist terrorist incidents but under-reporting the much larger number of planned non-Islamist terrorist attacks carried out by "non-Irish white folks".^[18] A 2012 study indicates that Muslims across different European countries, such as France, Germany and the United Kingdom, experience the highest degree of Islamophobia in the media.^[19]

Fearmongering

"Ground Zero Mosque" protesters.

In 2009, a group of Muslim Americans planned to construct an interfaith community center in Manhattan at 45-51 Park Place, formerly a Burlington Coat Factory. Initial media coverage of the project was largely positive. However, in the months that followed, the coverage took a decidedly negative turn and media outlets dubbed the project the "Ground Zero Mosque." The actual coining of this term is attributed to conservative blogger and staunch anti-Islamist, Pamela Geller.^[1] That is significant, as the project was not a mosque and was not at Ground Zero. By 2010, media outlets like The New York Post and Fox News "began publishing and broadcasting sensational stories detailing New Yorkers' outrage over the project. CAIR and other muslim organizations were widely criticized for their dubbing of the protests as islamaphobic. "^[20]

The types of stories told by mainstream journalists, the ways in which these stories are told, and the selection of "experts" chosen as interview guests are increasingly influenced by the blogosphere. "Anti-Islam and anti-Muslim bloggers such as Pamela Geller and Daniel Pipes have fashioned themselves into legitimate experts on Islam largely on the strength of their blog following—both were highly visible in the mainstream news media during the Park51 debate."^[1]

On April 15, 2013, two homemade bombs exploded on Boylston Street near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. With three people dead and another 264 wounded, this incident is regarded as the most significant terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 2001.

In the confusion immediately following the attack, the mainstream media made several notable mistakes, including incorrectly identifying the suspects as "dark-skinned" or "Saudi males." Although such mistakes frequently happen in fast-moving news stories, the mistakes fueled public hysteria about Islamic extremism and led to the harassment of several innocent American Muslims or those perceived to be Muslim for their alleged involvement in the attack.^[5]

Media personalities

Some media personalities are associated with maintaining Islamophobic perspectives.

The obituary in The Guardian for the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci described her as "notorious for her Islamaphobia" [sic].^[21]

Arabophobia

After the events of September 11, coordinated by the Islamic terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, the media's interest in Islam and the Muslim community has been significant but considered deeply problematic by some. Within minutes of planes crashing into the Twin Towers in New York, "Muslim" and "terrorism" had become inseparable. Many scholars felt that the events of September 11 brought to the fore a marked tone of hysteria, frenzied and ill-informed reporting and a general decline in journalistic standards as far as discussions about Islam and Muslim were concerned.^[22]

In public discussions and in the media, Muslims are mostly portrayed as a monolithic bloc, a closed and united group of people who are totally different from or even intimidating and hostile to a likewise closed "West" which is Christian, secular, liberal, and democratic. The description of the Muslims and Western worlds as two contrasting, and contradictory poles leads to a dualistic understanding of relations, disregarding many fine distinctions and exceptions. The so called risk of Arabs has been hyped throughout by the media channels to an extent that now westerners see Muslims only in the context of somebody who is an adversary of the democratic world order and modernization.^[22]

Arabophobia stats

When Muslims and Islam are discussed on News Networks, it is often regarding the "War on Terror".^[23]

Response

Some media outlets are working explicitly against Islamophobia, and sometimes, the government is accused of conspiring.^[24] In 2008, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting ("FAIR") published a study "Smearcasting, How Islamophobes Spread Bigotry, Fear and Misinformation." The report cites several instances where mainstream or close to mainstream journalists, authors, and academics have made analyses that essentialize negative traits as an inherent part of Muslims' moral makeup.^[25] FAIR also established the "Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism", designed to monitor coverage in the media and establish dialogue with media organizations. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Islamic Society of Britain's "Islam Awareness Week" and the "Best of British Islam Festival" were introduced to improve community relations and raise awareness about Islam.^[26] In 2012, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation stated that they will launch a TV channel to counter Islamophobia.^[27]

Pushback

Two days after completing his short book: Lettre aux escrocs de l'islamophobie qui font le jeu des racistes (Letter to the Islamophobia Frauds Who Play into the Hands of Racists), Stéphane "Charb" Charbonnier, editor of Charlie Hebdo, was dead. Charb and 11 others were murdered on January 7, 2015 by Chérif and Said Kouachi in their attack on the Parisian office of the satirical magazine.

During his time as editor, Charlie Hebdo aimed its satire at Catholicism, Judaism and radical Islam in equal measure. In his final, posthumous missive, Charb rejects all accusations that he ran a "racist" or "Islamophobic" magazine. "He argues—from a left-wing, anti-racist, militantly secular viewpoint—that the word "Islamophobia" is a trap, set by an unholy alliance of Muslim radicals and the unthinking, liberal Western media. The real issue, he says, is racism and Charlie Hebdo was never racist..."^[28]

Charb on November 2, 2011

Really, the word "Islamophobia" is badly chosen if it's supposed to described the hatred which some lame-brains have for Muslims. And it is not only badly chosen, it is dangerous. From a purely etymological viewpoint, Islamophobia ought to mean "fear of Islam"—yet the inventors, promoters and users of this word deploy it to denounce hatred of Muslims. But isn't it odd that "Muslimophobia," or just "racism," isn't used instead of "Islamophobia."

...

Racist language—which pressure groups, politicians and intellectuals had managed to corral in the space between the mouth of the xenophobe and his kitchen door—has escaped into the street. It flows through the media and sullies the networks of social media.

So, yes, we are in the middle of an explosion of racist behavior—yet the word "racism" is used only timidly, and is on the way to being supplanted by "Islamophobia." And the campaigners for multiculturalism, who try to foist the notion of "Islamophobia" on the judicial and political authorities, have only one aim in mind: to force the victims of racism into identifying themselves as Muslims.

The fact that racists are also Islamophobic is, I'm afraid, irrelevant. They are, first and foremost, racists. By attacking Islam, they are targeting foreigners or people of foreign origin. But by focusing only on their Islamophobia, we are minimizing the danger of racism. The anti-racist campaigners of old are in danger of becoming overspecialized niche retailers in a minority form of descrimination.

...

A non-believer, however hard he may try, cannot blaspheme. God is only sacred to those who believe in God. To insult God, you have to believe that God exists. The strategy of the multiculturalists disguised as anti-racists is to muddle blasphemy and Islamophobia, Islamophobia and racism. Still, the word "Islamophobia" would not have enjoyed its glittering success without the complicity—often the stupid complicity—of the mainstream media. Why have they grabbed hold of it so quickly? From laziness, from love of the new and for commercial gain. They have no anti-racist motives in popularizing the word "Islamophobia." On the contrary.

To put it simply, any shock-horror story with the word "Islam" in its headline is a good seller. And ever since 9/11, the media have loved to shove on the stage that fascinating and terrifying character, the Islamist terrorist. Why? Because fear sells. The fear of Islam sells. And the Islam which scares people is the only Islam which the mass public sees.

Often, what the mass media present as news about Islam is just a caricature. But then, there are few protests from the organizations dedicated to hunting down Islamophobia. On the other hand, if radical Islam is actually caricatured—and openly caricatured – the Islamophobe-hunters shriek with anger. To get your name into the media, it is less risky to attack a little player like Charlie Hebdo than to criticize the big TV channels or news magazines.

...

As I said, Charlie Hebdo drew the Muslim prophet long before the scandal of the Danish cartoons. No organization or journalist expressed their horror. A few individuals sent complaining letters. That's all. No demonstration, no death threats, no terrorist attacks. It was only after the denunciation and exploitation of the Danish cartoons by a group of Muslim extremists that caricaturing the Prophet began to detonate hysterical crises in the media and among Muslims (though the media came first).

...

The drawing that showed Mohamed with a turban in the shape of a bomb became the best known. Not everybody interpreted it in the same way, but everyone could read it because there was no caption. Its critics decided that it was an insult to all Muslims: to put a bomb on the Prophet's head was to say that all believers were terrorists. But there was another interpretation that did not interest the mass media. (It was not scandalous and it did not sell newspapers.) To show Mohamed wearing a bomb on his head could be an attack on terrorists for exploiting religion. In this scenario, the drawing said: "Look at what the terrorists are doing to Islam; look how terrorists who claim to be followers of Mohamed see the prophet."

...

However, why do the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, who know that their drawings will be exploited by the media, by the retailers of anti-Islamophobia, by far-right Muslims and nationalists, insist on drawing Mohamed and other "sacred" symbols of Islam? Simply because the Charlie Hebdo drawings do not have the vast majority of Muslims as their target. We believe that Muslims are capable of recognising a tongue-in-cheek.^[29]

See also

• Islamophobia
• Xenophobia

References