EDUCATIONAL STUDIES, 46 3–24, 2010Copyright C© American Edu.docx

EDUCATIONAL STUDIES, 46: 3–24, 2010
Copyright C© American Educational Studies Association
ISSN: 0013-1946 print / 1532-6993 online
DOI: 10.1080/00131940903480217
ARTICLES
Images of Islam in US Media and their
Educational Implications
Liz Jackson
Northwest Province Department of Education, Republic of
South Africa
Educators teaching about social difference and about minorities
in society face
a variety of challenges in effectively teaching students accurate
and balanced un-
derstandings of different groups in society, including,
particularly, the competing
influence of the mass media on young people’s minds. Whether
one views rep-
resentations in contemporary US media as directly educational
to youth, or as
more reflective of common beliefs and attitudes deemed
acceptable or normal in
mainstream society, it remains clear that controversial
minorities are vulnerable to
stereotyping in this domain that has at least an indirect
influence on young people,
and that must, therefore, be taken into account by multicultural

educators as partly
constitutive of students’ background knowledge/experience.
In this article, I illustrate this challenge for multicultural
education by reference
to some of the common themes that emerge in widely
disseminated images of
Islam and Muslims in US media since September 11, 2001
(9/11). Although many
insightful accounts emphasize a systematic, structural, and/or
comprehensive
character to Muslim misrepresentation in Western/US media
throughout the
later half of the twentieth century (Hudson and Wolfe 1980;
Kamalipour 1997;
Karim 2002; Kincheloe and Steinberg 2004; Mousa 1984; Said
1979, 1997;
Shaheen 2001), it is important to consider chiefly
representations of this group
since 9/11, given the likelihood that recent media accounts may
be more
Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Liz Jackson,
Educational Policies Consultant, North-
west Province Department of Education, Private Bag X1003,
Swartruggens 2835, South Africa. E-mail:
[email protected]; [email protected]
4 JACKSON
reflectively produced, for instance, given recent government
statements disallow-
ing hatefulness toward Islam and Muslim in US society (Bush
2001). Additionally,

media changes so rapidly that old structures of film and news
journalism that
predominated at earlier periods in media history are no longer
necessarily central
to an objective view of contemporary media representations;
thus I want to largely
discard earlier findings regarding mainstream media coverage of
Islam, focusing
here instead on what is normal in media representations today,
since 9/11, and its
implications for education.
After elaborating on my understanding of the impact the media
has on young
people, I provide an overview of recent popular representations
of Islam and Mus-
lims, showing how this minority group is regularly and
commonly portrayed in
mainstream media in negative, stereotypical ways, especially
since 9/11. Articu-
lating this trend as a challenge to teachers aiming to provide
students with more
balanced, impartial understandings of Islam and Muslims, I go
on to elaborate
on the need for thematic, analytical, and critical media literacy
in social studies
classrooms that responds to the irresponsible, incidental
education of mass media,
discussing in relation some best teaching practices for managing
resources to learn
about Muslims and related topics in public schools today.
THE IMPACT OF MEDIA
There are two ways in which media (news media and popular
culture and enter-

tainment sources) are commonly viewed as educational. In the
first sense, people
learn what to think and how to behave from media sources,
viewing information
on the news as matter of fact, or the characters on a televised
sitcom as models
for normal behavior, for example. Many find this view most
compelling when
considering media’s impact on young children, whose
understanding of the dis-
tinction between reality and fantasy is not set in stone. For
instance, Robert Schrag
argued that children’s first stories teach them about the real
world, as well as the
criteria for assessing the narrative fidelity, or truthfulness, of
later media accounts
or messages, lacking “prior stories or authoritative instructions
to the contrary”
(Schrag and Javidi 2005, 214).
As an example, Schrag suggests that, lacking prior learning or
experience
with Middle Eastern culture, young children are bound to learn
from Aladdin—a
Walt Disney film marketed to young children that has sold tens
of millions of
copies—that Middle Eastern fruit sellers are commonly prone to
violent rage
upon discovering a single apple has been stolen from their cart
(Schrag and Javidi
2005). A similar view of media as unduly and directly
influential to children was
used in defense of twelve-year-old Lionel Tate, who was tried
in 1991 for killing
a six-year-old girl by body slamming her as he commonly
observed contestants in

World Federation of Wrestling do on television (Cortés 2005,
69–70).
EDUCATIONAL STUDIES 5
Others argue that such views of the impact of the media are
overly simplistic,
however. Older children clearly recognize Aladdin as fiction,
rather than reality,
and can bear in mind alternative renderings of Middle
Easterners as they watch
the film. It is not that younger children identify the story as
real, but that they
lack the prerequisite ability to distinguish between reality and
fantasy needed to
make such an evaluation. It makes more sense, therefore, to
view the educative
impact of media as more indirect—as a framing or reflection of
popular ideas,
beliefs, and perceptions, rather than as directly instructional: as
a source of ideas
and attitudes, shaped by producers’ expectations about their
target audience, that
one can respond to with more or less criticality (Hall 1973;
Morley 1980). As
Carlos Cortés notes, “Media teaching does not guarantee media-
derived learning,
just as classroom teaching does not guarantee classroom
learning” (2005, 58–59).
He goes on,
Both critics and defenders of media often address the wrong
proposition when
debating the media’s behavioral role modeling. It is difficult,

generally impossible,
to prove that the media have actually caused something to
happen (after all, millions
may watch the same move or television show without imitating
that behavior).
Rather, the question should be tweaked in the following manner:
If it were not for
the media, would this have happened? . . . How likely is it that
Lionel Tate would
have dreamed up the particular body slams that killed Tiffany
Eunick?
But consider some dimensions that are not framed as potential
cause-and-effect
provocation to action. Some critical theorists argue that media
fostering of
“nonchange”—or at least a reduction in the speed of change—
may constitute the
most important behavior-related aspect of the media. From this
perspective, interra-
cial buddy movies and desegregated TV news teams may
actually retard the process
of social change. Rather than role modeling integration, they
may surreptitiously sug-
gest that social change is occurring so rapidly and normally that
additional special
efforts are unnecessary.
Then there is the issue of disinhibiting effects. . . . Do movies
that celebrate vigilan-
tism contribute to societal violence by removing inhibitions to
imitative behavior?
Or do they reduce violence by providing viewers a catharsis for
pent-up frustrations?
Do films with teenage sex disinhibit such activity by making it
appear normative and

safe. . . . Or do they provide a vicarious substitute for the real
thing? (Cortés 2005,
70)
As Cortés (2005) illustrates, the impact of media is not
necessarily simple or
straightforward, but can be, in many cases, understood as highly
complex. Thus,
there is second, more general, way that media can be viewed as
educational: for
what is says about us—its producers and audience. By
examining norms and
trends in popular or mainstream media, one can uncover what is
valued or held as
6 JACKSON
legitimate in mainstream society—what is regarded by media
producers informed
about mainstream norms as acceptable, and what is not.
For example, it is still common for movie stars to smoke
cigarettes in
realistic mainstream films, because, regardless of anti-smoking
campaigns,
smoking is not considered a taboo in mainstream society today.
Libertarianism
toward smoking still permeates the society sufficiently to make
smoking by film
stars tolerable and normal, if not also attractive and desirable,
as long as they are
not literally advertising cigarettes to minors. Some audience
members respond
critically to media messages implying that smoking is socially

acceptable, while
others are more favorable. Yet the commonality of smoking by
protagonists in
mainstream film, nonetheless, reveals that, according to
mainstream producers’
information, smoking is not considered to be beyond the bounds
of social norms;
it is regarded normally as an expected, largely acceptable,
behavior that need not
require a critical response or prohibition on the big screen
(McCarthy 1998).
Here, I understand media’s impact on young people primarily in
this second
sense, as a reflection of mainstream cultural/social norms, as I
examine contempo-
rary trends in representing Muslims for their educational
implications. I argue that
the commonality of stereotypical representations associating
Muslims with terror-
ism in mainstream media reveals widespread belief among the
producers of media
messages that the association, or connection, is normal,
reasonable, and/or accept-
able, which is then implied to, and learned by, young people,
rather than the view
that, alternatively, the association is biased and stereotypical
and harms Muslims,
making them vulnerable to prejudice and discrimination in the
public sphere.
Journalists or writers of fictional accounts may not intend to
develop or
sustain an association of Muslims with terrorism—indeed, they
may intend to
express the opposite, or criticality toward this connection, if

they desire any in-
fluence on long-term audience perception at all. Yet out of the
sum of otherwise
heterogeneous portraits and stories of Islam, nonetheless,
emerges this common
connection, which is “what a large cross-section and hegemonic
part of [society]
‘already knows’“ (McCarthy 1998, 83). Mass media associates
Islam and Mus-
lims, by and large, with terrorism, portraying the religion and
the group most
frequently as unreasonable, fundamentalist, and/or prone to
reactive violence.
Although some may dismiss this informal education, or
critically respond to or
reject it, teachers are responsible for helping their students
learn about the world
around them, and effective teaching about social difference
depends upon teachers
considering students’ knowledge and background experience in
a subject matter in
the course of their teaching. Critical teachers should, therefore,
keep this popular,
but harmful, disposition toward Islam and Muslims in mind as
they try to enable
students to develop more accurate and balanced understandings
of the religion
and the group, responding to media actively and critically in the
course of their
teaching.

ISLAM IN CONTEMPORARY NEWS MEDIA AND POPULAR
CULTURE
Common sorts of representations of Islam recently given in
news media illustrate
that the assumption that Muslims are, may be, or are like
terrorists has remained
ever present in well-known mainstream representations of this
group since 9/11,
even if this assumption is sometimes played with or framed
critically. Although
one can hardly say from this sample that people learn to see
Muslims as terrorists
from media, or that mainstream media messages are exclusively
or intentionally
negative toward Muslims, or anti-Islamic, the sample does
demonstrate that it is
popular to associate Muslims with terrorism, and is therefore
implied as acceptable
or legitimate by American mass media.
To best understand media representations of controversial
minorities, it is im-
portant to recognize the relationships between media and real-
world events. In
the case of contemporary media, the association of Muslims
with terrorism or
violence did not come strictly from a film writer or journalist’s
imagination.
Journalists could have hardly interpreted the terrorist attacks of
9/11, plotted by
self-identified Islamic radicals, without reference to a group of
Muslims that au-
diences keenly wished to know more about (although many do
question, however,
the media’s repetitious framing of 9/11 in religion terms, when

compared with
their treatments of other attacks conducted by members of other
religions; see
Abukhattala 2004, 158; Karim 2002; McBrien 2005, 28). Thus,
the media is not
simply free to portray things however they would like, but
depends upon audience
interests (among other factors, not the least of which includes
owners’ personal
and political interests) in depicting facts and fictions.
In this section, I examine, first, 9/11 as a major media event
influencing popular
perception, not necessarily unduly, and related portrayals of
Osama bin Laden,
perhaps the most well known (and certainly the most visible)
Muslim in the United
States today, as well as the ultimate enemy of the state. I argue
in the case of the
proliferation of images and information about bin Laden that
real-life terrorism
contributes substantially to the commonality of associating
Muslims with terrorism
in the US mass media, but that it is, nonetheless, a highly
imbalanced representa-
tion of the group, focusing on the very narrowest margin of
Muslim people and
experiences, owing to the news’ focus on the exceptional over
the ordinary. I then
show how a similar theme emerges in political cartoons,
particularly since the
Dutch cartoon protests, where imagery portrays Muslims as
exceptionally violent
and antagonistic, rather than as ordinary or peaceful. These
various representations
largely present roughly the same negative stereotypical

perspective on Muslims, I
argue here, to the detriment of members of this religious group
in society, lacking
an education aiming to actively counteract potential
miseducative effects of the
media.
8 JACKSON
Newsworthy Imagery Since September 11, 2001: Osama bin
Laden
The mediation of the events of 9/11 brought real fear and a real
villain, who
happens to self-identify as Muslim—bin Laden—to ordinary US
households.
Journalists portrayed a world of great uncertainties that day,
initially, knowing
no more than most people did, as James Carey (2002) recalls:
“While it was
clear, following the second crash, that these were deliberate acts
rather than a
spectacular coincidence, no one was sure that the episodes in
New York and
Washington were not a prelude to an even wider attack on
multiple sites across the
country” (73). As those covering 9/11 were initially unable to
comprehend what
they were reporting on and showing to television, radio, and
Internet audiences
and lacked much official information for days after, the events
of the day were
represented as urgent, yet incomprehensible. As Michael Apple
(2003) recalled, “I

sat and watched—for hours. Interviews, screaming people
running away, running
toward. . . . Another plane—this one missing. What was its
target? Then came
the news that the pentagon was hit” (300). Journalists and
audiences struggled
together without official information to know exactly what was
happening, and
waited as resources were collected to make sense of the day’s
events.
Within days, previously identified terrorist suspect bin Laden
and the group of
al-Qaeda were identified as leading suspects plotting the attack,
and on September
20, then-President George W. Bush (2001) identified both as
enemies of the United
States, emphasizing incidentally in his speech that “the enemy
of America is not
our many Muslim friends,” but “traitors to their faith, trying, in
effect, to hijack
Islam itself.” At this juncture, the media took on the task of
informing the public
about bin Laden, and other terrorist suspects and groups, but did
not see the
need to educate about the other, truer Muslims, as discussed by
Bush—about
the diversity of Muslims within and outside the United States.
Quotations of
bin Laden speaking out against the West and the United States
before and after
9/11 were presented, sparingly—to some the publication and
transcription of
enemy statements was viewed as antithetical to state interests
(Carey 2002; Bush
2005)—although other Muslim leaders’ statements and

perspectives received even
less attention and publicity, leading plausibly to large cross
sections of the public
claiming knowledge of Muslims teaching hatred and promoting
violence, but
lacking awareness of any Muslim leaders condemning terrorism
(see Council on
American–Islamic Relations [CAIR] 2006).
By far, the most frequently represented (self-identifying)
Muslim, bin Laden
has become a sort of icon representing Muslim terrorists who
describe their actions
by reference to their (mis)understanding of the dictates of Islam
(Borradori 2003;
Kellner 2004, 37). He has since been portrayed in negative
ways, as a sinister
villain, in alignment with the public understanding of him as a
clear, embodied
form of the threat apparent since 9/11 to US society or the
nation-state. Although
such a form of representation may be reasonable—it is certainly
not in the interest
FIGURE 1 Bin Laden, photograph 1.
of American media to glorify or empathize with bin Laden—as a
consequence,
the single most common representation of a Muslim (albeit one
self-professed,
and largely against the expressed interests of many other
Muslims) has, since

9/11. been of a scary, shady character: an unlikable, intolerable
enemy of society.
Thus, although one might hope that the most common
representation of Islam in
American mass media is of an ordinary, good man, woman, or
group of believers,
instead it is of a dark, often even disembodied, presence, who
is, in his own words,
out to “get” Americans.
Consider Figures 1 and 2.
In these images, bin Laden appears in thoughtful social or
interpersonal engage-
ment, communicating with others or his photographer
peacefully, or nonviolently:
in the first image at a political event, and in the second, in
apparent tranquility or
serenity. Neither framing of bin Laden reflects that he is
violent, or even perturbed.
He appears as engaged meaningfully and productively with
others in both images.
His body is apparent in both, with his hand(s) and torso visible.
The message these
pictures convey is of a possibly ordinary Muslim man in
nonviolent interaction
with others. In neither picture does he have the expression
emphasized in images
of bin Laden in the US popular press since 9/11, such as in
Figures 3 or 4.
10 JACKSON
FIGURE 2 Bin Laden, photograph 2.

In stark contrast, these cover images from Time and the New
York Times Maga-
zine graphically portray a very different sense of the man. In
them, all is obscured
but his beard and head covering (which are divergent from
American norms, them-
selves reflecting his divergent culture and faith) and his facial
features; his shoulder
is even blurred from view in the photographic image (Figure 3).
Unlike either of
the first two, his eyes are looking slightly upward, as if he is
watching somebody,
FIGURE 3 Bin Laden Time cover image.
or the audience to the image, and the meaning or emotion of his
expression is not
immediately clear or relatable—is he grimacing or smiling? His
expression is less
clear, or relatable, than it is in the previous two images. In
these cover images, he
is also framed with words, expressing that he is a target and an
enemy.
12 JACKSON
FIGURE 4 Bin Laden New York Times image.
In contrast to the rest, Figure 4 is obviously a painting, rather

than a photo-
graph, commissioned for the New York Times by Brenda
Zlamany. It is a shadowy
impression of a man, emphasizing his iconic status as the
ultimate enemy of the
state. By making dramatic imagery of bin Laden the most
common representation
of a Muslim since 9/11, the media, nonetheless, provides for,
and perpetuates, a
visual association of Muslims with terrorism and fear. To put it
another way, the
most visible Muslim in America is an actual (that is, self-
professed) menace to US
society, a real-life villain, and his stature as such has led to a
proliferation of im-
agery connecting Islam and Muslims with terrorism in the mass
media, rather than
a series of pictures and stories connecting Islam Muslims with
(less newsworthy)
condemnations of terrorism, or acts of peaceful cross-religious
collaboration, for
instance.1
This major theme in the visual representation of Islam in mass
media since
9/11 undoubtedly contributes to a public demonstrating high
awareness of Mus-
lims wishing it harm, and of radical elements unaligned with the
majority of
Muslims, over other points of view on Islam. The CAIR found
that those who

expressed intolerant attitudes and positions toward Islam and
Muslims among the
American public most commonly knew of this singular framing
of Islam, as a
radical religion inspiring violence and terrorism. That one-fifth
of the popula-
tion could be categorized thusly, while two-thirds claimed to
have not heard of
Muslim leaders condemning terrorism, is attributable, according
to CAIR, to the
mainstream media viewing acts of terror as “more newsworthy
than statements
condemning senseless violence” (2006, 11). Their polling also
revealed that a vast
majority of Americans cite their major source of information
about Islam and
Muslims as television. On television there can be little doubt
that the most cited
Muslim man is bin Laden, rather than any other more internally
popular or more
important religious leader.
To summarize, the most common graphic representation of
Islam or of Muslims
since 9/11 has been of a man identified as a terrorist, bin Laden.
Other Muslims
identified as state enemies, such as others identified as
terrorists or sponsors of
terrorism (in particular Saddam Hussein) surely also rank
highly. Of course, the
media should not be held as solely responsible for this
representational imbalance;
after 9/11, “Osama bin Laden” ranked the highest among
subjects of Internet
searches, revealing a widespread interest, or need to know,
about Muslims in

association with terrorism, that media appropriately aims to
respond to, in part
(Bird 2002, 149; Google 2001;).
Yet the result remains that a Muslim “bad guy” is fore-grounded
in media
over other Muslims and despite the diversity of Muslim
experiences. And this
trend can also be seen elsewhere in mass media accounts: As I
show in the next
section, imbalanced representations of Islam emerge in recent
political cartoons,
particularly since the recent Dutch cartoon protests, which
further demonstrates the
extent to which the visual association of Muslims with terrorism
is commonplace,
if not predominant, in news spaces, reflected as a normal view
in mainstream
media that need not be perpetuated, yet is—to the detriment of
Muslims in our
society and across the world.
Political Cartoons
As Maher Al-Hajji and Jack Nelson (1997) observed, “One of
the strongest
weapons a newspaper uses to forcefully state a point of view is
its editorial
14 JACKSON
FIGURE 5 Cartoon 1: Radical Islam.
cartoons” (394). As images rather than statements, political

cartoons can express
popular sentiments and perspectives without acquiescing to the
demands of jour-
nalistic objectivity that prevail in most of the rest of news
pages. These sentiments
can be conveyed without any reporting, providing particular
sorts of perspectives
in an otherwise possibly objective or neutral space, that may
bare little relation
to the real world. In this domain, Muslims as terrorists, or as
violent, uncivi-
lized people, are the most common sorts of Muslims portrayed
today, as in the
past (Al-Hajji and Nelson 1997; Palmer 1997). Consider the
cartoons, shown in
Figures 5, 6, and 7, published in major US newspapers years
after 9/11, in relation
to controversy surrounding a Dutch newspaper seeking cartoons
portraying the
Muslim prophet Muhammad, to the upset of many Muslims (and
non-Muslims)
who regard imagery of the Muhammad (or Allah) as a taboo in
Islam.
While alluding to an important social debate regarding the
rights of illustrators
and cartoonists to free speech versus the interests of religious
communities and
Muslims, these political cartoons clearly echo the terroristic
view of Muslims
as vengeful and unreasonable, archaically flinging about swords
to intimidate or
kill more deliberative non-Muslims. No mass published political
cartoons dealing
with the debate portray any calm, apparently reasonable
Muslims, questioning

the newspaper’s interest or considering the potential harm
involved in breaking
FIGURE 6 Cartoon 2: Cartoon controversy.
FIGURE 7 Cartoon 3.
16 JACKSON
FIGURE 8 Cartoon 4: “Islam.” The gun holder reads,
“terrorist.”
their religious taboo; nor does one see any evidence of actual
violence done to
those peacefully protesting the newspaper’s actions (which
included Muslims and
non-Muslims; AFP 2008). Indeed, it is hard to find in the
United States cartoons
depicting the Muslim as anyone other than an antagonistic,
violent (vengeful,
armed, and bearded Arab) man—Pulitzer Prize winning
cartoonist Clay Bennett’s
“Islam” comes closer than most (see Figure 8).
Although aimed at criticality toward the dominant Islamic
terrorist discourse,
differentiating terrorists as mistaken or pretending Muslims set
aside from other,
nonterrorist Muslims, the cartoon, nonetheless, frames Islam
and terrorism to-

gether, and the other praying Muslims are not the focus of the
cartoon. At most,
the focus is on one Muslim merely watching a terroristic false
Muslim in his
midst. In summary, although these representations certainly
bear some relation to
truth and reality, they reflect an incredibly narrow minority of
Muslim experiences
and practices, focusing on the normalized, stereotypical
conception of Muslims
as terrorists. Reflecting popular beliefs and ideas, no African
American Muslims
are featured, for instance, nor are any women or reasonable or
ordinary nonviolent
Muslim. Overall, then, there is a close, commonplace
associating of Islam and
Muslims with terrorists in mainstream media images today, and
a lacking of many
popular representations of Muslims not aligned to the common
stereotype.
In summary, although the media does not appear to actively aim
to vilify real-
life Muslims, lacking any major representations of Muslims
doing good things,
or being ordinary members of society, emergent from their
major presentations
are predominantly sinister, scary, and threatening sorts of
Muslims, representing
only the narrowest margin of Muslim experience. Given such a
common pattern
in mainstream media representation, it is unsurprising that many

Americans know
little that is not negative about Islam and Muslims, but can
easily identify them
as threatening and as international terrorists. However, without
a more balanced
understanding of Muslims that incorporates marginal and more
mainstream experi-
ences of Muslims within the United States and abroad, US
citizens are ill-equipped
to navigate a diverse world and society of which Muslims are a
significant part. As I
draw out in the next section, educators must provide additional
information to chal-
lenge the picture of Islam provided by media, and a thematic,
analytical, and critical
media literacy should be a part of a critical multicultural social
studies education.2
CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY EDUCATION
As stated previously, critical media literacy for dealing with
representations of
controversial groups such as Muslims should be thematic,
analytical, and critical.
Here I briefly outline what I mean by this, and discuss some
examples of best
teaching practices in effectively managing and using resources
to elaborate the
implications of this framework. Given the common consensus
among educators
that ideal resources for teaching about minorities and
particularly Muslims are
lacking in the formal curriculum and otherwise challenging to
find and use in the
classroom (Kaviani 2007), I highlight here that, in general, it is
not necessary to

have access to or knowledge of the best resources or
information about a group,
such as Muslims, to effectively teach an important, crucial
lesson in understanding
others in society: that the representations prevalent in the mass
media constitute
only one sort of understanding or framing of the subject, and
that for an informed
perspective one must consult various sources of evidence to
develop a critically
distant point of view.
Although an approach that analyzes the news as a particular
form of media or
a sort of production might be best in a class on citizenship
education that incorpo-
rates lessons involving critical media literacy, when teaching
about controversial
minorities in social studies coursework a thematic approach is
best, which explores
various representations of a particular subject: the minority
group that is being
explored in the formal curriculum, simultaneously. By
examining the group as rep-
resented in multiple forms of media—from film and television
to the radio, music,
and so on—student are best able to capture the broadest
possible view of existing
perceptions and perspectives on the group in question, and,
therefore, best able to
develop an informed, independent, critical view of the group for
themselves. The
18 JACKSON

key here is that teachers also allow for presentations of a
variety of perspectives
within resources. Multiple perspectives, both internal and
external to the group,
must be provided, to demonstrate to students how an
autonomous perspective can
be better developed through a thorough examination of sources
of evidence, and
is not simply provided to them by a text or newspaper article.
Hijab, or head-covering, is a very common contemporary issue
related to Islam
for students to consider using multiple perspectives, given that
it is connected
to negative associations of Islam with gender inequality and
female oppression,
and also constitutes a common cultural norm that is seen as
different within a
Western context, that many students are naturally ignorant, if
not curious, about.
Comparing it to other similar phenomena and considering
alternative perspectives
on it available in various media is one effective way to help
students gain more
balanced and less partial perspectives about it:
For her contemporary world problems class, [Hilda] used
newspaper and magazine
articles and surfed the Internet for news that “pushed the
button.” She looked for
current high profile controversial issues that had graphic images
and made a de-
liberate effort to include them in her lessons. She believed that
images were really
important in telling a story because students could “grasp

easily” what was going on.
Her students visited a photo bank of images on the Internet,
showing Muslim women
in various degrees of body covering and they compared those
images to clothing for
traditional Catholic women and explained how traditions
influenced fashion and in
turn, the Islamic fashion could be seen as a form of political
statement. (Kaviani
2007, 116)
Hilda finds media that is both critical and positive toward hijab,
from Muslim
women and others, as well as images of religious dress more
generally, to provide
a wide variety of personal, political, and more large-scale and
broad perspectives
about this topic in the classroom. By using this method, Hilda
helps her students
realize that whether one views hijab as a marker of cultural
distinction, as an
expression of faith common to many belief systems, or as a
symbol of female
oppression depends on one’s frame of reference and what is
included in one’s lens.
Such an approach is clearly preferable to discussing any one of
these perspectives
on its own, for enabling students to recognize and learn to
grapple with multiple
points of view and sources of reasoning.3
Alternatively, teachers can approach the managing of resources
by assigning
particular sorts of projects to their students that require their
use and presentation
of resources embodying multiple perspectives, such as a

“structured academic
controversy” (Kaviani, 2007, 57). Similar to a debate, this sort
of lesson involves
students researching alternative perspectives on one issue—the
clash of civiliza-
tions thesis (Huntington, 1993) might be a good hypothesis for
upper-level students
to explore—and presenting their findings to one another. Such
research-oriented
class projects, although time-consuming (taking at least a few
days, if not a week
or more), requires students’ active discovery and more
independent (and collabo-
rative) analysis and critical consideration of different points of
view. In Kaviani’s
(2007) observations, readings from Said, Huntington, and
Lewis, and from main-
stream and alternative and international news sources are
commonly used for these
sorts of projects.
An analytic, process-oriented perspective should be also be
basic to the ap-
proach taken, which examines media representations as the
products of many
different individual and group choices. Tracing how a real-life
event becomes a
media event is the key lesson here, and students can understand
this as a straightfor-
ward, linear process, at the outset, regardless of the more
nuanced understanding of

the media’s relationship with reality laid out earlier in this
article. Students should
understand as choices the creation and reproduction of images,
and the words used
(and those not used) in discussing an event or group.
Additionally, different parts
of media production should be understood as discrete acts and
choices of message
producers.
The following example represents a common lesson plan in
critical media
literacy, which could be applied in a discussion of hijab or of
stereotypes of
Muslims, whose format could also be changed as well for the
analysis of the text,
plots, or themes of news stories, movies, and other media.
Roughly mirroring my
analysis of images of bin Laden here, such lessons can enable
students to think
through how particular kinds of representations rather than
others come to prevail
for themselves within a democratic setting.
The students are clustered in small groups. Each group is given
a different black and
white still image to study. All of the photos relate to the topic
they are exploring.. . .
The students study their photo and jot down everything t hey
notice. They are asked
to consider such characteristics as: the type of shot (close-up,
medium shot, long
shot); the angle (high angle, low angle); light and shadow; and
placement of elements
(objects, people, etc.) in the picture (foreground, background,

juxtaposition). Then
they describe how the images makes them think and feel.
Using an overhead projector, each image is projected for the
whole class to see. The
students who first analyzed the images present their ideas. After
they are finished,
others contribute to the analysis. Students collectively explore
questions such as
• Who do you think took the picture?
• How are the people in the photos represented?
• What caption would you write for that photo?
• What kind of message is the photographer trying to convey?
• How do the different elements in the image contribute to get
that message
across?
20 JACKSON
• How might the message of the photo change if it were taken
from a different
angle, or cropped differently?
• Who might be the intended audience for the photo?
• How might different audiences respond to the photo?
• Where do you think the picture appeared? (Goodman 2005,
212–213)?
Similar lessons could be created with newspaper clippings,
which ask students
to understand the point of a text or image in connection to its
use of language,

quotations, facts, and so on.
Although many educators use a variety of resources in the
classroom for ed-
ucating about controversial or complicated topics, not all use of
media and other
diverse resources are effective for teaching with critical
distance, however. For
instance, some teachers have been observed using media as a
reward for students
engaging in learning activities, presenting popular films at the
end of a term;
others simply replace historical lessons with documentaries or
other televised or
film accounts, letting their producers do the task of educating
their students for
them (Hobbs 2005). Although such uncritical uses of media may
serve purposes of
community building or creating learning incentives, such should
not be regarded
as a learning activity without an analytic or critical aspect to
the viewing—not just
a list of basic comprehension questions, but an evaluation of
content and methods.
Thus, criticality about messages received should be required,
meaning here
an independent, distanced perspective from others’ knowledge
claims, which can
be developed in introductory lessons through comparing images,
messages, or
sources, and asking students to evaluate them in terms of their
persuasiveness. For
instance, during a presidential election, pictures and
information about different
candidates provided from different sources can be compared to

demonstrate how
subjective judgments are involved in presenting images (Hobbes
2005). In the
case of Islam, images of, and information about, Muslims in
mainstream and
independent sources, and Western and Muslim news sources,
can be compared
with the assistance of a teacher to uncover how value judgments
are made in
media production, that convey certain perspectives. By
requiring criticality in
media literacy lessons, students can gain experience weighing in
on the meaning,
significance, and validity of different media messages,
identifying sources they
find better and worse about a given topic, issue, person, or
group.
Bringing in historical or cultural texts, such as academic texts,
alternative his-
torical analyses such as Howard Zinn’s (1995) A People’s
History of the United
States, or historical or contemporary narratives, such as
autobiographical accounts
by Muslims living in different places at different times, helps
students to further
respond to predominant media themes with critical distance.4
By comparing edu-
cational resources with mainstream media, or mainstream media
with alternative
and international media sources, students can see how different
groups choose dif-
ferent images, use different words, and quote different people,
and finally go on to

evaluate the effects of these choices on their persuasive power.
Analyzing how an
article about Muslim anti-Americanism in a newspaper
compares to one in a text-
book can enable students to be more critical about media as
sources of information.
Being critical here does not mean that one learns to recognize
mediated informa-
tion as susceptible to bias and therefore develop a tendency to
reject news media or
popular culture as a whole (Semali 2005). Rather, it means
asking students where
they, and their sources, got the information informing their
perspectives, for in-
stance, related to Muslims, and isolate and evaluate
independently the information
their sources use as evidence for their claims. As mentioned
several times here,
comparing two sources on one issue, or multiple perspectives on
a more general
situation, from one form of media, or from a variety, are all
very easy ways to
add critical media literacy as a component of one’s lessons
about controversial
subjects such as Islam
In summary, using resources encompassing a wide variety of
views in the
classroom, rather than just the textbook, a single supplement, or
various sources
of similar orientations can help enable students’ critical
distance and development

of their independent reasoning skills through the exploration of
different perspec-
tives . . . so long as these materials are accompanied with
guidance on critical
media literacy. To engage in projects involving multiple
perspectives and weigh-
ing alternative viewpoints, students must be given some
guidance to understand
how knowledge claims are evaluated as reasonable or
unreasonable, and teachers
also should be equipped to judge the validity of various sources
available for use
in classroom discussion. Teachers need not cull from classroom
discussions per-
spectives and data they observe as unreasonable or poorly
argued, but they must
educate their students to evaluate sources using critical literacy,
as I elaborated
here. Although there are, to be sure, barriers that exist to
emphasizing such lessons
in US public schools today (see Hobbs 2005), only through the
inclusion of critical
media literacy lessons like those mentioned here can public
school teachers effec-
tively guide students to recognize media images of Islam and
Muslims for what
they are: highly biased representations of a diverse cross-
section of humanity.
CONCLUSION
Overall, representations in US media of Islam and Muslims
hardly scratch the
surface when it comes to the diversity of the community,
worldwide: in the Mid-
dle East, in the United States, and in other Western and Eastern

countries. As this
review has shown, out of heterogeneous images and narratives
ultimately emerges
a common, normalized associating of Islam and Muslims with
terrorism and/or
conflict, violence, irrationality, and vengefulness. Although the
attack of Septem-
ber 11, 2001, in the context of the mainstream media’s tendency
to feature the
extraordinary—the ordinary just is not seen as news—informs,
inevitably perhaps,
22 JACKSON
such an association, in later events involving Muslims
mainstream media imagery
also frames them as unnecessarily antagonistic or violent or
otherwise associates
them with terrorism.
The result is that even if media do not teach students to
associate Muslims
with terrorism, they will, nonetheless, learn that it is normal to
do so, that it is
recognized in the mainstream media as reasonable or
acceptable, rather than as
harmful to Muslims, who face discrimination, prejudice, and
hatefulness when
the breadth of their realities is not considered newsworthy or
entertaining, lacking
an education that critically responds to the predominant
stereotype. Thematic,
analytic, and critical lessons in media literacy must complement
the formal

curriculum about Islam to optimize the active awareness and
critical reception
of what is ultimately portrayed as normal to think about
Muslims in the mass
media. What particular resources are used is not as important as
what is expressed
through their inclusion: that mainstream messages are
incomplete or biased,
and that informed members of a democratic society must
grapple with multiple
perspectives when it comes to difficult, controversial topics to
act autonomously
and in an informed way within society.
Notes
1. I do not exaggerate bin Laden’s effects as a single man in the
world, but I do call attention
to his notoriety as an actual person expressing anger and
opposition to US society, who did,
with 9/11, make apparent his potential to call upon others and
inspire in them hatred and
anti-American actions. Here, in the case of bin Laden’s
iconography, Islam is represented
by a real, rather than a fictional, villain. This is a more
powerful, more compelling sort of
enemy than any in a movie or television show; however his
effect and position are certainly
exaggerated in fearful discourses that are normal and typical in
mainstream US media. I
mean to call attention to this use or framing of reality as it
perpetuates fear—not to further
this fearful discourse, myself.
2. Similar work is being done to protect other minorities from
similarly negative me-
dia stereotyping by multicultural educators; see, as instances,

Cortés (2005), “How
the Media Teach” for stereotypes of Hispanics; the essays by
Richard Butsch, Robert
Lichter and Daniel Amundson, Peter Nardi and Debra Baker
Beck in Ore (2007), Social
Construction of Difference and Inequality, on critical media
literacy and media stereo-
types of class and gender, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, and
feminists, respectively; and
McCarthy (1998), “Reading the American Popular,” in Uses of
Culture, on racial resentment
in mass media.
3. Of course, one should not presume that teachers necessarily
know much about cultural
and religious diversity in such cases, themselves. Indeed,
teacher preparation today seems
highly inadequate for the purposes of training teachers to teach
such lessons; see, for
instance, Subedi (2006), “Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs and
Practices”; Noddings (1993),
Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief ; and especially
Sensoy (2006), “‘I Wouldn’t
Want to Be a Muslim Woman,’“ which documents White female
preservice teachers’
commonly biased views against hijab. Although I discuss this
elsewhere, it is important
to keep in mind here that teacher education students should gain
experience studying
phenomena related to minorities in-depth in the course of their
own education in order to
effectively teach their students.

4. Islam Today and Islam in Africa feature narratives by Muslim
children; see the Council
on Islamic Education, Teaching About Islam and Muslims for a
wide variety of autobio-
graphical, historical, and political works putting forward
different Muslims’ perspectives.
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Arabs and Muslims in the Media after 9/11: Representational
Strategies
for a “Postrace” Era
Evelyn Alsultany
American Quarterly, Volume 65, Number 1, March 2013, pp.
161-169 (Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: 10.1353/aq.2013.0008
For additional information about this article
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| 161 Arabs, Muslims, and “Post-race” Representations after

9/11
©2013 The American Studies Association
Arabs and Muslims in the Media after
9/11: Representational Strategies for a
“Postrace” Era
Evelyn Alsultany
A
fter 9/11 a strange thing happened: there was an increase in
sym-
pathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims on US television. If a
TV
drama or Hollywood film represented an Arab or Muslim as a
terror-
ist, then the story line usually included a “positive”
representation of an Arab
or Muslim to offset the negative depiction. Dozens of TV
dramas portrayed
Arab and Muslim Americans as the unjust target of hate crimes
or as patriotic
US citizens. President George W. Bush was sure to distinguish
between Arab
and Muslim “friends” and “enemies,” stating “the enemy of
America is not
our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our
enemy is a
radical network of terrorists, and every government that
supports them.”1
News reporters interviewed Arab and Muslim Americans,
seemingly eager to
include their perspectives on the terrorist attacks, careful to
point out their

experiences with hate crimes.
Yet at the same time that sympathetic portrayals of Arab and
Muslim
Americans proliferated on US commercial television in the
weeks, months,
and years after 9/11, hate crimes, workplace discrimination,
bias incidents,
and airline discrimination targeting Arab and Muslim
Americans increased
exponentially. According to the FBI, hate crimes against Arabs
and Muslims
multiplied by 1,600 percent from 2000 to 2001.2 In just the first
weeks and
months after 9/11, the Council on American-Islamic Relations,
the American-
Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and other organizations
documented
hundreds of violent incidents experienced by Arab and Muslim
Americans and
people mistaken for Arabs or Muslims, including several
murders. Dozens of
airline passengers perceived to be Arab or Muslim were
removed from flights.
Hundreds of Arab and Muslim Americans reported
discrimination at work,
receiving hate mail, and physical assaults, and their property,
mosques, and
community centers vandalized or set on fire.3 In the decade
after 9/11, such
discriminatory acts have persisted.
| 162 American Quarterly

In addition to individual citizens taking the law into their own
hands, the US
government passed legislation that targeted Arabs and Muslims
(both inside and
outside the United States) and legalized the suspension of
constitutional rights.4
The government’s overt propaganda of war was palatable to
many citizens on
edge and regarded with suspicion by others as the government
passed the USA
PATRIOT Act, initiated war in Afghanistan and later in Iraq,
and explained
the terrorist attacks to the public by stating “they hate us for our
freedom.”
Given that Arabs and Muslims have been stereotyped for over a
century,
given that 9/11 was such an opportune moment for further
stereotyping,
given that the US government passed domestic and foreign
policies that
compromised the civil and human rights of Arabs and Muslims,
and given
that demonizing the enemy during times of war has been
commonplace, why
would sympathetic portrayals appear during such a fraught
moment? As overt
war propaganda has become increasingly transparent and
ineffective over the
decades since World War II and the Cold War, the production
and circulation
of “positive” representations of the “enemy” have become
essential to projecting
the United States as benevolent, especially in its declaration of
war and passage
of racist policies. Positive representations of Arabs and

Muslims have helped
form a new kind of racism, one that projects antiracism and
multiculturalism
on the surface but simultaneously produces the logics and
affects necessary to
legitimize racist policies and practices.5 It is no longer the case
that the other
is explicitly demonized to justify war or injustice. Now the
other is portrayed
sympathetically in order to project the United States as an
enlightened country
that has entered a postrace era.
The representational mode that has become standard since 9/11
seeks to
balance a negative representation with a positive one, what I
refer to as “simpli-
fied complex representations.” These are strategies used by
television producers,
writers, and directors to give the impression that the
representations they are
producing are complex, yet they do so in a simplified way.
These predictable
strategies can be relied on if the plot involves an Arab or
Muslim terrorist,
but are a new standard alternative to (and seem a great
improvement on) the
stock ethnic villains of the past. I argue that simplified complex
representa-
tions are the representational mode of the so-called postrace
era, signifying a
new standard of racial representations. These representations
often challenge
or complicate earlier stereotypes yet contribute to a
multicultural or postrace
illusion. Simplified complex representations have taken

numerous forms in
TV dramas and news reporting, some of which I outline here to
highlight the
various mechanisms through which positive imagery of Arabs
and Muslims
9/11
can operate to justify discrimination, mistreatment, and war
against Arabs
and Muslims.
Simplified Complex Representations in TV Dramas
Watching dozens of television shows between 2001 and 2009, it
becomes
evident that writers have increasingly created “positive” Arab
and Muslim
characters to show that they are sensitive to negative
stereotyping. Such positive
representations have taken several forms, such as a patriotic
Arab or Muslim
American, an Arab or Muslim who is willing to help the United
States fight
terrorism, or an innocent Arab or Muslim American who is the
victim of post-
9/11 hate crimes. If an Arab/Muslim terrorist is represented in
the story line of
a TV drama or film, then a “positive” representation of an Arab,
Muslim, Arab
American, or Muslim American is typically included, seemingly
to subvert the
stereotype of the terrorist.

Examples of patriotic Arab or Muslim American characters who
assist the
US government in its fight against terrorism, either as a
government agent
or civilian, include Mohammad “Mo” Hassain, an Arab
American Muslim
character who is part of the USA Homeland Security Force on
the show Threat
Matrix, and Nadia Yassir, a dedicated member of the Counter
Terrorist Unit on
season 6 of 24.6 In Sleeper Cell the “good” Muslim is the lead
African American
character, Darwyn Al-Sayeed, an undercover FBI agent who
proclaims to his
colleagues that terrorists have nothing to do with his faith and
cautions them
not to confuse the two.7 This strategy challenges the notion that
Arabs and
Muslims are not American and/or un-American. Judging from
the numbers of
these patriots, it appears that writers have embraced this
strategy as the most
direct method to counteract potential charges of stereotyping.
Multiple stories appeared on TV dramas with Arab or Muslim
Americans as
the unjust targets of hate—as victims of violence and
harassment. The viewer
is nearly always positioned to sympathize with their plight. In
an episode of
The Practice, the government detains an innocent Arab
American without
due process or explanation and an attorney steps in to defend
his rights.8 On
another episode of The Practice, an Arab American man is

barred from being
a passenger on an airplane, and it is debated in court whether
airlines have the
right to discriminate in a post-9/11 world in which Arab and
Muslim identities
are considered a security threat.9 This emphasis on
victimization and sympathy
challenges long-standing representations of Arabs and Muslims
as terrorists
that have inspired a lack of sympathy and even a sense of
celebration when
the Arab or Muslim character is killed.10
However, many of these sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and
Muslims do
the ideological work of justifying discriminatory policies. For
example, a TV
drama that portrays an Arab American as the unjust victim of
post-9/11 dis-
crimination often appears in a story line that concludes that it is
unfortunate
but inevitable that Arabs and Muslims will have to deal with
discrimination
because of the exceptional national security crisis. So, on the
one hand, we
have unusually sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims on
network tele-
vision. And on the other, the image often appears in a narrative
that justifies
discrimination against them. Furthermore, the inclusion of
positive representa-
tions of Arabs and Muslims come in limited forms: patriotic

Americans and
victimized Americans.
In addition to Arab and Muslim patriots and victims, TV dramas
use nu-
merous devices to circumvent the charge of stereotyping,
including flipping
the enemy and fictionalizing the country of the enemy.
“Flipping the enemy”
involves leading the viewer to believe that Muslim terrorists are
plotting to
destroy the United States, and then revealing that those Muslims
are merely
pawns or a front for Euro-American or European terrorists. The
enemy’s iden-
tity is thus flipped: viewers discover that the terrorist is not
Arab, or they find
that the Arab or Muslim terrorist is part of a larger network of
international
terrorists. During season 2 of 24, Counter Terrorism Unit agent
Jack Bauer
spends the first half of the season tracking down a Middle
Eastern terrorist
cell, ultimately subverting a nuclear attack. In the second half
of the season,
we discover that European and Euro-American businessmen are
behind the
attack, goading the United States to declare a war on the Middle
East in or-
der to benefit from the increase in oil prices.11 By including
multiple terrorist
identities, this strategy seeks to challenge the idea that
terrorism is an Arab or
Muslim monopoly.
It has become increasingly common for the country of the

terrorist characters
in television dramas to go unnamed. This strategy rests on the
assumption that
leaving the nationality of the villain blank eliminates potential
offensiveness;
if no particular country or ethnicity is named, then there is less
reason for any
particular group to be offended by the portrayal. In season 4 of
24, the terrorist
family is from an unnamed Middle Eastern country. They are
possibly from
Turkey, but where exactly is never stated; it is, we assume,
intentionally left
ambiguous.12 In The West Wing, the fictional country “Qumar”
is a source of
terrorist plots; in season 8 of 24, it is “Kamistan.”
Fictionalizing the country
of the terrorist can give a show more latitude in creating
salacious story lines
that might be criticized if identified with an actual country.
9/11
Despite the shift away from the more blatant stereotypes of
previous decades,
Arab and Muslim identities are still understood and evaluated
primarily in rela-
tion to terrorism. This binary focus, in turn, overpowers the
strategies described
above. Though some television writers and producers might
desire to create
innovative shows, devoid of stereotypes, such efforts are
overwhelmed by the

sheer momentum of the current representational scheme.
Representations of
Arab and Muslim identities in contexts that have nothing to do
with terrorism
remain strikingly unusual in American commercial media.13
Simplified Complex Representations in News Reporting
Versions of simplified complex representations that commonly
appear in news
reporting include the use of disclaimers and native informants,
often found in
stories about oppressed Muslim women. An examination of
representations
of Arab and Muslim women in the commercial news media after
9/11 reveals
an overwhelming number of stories about the oppression of
Muslim women.
Within a year after 9/11, headlines often read as follows:
“Lifting the Veil,”
“Free to Choose,” “Unveiling Freedom,” “Under the Veil,”
“Beneath the
Veil,” and “Unveiled Threat.”14 Journalists promised to take
viewers “behind
the veil” to reveal a secret, hidden, mysterious world that would
shed light
on why Arabs/Muslims are terrorists. The oppression of women
is framed as
providing insight, a vital clue, into why terrorism occurs. What
is revealed
“behind the veil”? An assault of evidence is then presented,
testifying to the
oppressive and backward nature of Islam, especially when it
comes to women.
Story after story chronicles Muslim women dying in “honor
killings”; facing

female genital mutilation; being beaten on the streets of
Afghanistan and Saudi
Arabia for violating the dress code; sentenced to death for
adultery and be-
ing buried alive in the ground or stoned to death; beaten for
disobeying their
husbands; raped by male family members; and being unable to
get a divorce
or child custody rights.15
A November 2001 article in Time magazine, “The Women of
Islam,” by
Lisa Beyer, is one example of how journalists use simplified
complex repre-
sentational strategies while advancing a monolithic image of
Islam as brutal,
violent, and oppressive.16 The article’s subtitle reads: “The
Taliban perfected
subjugation. But nowhere in the Muslim world are women
treated as equals.”
The article begins with a few concessions, stating that the
prophet Muhammad
was a feminist who improved the status of women in the seventh
century. The
author also writes:
While it is impossible, given their diversity, to paint one picture
of women living under Islam
today, it is clear that the religion has been used in most Muslim
countries not to liberate but
to entrench inequality. The Taliban, with its fanatical
subjugation of the female sex, occupies

an extreme, but it nevertheless belongs on a continuum that
includes, not so far down the
line, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan and the relatively moderate
states of Egypt and Jordan.
Where Muslims have afforded women the greatest degree of
equality—in Turkey—they
have done so by overthrowing Islamic precepts in favor of
secular rule. As Riffat Hassan,
professor of religious studies at the University of Louisville,
puts it, “The way Islam has
been practiced in most Muslim societies for centuries has left
millions of Muslim women
with battered bodies, minds and souls.”17
Journalists often begin with a disclaimer—“It is impossible to
capture the
diversity of the Muslim world,” or “These are not Islamic
practices”—before
presenting an onslaught of evidence to prove the brutality of
Islam. The
disclaimer signals that the journalist is aware of the diversity of
Muslim lived
experiences and is making an effort to present a semblance of
sensitivity and
awareness. While lip service is paid to diversity and
complexity, the vast major-
ity of evidence supports the opposite idea.
In addition to using disclaimers to signal that the news media do
not intend
to contribute to a monolithic portrait of Islam, and selectively
including and
excluding particular aspects of the context to understand the
oppressed Mus-
lim woman, another important simplified complex
representational strategy

is the use of native informants. This is evident in how the above
quote by the
Islamic feminist scholar Riffat Hassan is used. Several Muslim
women, includ-
ing Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, have
made successful
careers as women who have defected from Islam and become
spokespersons
for its inherent backwardness. While the oppressed Muslim
woman narrative
has cross-ideological appeal and has been taken up as a cause
by both the Right
and the Left, these native informants collaborate with right-
wing agendas that
aim not only to help oppressed women but also to denounce
Islam entirely.
Darwish, an Egyptian, is the founder of Arabs for Israel, the
director of Former
Muslims United, and the author of two books arguing that Islam
is a retro-
grade religion.18 Sultan, a Syrian, claims that Islam promotes
violence; she is
the author of a book titled A God Who Hates.19 Hirsi Ali, a
Somali, embraced
atheism after 9/11; she has written numerous books in which she
argues that
Islam is incompatible with democracy.20
In a guest appearance on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Hirsi
Ali commented
on a case in which a woman in Saudi Arabia was raped and
punished with two
hundred lashes. In response to a question about what life is like
for women in
Saudi Arabia, Hirsi Ali said:

9/11
For all women, the reality is stay in the house unless you have a
pressing need to go outside.
If you have a pressing need to go out you must wear the veil. If
you marry, your husband
can say three times, “I divorce you,” and you are divorced. The
other way around is not
possible. The problem of child brides in Saudi Arabia is as
common as drinking espresso
coffee in Italy. It is because the Prophet Muhammad married a
nine-year-old girl, every
man in Saudi Arabia feels that he can marry a minor or he can
marry off his daughter who
is underage. You will be stoned, flogged if you commit or give
the impression that you may
have committed adultery. It is not nice being a woman in Saudi
Arabia.21
Hirsi Ali’s insider status authenticates her narrative. Moustafa
Bayoumi argues
that these Muslim women commentators are modern-day neo-
orientalists
who narrate stories about Islam for Western consumption. The
stories they
tell are about Islam as a system of tyranny that defeats human
liberty and the
subsequent need to either renounce or drastically reform Islam
to be more like
Christianity, Judaism, or even atheism.22 These female native
informants are
a version of the “good Muslim” who confirms to Western
viewers that Islam

poses a threat to women and to the West. Sunaina Maira writes,
“By definition,
‘good’ Muslims are public Muslims who can offer first-person
testimonials, in
the mode of the native informant, about the oppression of
women in Islam, . . .
and the hatred, racism, and anti-Semitism of Arabs and
Muslims. These Mus-
lim spokespersons are the darlings of the Right-wing and
mainstream media,
publish widely distributed books, and have slick websites.”23
While there are
male Muslim spokespersons, it is the women specifically who
authenticate a
Western feminist narrative about Islam. These female
spokespersons are often
regarded and praised by the news media as “moderate
Muslims.”24
My point here is not that we should not feel outrage at human
rights abuses
and injustice. Rather, my point is that pity for the oppressed
Muslim woman
has been strategically used to advance US imperialism. This
highly mediated
evocation of outrage for the plight of the oppressed Muslim
woman inspires
support of US interventions in Arab and Muslim countries. It is
no coincidence
that inspiring outrage at the impact of US foreign policies—
from sanctions
in Iraq that killed approximately five hundred thousand children
to the ongo-
ing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have killed over one
hundred thousand
civilians to the detention of hundreds of Muslims at

Guantánamo Bay prison
without being charged—is not part of the regular news cycle.
Sympathy for
Muslim women operates to justify withholding sympathy for
Muslim men
because they presumably deserve to be in Guantánamo or Abu
Ghraib.
Arab and Muslim victims emerge as particularly important to
simplified
complex representations because they allow viewers to feel for
“the enemy.”
The growth of this affect in turn comes to symbolize
multicultural progress.
Rather than demonize all Arabs and Muslims, having sympathy
for some of
them reflects an enlightened culture that can distinguish
between the “good”
and “bad” ones. The continued support of US empire after 9/11
has been
made possible partly through the use of disclaimers, native
informants, and
other simplified complex representations that signal that the
United States has
achieved a postrace society that no longer discriminates.
Notes
1. George W. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and
the American People,” September 20,
2001, www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920–

8.html.
2. See, for example, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee, “Report on Hate Crimes and
Discrimination against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11
Backlash” (Washington, DC:
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Research
Institute, 2003), www.adc.org/hatecrimes/
pdf/2003_report_web.pdf.
3. Ibid.
4. For a summary of government initiatives after 9/11, see Anny
Bakalian and Mehdi Bozorgmehr,
Backlash 9/11: Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans Respond
(Berkeley: University of California Press,
2009), 253–65.
5. I am building here on arguments made, for example, in the
following: Howard Winant, The New
Politics of Race: Globalism, Difference, Justice (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2004); Jodi
Melamed, “The Spirit of Neoliberalism: From Racial Liberalism
to Neoliberal Multiculturalism,” Social
Text, no. 89 (2006): 1–24; and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism
without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and
the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States, 2nd
ed. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield,
2006).
6. Threat Matrix, ABC, September 18, 2003–January 29, 2004;
24, FOX, season 6, January 14–May
21, 2007.
7. “Al-Fatiha,” Sleeper Cell, Showtime, season 1, episode 1,
December 4, 2005.

8. “Inter Arma Silent Leges,” The Practice, ABC, season 6,
episode 9, December 9, 2001.
9. “Bad to Worse,” The Practice, ABC, season 7, episode 8,
December 1, 2002.
10. For more on the history of representations of Arabs, see
Jack G. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hol-
lywood Vilifies a People (Northampton, MA: Interlink
Publishing Group, 2001).
11. “Day 2,” 24, FOX, October 28, 2002–May 20, 2003.
12. “Day 4: 7am–8am,” 24, FOX, January 9, 2005.
13. Even post-9/11 films with positive representation of Arabs
and Muslim characters, such as The Visi-
tor (2007) and Sorry, Haters (2005), are framed in the context
of 9/11. Little Mosque on the Prairie
(2007–2012), a sitcom televised by the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, has not crossed over
into the United States. Three sitcoms have been a departure
from the 9/11 context: Whoopi! (NBC,
2003–4); Aliens in America (CW, 2007–8); and Community
(NBC, 2009–present).
14. “Lifting the Veil,” CNN Newsnight, November 20, 2001;
“Free to Choose,” “Unveiling Freedom,”
CNN Newsnight, December 3, 2001; “Under the Veil,” ABC,
Nightline, October 26, 2006; Anna
Mulrine, “Unveiled Threat: The Taliban Is Relentless in Its
Oppression of Afghan Women,” U.S. News
& World Report, October 15, 2001, 32–34; Richard Lacayo,
“Lifting the Veil,” Time, December 3,
2001, 34–49; and “Beneath the Veil,” CNN Newsnight,
September 13, 2002.
15. See, for example, Richard Lacayo, Hannah Beech, Hannah
Bloch, Matthew Forney, Terry McCar-

thy, Jeff Chu, Jeffrey Ressner, Alex Perry, Tim McGirk, and
John F. Dickerson, “About Face,” Time,
December 3, 2001,
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001344,00.html;
and David Van
Biema, Marguerite Michaels, and Nadia Mustafa, “Islam: In the
U.S.: Freer, But Not Friedan,” Time,
December 3, 2001,
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1001348,00.html#i
xzz0r2vh2irx.
9/11
16. Lisa Beyer, “The Women of Islam,” Time, November 25,
2001, www.time.com/time/world/ar-
ticle/0,8599,185647,00.html.
17. Ibid.
18. Nonie Darwish, Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I
Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War
on Terror (New York: Sentinel HC, 2006); and Darwish, Cruel
and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying
Global Implications of Islamic Law (Nashville, TN: Thomas
Nelson, 2008).
19. Wafa Sultan, A God Who Hates (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2009).
20. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel (New York: Free Press, 2007).
21. “Crime and Punishment/Saudi Arabian Rape Case/Ali
Interview,” Anderson Cooper 360, CNN,
November 29, 2007.

22. Moustafa Bayoumi, “The God That Failed: The Neo-
Orientalism of Today’s Muslim Commentators,” in
Islamophobia/Islamophilia: Beyond the Politics of Enemy and
Friend, ed. Andrew Shryock (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2010), 79–93.
23. Sunaina Maira, “‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Muslim Citizens:
Feminists, Terrorists, and U.S. Orientalisms,”
Feminist Studies 35.3 (2009): 631–56.
24. Ibid.
Muslims and the Media after 9/11:
A Muslim Discourse in
the American Media?
Halil Ibrahim Yenigun
Abstract
This paper seeks to answer two questions: Has there been a shift
in the representation of Muslims by the American media in the
wake of increasing number of Muslims living here, and could
Muslims speak for themselves through an autonomous Muslim
discourse in the post-9/11 period? Using the tools of
postcolonial
analysis, I analyze the coverage on Muslims in the mainstream
media following the 9/11 attacks. I find that there was a shift, in
the form of a differentiation between moderates and fundamen-
talists. Additionally, the same tropes used to represent Muslims
in

the colonial discourse were now employed to the fundamentalist
“Other.” Muslims could speak up; however, this could not avoid
reproducing the dominant discourse. Yet, the presence of a sig-
nificant Muslim minority offers opportunities for broadened
boundaries of “American” citizenry that can be realized by
grow-
ing activism to this end.
Introduction
It has been a while since “Islamophobia” became the Muslims’
dominant
perception of the American media’s coverage of Islam and
Muslims. In this
Halil Ibrahim Yenigun is a graduate student at the University of
Virginia, Department of
Politics, Charlottesville, Virginia. An earlier version of this
paper was presented at the 31st
Annual Convention of Association of Muslim Social Scientists
(AMSS), American
University, Washington, D.C., on 25-27 October 2002.
Although some arguments made in
this paper were based on the news material then available, I did
not find it necessary to mod-
ify them, since I maintain that most of the subsequent news
coverage on Muslims only
serves as further evidence to my points.
paper, I will go beyond simply probing the veracity of this
widespread per-
ception of American media bias against Islam and Muslims. My
funda-
mental concern is the current shape that the discourse on
Muslims takes

when its “Other” came to reside within the same territorial
boundaries. It is
noteworthy that the phrase “the fastest growing religion in the
U.S.” has
become another catch phrase in the media for Islam, right
alongside its
enormous anti-Islamic content.
Does this imply a radical transformation of the discourse? I
believe that
this everyday observation calls out for a critical revision of the
literature
dealing with the media’s portrayal of Muslims. Indeed, the
challenging
question today is the prospect of essentializing the Oriental and,
in turn, the
western identity subsequent to the massive scale of immigration
to the West
from the “Orient.” If the West has an unceasing need for the
Orient in order
to construct its own identity, how will it maintain this identity’s
integrity if
the Orient infuses within it today? Has this development
affected how the
media represent Islam?
Even before the mounting public visibility of Muslims in the
West, the
ongoing Palestinian question was severe enough to occupy a
focal place on
the news.1 But after the Gulf War, and especially after the
World Trade
Center attack of 1993 and the embassy bombings in 1998,
coverage of
Muslims started to occupy an important place in the news. Thus,
the

American public was constantly exposed to a negative image of
Islam and
Muslims. Consequently, the image of American Muslims took
shape along-
side the images of Muslims on television. This Muslim image is
known to
anybody: irrational terrorists, airplane hijackers, and suicide
bombers who
wage war against “civilization” and “democracy” in the name of
jihad (holy
war) to establish the Islamic way of life against the kafirun,
who are unbe-
lievers to be either converted or killed.2
Beyond all of that, the 9/11 attacks were perhaps the single
most impor-
tant turning point in the American Muslim experience. Apart
from its neg-
ative consequences on their daily lives, the media’s coverage of
Islam
reached an unprecedented intensity. This demands a thoughtful
inquiry:
Does this new wave of representation simply follow from the
previous
decades? The crucial component of this question’s answer is the
role of the
new actors in the American public sphere, namely, American
Muslims.
How do American Muslims relate to this picture? We have seen
many more
Muslims on television or in the newspapers after 9/11 than ever.
Is it possi-
ble to discern a general pattern, a common discourse in how
Muslims
responded to this event, or are there more ruptures than
commonalities? In

40 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 21:3
essence, how did the Muslims respond to the 9/11 tragedy? Is it
now pos-
sible to talk of a “Muslim discourse” in the American media as
a site of
resistance, or were statements made by Muslims easily
appropriated by the
mainstream media to underpin the dominant discourse?
Therefore, my research is twofold: On the one hand, I will seek
to find
out whether there is anything novel in the representation of
Islam and
Muslims in the current American media that differs from the
colonial dis-
course. And, if so, does this have anything to do with the
Muslim presence
in the United States? That is to say, could Muslims construct a
Muslim dis-
course that affects how the media represents them?
This set of questions is pivotal for me, because I consider an
inde-
pendent discourse of Muslims in the American public sphere to
be exis-
tential. It is a leading indicator of whether the Muslims’
existence in the
United States is still an auxiliary to the American way of life, in
the
form of consumers of American culture, or active participants in
and
contributors to it with its enriching way of life. The moment we

can
choose the latter, we can look at the future of Muslims in the
United States
with confidence.
The theoretical framework to address these issues is given
below.
Subsequent to this part, methodological concerns will be
presented. Thus,
media material on 9/11 will be scrutinized from two angles: The
American
media’s dominant patterns will be identified, and the Muslim
response to it
will follow suit. In the end, I will discuss my findings for the
prospects of
Muslims in the New World.
Theoretical Considerations
It has become conventional to start all analyses of the Orient
with a reference
to Edward Said’s path-breaking Orientalism (New York:
Vintage, 1979). In
fact, Said was not the first to present this challenge to
Orientalism. His pecu-
liarity lies in the fact that he adapted the theories of Foucault3
and Gramsci to
colonial literature in order to show how the regime of
disciplinary power
inscribed in Orientalism transforms the “real” East into a
discursive “Orient,”
or rather substitutes the one for the other.4 This influence is
apparent when he
defines Orientalism through its four aspects: as academic, a
style of thought
based on an “essential” distinction between East and West, a
discourse, and a

hegemony. 5 Gramsci’s influence on this definition is more
about how the cul-
tural hegemony at work gives it durability and strength, and the
civil domain
of cultural relations as the medium through which power
operates most effec-
Yenigun: Muslims and the Media after 9/11 41
tively.6 Foucault’s impact, on the other hand, is more related to
how power,
as an impersonal force, makes its subjects the objects of power
through
knowledge and Orientalist “discourse,” thereby producing the
Orient as not
only essentially distinct but also inferior. This, in turn,
reinforces the West’s
own image of itself as a superior civilization.7
Media representation of other cultures should be analyzed
within this
theoretical framework. Scholars involved in media studies now
common-
ly refer to what they call a large gap between what news
producers claim
their work to be and what social scientists call it. News
producers claim
that news stories reflect reality, whereas social scientists speak
of “con-
structing the news.”8 There is an ideology of journalism made
up of such
elements as “freedom of the press,” “objectivity,” “fairness,”
“impartiali-
ty,” “balance,” “the reflection of reality,” “true representation,”

fact vs.
opinion, and so on,9 as if there were no cultural mediation
between what
journalists transmit and what the audience perceives. The
standpoint I
adopt here, known as the “culturological view,” pays attention
to the force
of broad cultural symbol systems, semiotic analyses of
journalism, and
journalistic ideologies. This approach claims that “[a]n event is
not just a
happening in the world; it is a relation between a certain
happening and a
given symbolic system.”10 From this perspective, “the basic
definition of
the situation that underpins the news reporting of political
events, very
largely coincides with the definition provided and legitimated
by the
power holders.”11
In short, the fact that journalists think that they “record the
events,”
and that there is a distance between fact and fiction in news
production is
nothing more than an ideal. Correspondingly, the study of
narrative and
fiction is becoming increasingly important, where the emphasis
is more
on texts as cultural constructions. As Bird and Derdenne write:
“Cultural
anthropologists have not only rediscovered narrative as an
important ele-
ment in the cultures they examine, but have also begun
reflexively to
rethink their ethnographic narratives – their news stories –

which had
long been treated as objective accounts of reality.”12 In other
words, the
proper way is to treat a genre as a particular kind of symbolic
system and
to look at news as narratives and stories. In this symbolic
system, the
facts, names, and details change almost daily; however, the
framework
into which they fit (the symbolic system) is more enduring. For,
as Bird
and Derdenne state, “ … it could be argued that the totality of
news as an
enduring symbolic system ‘teaches’ audiences more than any of
its com-
ponent parts, no matter whether these parts are intended to
inform, irritate,
or entertain.” 13 Arguing that news stories, like myths, do not
“tell it like it
is,” but rather tell it “like it means,”14 insinuates the existence
of an ideal
story, which is an archetype that does not exist but that is
recreated in
individual tellings.15
To sum up, given the power-culture link that demystifies the
cultural
sphere’s claim to autonomy from politics, as represented by
Said and his
sourcebook Orientalism, I subscribe to the view that the mass
media’s

products, as part and parcel of Gramsci’s civil society, are
entrenched with
relations of power and serve to perpetuate and confirm the
hegemonic
order. Therefore, what the particular news stories tell is the
grand narrative
that is positioned in the dominant discourse. In the case of the
American
media, as Said has shown in Covering Islam (New York:
Vintage, 1997),
what is represented is defined in terms of whether it is for or
against
American interests.16
Muslims have always complained about how the media
represent them,
but until recently, an extensive literature had not been
developed on this sub-
ject.17 More recently, however, apart from a limited number of
books, some
articles have opened up this field.18 Many of these works draw
on
Orientalism to frame their approach. Thus, the Orientalist
perceptions in
depicting Muslims are overtly emphasized.19 Some, such as
Christopher
Allen’s article and Mahboub Hashem’s piece in Yahya
Kamalipour’s edi-
tion, also seek to identify the catch phrases and tropes. What
matters most
for this paper is that almost all of them share the argument that
the media’s
representation of Islam is unitary, atavistic, struck in the past,
violent, and
anti-woman. Coverage of the Oklahoma bombing served as an
exemplary

case for this point. Until Melani McAlister’s challenge, though,
this convic -
tion was not shattered by means of a new theoretical
understanding of the
current representations, although there were sporadic referrals
to differences
between Muslims.20
The main difference of my approach is my attempt to account
for the
differentiation among Muslims as portrayed in the post-9/11
media and to
identify its theoretical relevance. Following McAlister, I
contend that
Orientalism’s binary opposition between the Orient and the
West does not
completely hold true now. However, I also believe that
Orientalism still
provides the best tools with which to understand the western
portrayal of
Islam and Muslims. In other words, for the most part, how the
West has
understood and portrayed the Orient still has relevance. My
attempt will
also include the revision to this framework.
Methodological Considerations
Since Islam has been a topic of central concern in the news for
quite a long
time, it would entail a much greater project to cover all of this
period in
order to present a complete picture of the media’s coverage of

Islam and
Muslims during the relevant period.Therefore, I did not scan all
of the
media articles or take a random selection of news stories that
could be more
appropriate for purely empirical researches. Instead, I took
certain snap-
shots throughout the first few months after 9/11 and looked at
how the
mainstream media covered these specific moments. Moreover,
some catch
words that we heard frequently during those days served as a
point of
departure for searching the news sources.
Today, the term media does not denote only television channels,
news-
papers, and magazines, but also the Internet. For this reason, my
material
includes highly visited news sites. In contrast to the few Muslim
profes-
sionals in the mainstream media sources, it is easy to find many
Muslim
organizations, along with their press releases, on the web.
Given this fact,
focusing on the Internet media seemed to be a far more
appropriate way to
approach this whole issue. More importantly, thanks to the
Internet’s devel-
opment, news stories in the printed and visual media can now be
accessed,
thereby making the Internet an all-encompassing media source.
Consequently, my primary source of information was the
Internet. For
this research, I focused more on the mainstream media rather

than the
tabloid magazines and radical publications of the right and the
left. Sources
like PBS, MSNBC, CNN, the New York Times, and the
Washington Post
were scrutinized during the first few weeks after 9/11.
Additionally, in order
to hear Muslim voices, the web sites of leading Muslim
organizations were
selected. In this regard, particular attention was paid to
www.islamon-
line.net, which is one of the leading news sources targeting
American
Muslims.
It should be mentioned that MSNBC’s website, which also
includes the
material broadcast on NBC or published in Newsweek, contains
the highest
number of articles cited in this research. Hashem found more
relevant arti-
cles in Time than Newsweek in his research21; however, the
reverse is true
for my study. In some cases, this was a deliberate choice on my
part. I
picked the best examples of the tropes out of several different
news sources,
and MSNBC proved to have more valuable articles in this
regard, My study
also differs from Hashem’s study and others that employ
content analysis,
which can be argued to be “more scientific.” But, given that I
seek to iden-

tify common tropes rather than locating frequent catch phrases,
this is not
a major flaw of my method. After all, the exact effect of media
coverage on
different audiences remains a mystery.
One final word should be said about the seemingly
disproportionate
weight of Internet articles. First, most of those articles were
also published
in the relevant news magazines or broadcast on television
channels of the
same media conglomerates. So, I do not think that my method is
biased
against those other media. Those media conglomerates are
aware of the fact
that some audiences prefer television while others follow the
news more on
the Internet. Therefore, they try to reach out to all of these
different audi-
ence segments by providing the same material through different
media.
Needless to say, my research is based upon textual analysis.
While I go
through these sources, I look for those rhetorical strategies of
the media that
seek to represent Islam or Muslims. Although Said does not
specify such
tropes in making his points, David Spurr’s The Rhetoric of
Empire
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993) has been my
primary source
of inspiration. While Spurr identifies 12 tropes in colonial

representation of
the “Other,” four of them were more essential for my research:
debasement,
surveillance, appropriation, and affirmation. As will be seen
later, these cat-
egories provide a powerful tool for unpacking American media
representa-
tions of Afghanistan.
The American Media’s Islam and Muslims
The American media no longer present a monolithic discourse.
Yet, this
does not rule out the possibility of identifying at least a
contested space
between some patterns. Given the fact that the American public
had never
been exposed to such a massive coverage on Muslims in such a
limited
time, it is extremely difficult to gather everything that was said
about Islam
and Muslims. Nevertheless, I will present some basic tropes that
were read-
ily available and quite effective in perception formation.
As we remember, even on the first night of the events, blame
was laid
squarely on some Muslims, mainly Osama bin Laden and his
organization.
But it was difficult to know whether this was because of the
material evi-
dence present at the time or because it was just the most likely
thing. The
story made complete sense to the American public: A different
sort of sui-
cide mission, one involving hijacking airplanes, had been
carried out by

Islamic terrorists. Yet, when events unfolded in a swift manner
to include
the war on Afghanistan, the media engaged in an enormous
coverage of
Muslims abroad. In this context, American Muslims for the first
time
appeared extensively on the screen. This is where we can pursue
the
answers for the questions at hand.
For quite a long time, “western” academia has perceived the
non-
western world with a crude modernist stance. This should be
considered
along with the relationship between academia and media, which
consti-
tutes one of the significant topics in Covering Islam, and
academia’s
effects on the media. In the modernist view, whatever the West
experi-
enced during its own modernization process constitutes the
basic standards
that any kind of subsequent modernization attempts in the
underdevel-
oped world should follow. This quite ethnocentric unilinear
view of moder-
nity still prevails in much of the social science literature on
area studies.
Along these lines, I expect that the civilizing narrative of
colonial dis-
course should have played itself out through the rhetorical

strategies used
to cover the war on Afghanistan. Therefore, what follows is an
attempt to
identify the tropes that were employed while covering 9/11 and
the war
on Afghanistan.
Rhetorical Strategies in the Coverage of 9/11
and the War on Afghanistan
Differentiation: The most remarkable shift in the representation
of
Muslims was the media’s departure from the monolithic
representation of
Muslims, one of Said’s main criticisms,22 toward a fragmented
perception.
The mainstream American media stopped essentializing the
Muslim world
as a monolithic bloc whose basic character of Islam overrode all
of its
inner differences and proved that these differences were
irrelevant.
Instead, a differentiation strategy between two types of Muslims
was pur-
sued: Fundamentalists (ie., Muslim extremists, Islamists,
Islamic radicals)
vs. moderate Muslims. The mainstream media, following the
government,
was careful to maintain a fine line between these two groups.
While mod-
erate Muslims were not considered a threat to American
interests, funda-
mentalists/extremists were considered enemies, and generally
called “ter-
rorists.” As a catch word, many media outlets preferred the term
Islamic
terrorist.

Newspapers, magazines, and television channels used certain
images to
characterize fundamentalism: hijackers, suicide bombers, or
anybody who
acts on the political sphere with an Islamic discourse, whether
he or she
resorts to violence or not.23 Kamalipour rightfully understands
the West’s
definition as referring to “those states, leaders, and
organizations that have
challenged many of the presuppositions of the Western
ideologies regard-
ing secularism and development theories.”24
This meaning seems to have underlined the media’s dominant
percep-
tion. In general, all sorts of Islamic revivalism were labeled
“fundamental-
ism.”25 Although there were some dissenting voices on the
margins, such as
Oliver Roy’s differentiation between neo-fundamentalism and
Islamism,26
the former usage prevailed.
This differentiation strategy provided the media with great
flexibility
both to denigrate the enemy, as embodied by Osama bin Ladin
and the
Taliban, and, at the same time, not to jeopardize relations with
Muslim groups

at home or with “Muslim allies” abroad. This double-faced
strategy operated
on two levels: on the one hand, (moderate) Muslims were
portrayed as
American patriots if they were American residents or
sympathizers with the
9/11 tragedy. In the first case, these Muslims were often
depicted as “targets
of misdirected anger.”27 The victimization of Muslims was, in
most cases,
accompanied by the catch phrase of Islam being the “fastest
growing religion
in the U.S.” These were Muslims who were saddened by 9/11,
just like their
fellow citizens, who participated in blood drives and
categorically con-
demned the attacks. These Muslims were said to “make an
incredibly valu-
able contribution to our country.”28 They even go to war for the
American
cause, which is the best proof that they are as American as any
other fellow
citizens.29 In short, they were “ambassadors of Islam” in the
United States.30
Opposed to this group was the radical branch, and President
Bush
clearly drew the line between these two separate entities:
The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to
hijack
Islam31 itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim
friends; it
is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of
terror-
ists, and every government that supports them.32

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EDUCATIONAL STUDIES, 46 3–24, 2010Copyright C© American Edu.docx