Muslims Imagined by Western Media

Muslims Imagined by Western Media

Today’s society relies heavily on media for information and knowledge about cultures, people, and events taking place around the globe. However, many people are beginning to acknowledge the influence of media and its tendencies to stereotype and frame. The conceptual press has a significant impact on people’s perceptions of different things in society. Western audiences, mainly Britain, Canada, Australia, and the US, rely on the media as a significant source of information on Islam and Muslims. Although Muslims “worldwide represent around one-quarter of the global population, one-fifth of the world’s Muslim population inhabits countries where Islam is not the majority religion, including Western societies where Islam is the principal minority faith” (Eid, 2014, p. 99). Because of serious misunderstandings, Muslims are often misrepresented in Western media. In spite of efforts by most of the Western media to provide an objective and fair portrayals of Muslims, most of the coverage is negative. A majority of mainstream media sources provide information that contributes to negative perceptions of Muslims regardless of where they are.

Muslims Imagined by Western Media

Western media continues to perpetuate negative stereotypes about Muslims leading to the distortion of public perceptions about the religion and its followers. Eid (2014, p. 99) argues that “the systematic media stereotyping of Muslims can be a result of individual prejudice by media practitioners or can be traced to the institutional operational dynamic of media outlets.” Some of the factors contributing to negative portrayals of Muslims by the Western include the existence of different power regimes and media platforms. Most western societies represent Muslims as outsiders (Martin, 2004, p. 19). Despite the existence of objective and fair discourses on Muslims, there is a widespread stereotypical discourse on the followers of Islam by Western media (Eid, 2014, p. 100). For example, Muslims are portrayed as people who cannot participate in nation-building activities as their counterparts. Thus, they are mostly described as deviant, oppressive, corrupt, backward, uncivilized, and irrational individuals.

The stereotypes in Western media constructs an imbalanced society where the Western cultures are perceived as normal and superior when compared to the Eastern cultures. This portrayal reinforces the political, economic, and cultural domination of Western cultures over their Eastern counterparts. These types of media images lead to the representation of Muslims as incapable of leading and defining themselves thus should be controlled or feared (Eid, 2014, p. 100). For this reason, the Western media perpetuates images of the Muslims as medieval, superstitious, and barbaric in comparison to the West, which is projected as rational, modern, and civilized. The depiction of Muslims often focuses on Islam as a foreign religion, which in turn reinforces a sense of togetherness for all the people feeling threatened by the faith. For this reason, Muslims are mostly portrayed in Western media as violent, extremists, and people who are involved in terrorist activities.

The 9/11 and Western Media Representations of Muslims

Although the stereotypical depiction of Muslims in the western media was rampant before 9/11, the negative coverage increased after the event with a bias on violence and terrorism. There is a significant rise in the utilization of stereotypes in conversations targeting Muslims in Western media after 9/11. Because of these perceptions, the Muslims are mostly blamed for issues in the Middle East due to the beliefs that violence and backwardness are inherent within the Islamic religion (Eid, 2014, p. 105). The correlation of Islam and Muslims with terrorism is a crucial part of the conversations on terrorism and security. A “Muslim” and a “terrorist” are almost becoming synonymous in Western media, as many Muslims are labeled as terrorists. Themes of militancy and violence and their associations with Muslims dominate Western media. Consequently, Muslims are portrayed as villainous kidnappers, assassins, terrorists, and hostages.

Despite genuine attempts by some Western media to provide a balanced and fair portrayal of Muslims such as the PBS’ documentary “Saudi Women behind the Veil” (Eid, 2014, p. 103) that portrayed Muslim women realistically, stereotypical depictions persist. For example, the Australian media portrays Muslims as a threat to the country’s liberal and secular culture. Thus, the so-called Lebanese gang rape that occurred in August 2000 was linked to Islam, and the media brought up several issues with cultural rather than religious bases such as horror killings and female genital mutilation. The nature and intensity of the negative portrayals of Muslims increased after the 9/11 terrorist attack. Since this event, the Muslims have been portrayed as uncivilized, backward, and oppressive.

Moreover, Muslims are often described as enemies within, ungrateful persons, and illegal intruders. In Britain, the Muslims are framed both publicly and politically using their cultural traits. In most cases, they are represented as dangerous immigrants who are bringing alien values and practices that threaten the UK’s values (Bleich, Stonebraker, Nisar & Abdelhamid, 2015). Notwithstanding, Bleich et al. (2015, p. 944) assert that “British press headlines do not portray Muslims in a consistently or uniformly negative light.” The 9/11 attack created a hostile environment for Muslims across Western nations (Bleich, Nisar & Abdelhamid, 2015, p. 1111). The mainstream media in Canada and the United States tend to portray the Muslims as a threat to the values and the freedom in these countries (Alam & Husband, 2014, p. 242). Media organizations’ coverage of the Muslim world is characterized by islamophobia (Kanji & Hussan, 2019, para. 5). Eid (2014, p. 102) asserts that “islamophobia embodies a deeply embedded element of the mainstream culture of media coverage of Islam” in Western nations. Western media tends to propagate images, messages, and texts that stereotype Muslims as incompatible with western society. For this reason, the followers of Islam increasingly get scrutinized in the public spotlights particularly in the US (Samaie & Malmir, 2017, p. 1362). A similar depiction of Muslims can also be found in the United States’ media where Muslims as portrayed as terrorists, violent, and intolerant.

Causes of Misperceptions of Muslims in the Western Media

In light of the most negative depiction of Muslims in the Western media, it is essential to understand the reasons for the portrayals. Most western media categorize the adherents of Islam as a homogenous group. Notably, the mainstream media in the US have failed to acknowledge that Islam contains a vast diversity of people with differentiated cultural identity (Powell, 2018, p. 257). Western media tend to imagine Islam as a rigid entity of homogenous global adherents. However, Muslims are highly heterogeneous and come from different parts of the world (McAuliffe, 2001; Ali &Leaman, 2008, p. 39). Consequently, Muslims encounter different interpretations of their religious and cultural practices.

However, there are significant differences among Muslims, such as the varieties of Islam that should be considered. Western media represents Islam as a faith from medieval, a time that is based on fanaticism rather than reason (Powell, 2018, p. 257). Their depictions utilize descriptions of Muslims’ zeal and brutality, mostly correlating these behaviors to how women are treated (Eid, 2014, p. 103). These representations imply that Muslims as inherently primitive, leading them to become irrational, violent, and grounded in a mix of resentment and fear toward the West.

Besides, western media conceptualizes Islam as a religion that promotes polygamous marriages. Yet, the West is discouraging the propagation of the inequality between men and women, which is inherent in such practices. Most of the misrepresentations of Muslims in Western media result due to ignorance and inaccurate stereotypes (Ahmed &Matthes, 2016, p. 220). For example, the hijab is a common theme for depicting Muslim women, yet over 57 percent of women do not wear it, according to Eid (2014, p. 103). Western media associates the hijab with oppression, and people who wear it are mainly considered as brainwashed.

The conception of Muslims in western media is strongly linked to common topics framed in such media. For example, behaviors considered exotic such as horrific killings, receive more attention than other issues (Törnberg & Törnberg, 2016, p. 136). For example, when a Canadian man turned himself to the police for strangling his daughter Aqsa Parvez, the Canadian media declared it as an Islamic horror killing since Aqsa refused to wear a hijab and later generalized to other Muslim girls. However, Eid (2014, p. 104) posits that “Western and Muslim societies are positioned on opposing sides.” Each side views the other with utmost suspicion.

Conclusion

Overall, the depiction of Muslims in most Western media is discriminatory, dehumanizing, stereotypical, and racist with attacks no Muslims becoming visible, particularly after 9/11. Thus, a Muslim is always a suspect or a sympathizer of terrorist activities due to the framing of the 9/11 within the context of Islam. The image being perpetuated by the media result from distortions, false assertions, and the presentation of fringe elements where the media claims violence and horror-related killings are representative of the Muslim.