Pointing the Finger


Book Description

The only detailed examination of how the British media treat Muslims Uncovering endemic racism in the British Media Ever since 9/11, Muslims and Islam have dominated the headlines in the UK. In this important book, several leading media commentators examine the phenomenon of ‘Islamophobia’ and ask how we can tackle it. Charting recent media controversies, from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s comments on Sharia law to the veil ‘debate’, the book argues that media hostility to Islam alienates Muslims and undermines efforts to combat extremism. With interviews from Muslim journalists and examples of press-fuelled myths about Islam in Britain, this is a captivating insight into how Muslims are depicted in the West.




On Islam


Book Description

In the constant deluge of media coverage on Islam, Muslims are often portrayed as terrorists, refugees, radicals, or victims, depictions that erode human responses of concern, connection, or even a willingness to learn about Muslims. On Islam helps break this cycle with information and strategies to understand and report the modern Muslim experience. Journalists, activists, bloggers, and scholars offer insights into how Muslims are represented in the media today and offer tips for those covering Islam in the future. Interviews provide personal and often moving firsthand accounts of people confronting the challenges of modern life while maintaining their Muslim faith, and brief overviews provide a crash course on Muslim beliefs and practices. A concise and frank discussion of the Muslim experience, On Islam provides facts and perspective at a time when truth in journalism is more vital than ever.




Media Language on Islam and Muslims


Book Description

This book brings together contributions from ten academics and a commentary from a Muslim community leader on how the British media represent some of the most important terminologies related to Islam and Muslims. It takes a nuanced approach to language within Muslims in the media research by focusing on terminologies. Each contributor in this volume focused on one terminology and its associated words to show how the representation of these terminologies have major implications on the lives of British Muslims. The book also includes some key recommendations on the usage of these terms from the Media Style Guide of the Centre for Media monitoring - a research organisation of the Muslim Council of Britain. This book’s link with the Muslim community can be a step towards new approaches in this field where academics will engage with communities and practitioners to ensure better impact of their academic works. This book will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners in a range of fields, including Journalism, Media and Communication Studies, English Language and Linguistics, Sociology, Cultural and Religious Studies.




Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes


Book Description

Is the British press prejudiced against Muslims? In what ways can prejudice be explicit or subtle? This book uses a detailed analysis of over 140 million words of newspaper articles on Muslims and Islam, combining corpus linguistics and discourse analysis methods to produce an objective picture of media attitudes. The authors analyse representations around frequently cited topics such as Muslim women who wear the veil and 'hate preachers'. The analysis is self-reflexive and multidisciplinary, incorporating research on journalistic practices, readership patterns and attitude surveys to answer questions which include: what do journalists mean when they use phrases like 'devout Muslim' and how did the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks affect press reporting? This is a stimulating and unique book for those working in fields of discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, while clear explanations of linguistic terminology make it valuable to those in the fields of politics, media studies, journalism and Islamic studies.




Muslims and the News Media


Book Description

This urgently relevant book examines both the role and representations of Muslims in the news media, particularly within a climate of threat, fear and misunderstanding. Written by both leading academic authorities and by Muslim media practitioners, "Muslims and the Media" is designed as a comprehensive and critical textbook and is set in both the British and international contexts. The book clearly establishes the links between context, content, production and audiences thus reflecting the entire cycle of the communication process and revealing the ways in which meaning is produced and reproduced in the news media. Looking closely at the circumstances and politics surrounding the representation of Muslims across a wide range of journalistic genres, at the presence and influence of Muslims in the processes of news production, and the ways in which audiences, both Muslim and non-Muslim, consume this media, the book brings together coherently a wide range of perspectives to provide crucial insights into the representation - and misrepresentation - of Islam and Muslims today. Accessibly written for students and indispensable for practitioners, it will also provide a broader audience with a lively understanding of ever more critical political and media issues.




The Muslim Next Door


Book Description

Introduces the values, practices, and beliefs of Islam, discussing what it means to be a Muslim in contemporary American society, and providing information about such topics as jihad, Islamic fundamentalism, and women's rights.




Religion in the Media: A Linguistic Analysis


Book Description

This ground-breaking book takes an interdisciplinary approach to language, religion and media using an audience-response study. In this book, the author investigates how the three Abrahamic faiths - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - are represented in mainstream British media and analyses how members of each religious group and those with no religion receive those representations. Employing Critical Discourse Analysis, Al-Azami considers the way the media use their power of language to influence the audience’s perceptions of the three religions through newspaper articles, television documentaries and television dramas. Chapter 3 presents the results of an original investigation into the responses of members of the three religious groups and those with no religion when exposed to those same media materials. The author applies the encoding/decoding model and also considers people’s views in face-to-face interactions compared to comments on online newspapers. Comprehensive in its analysis, this book will be of interest to students of Linguistics, Media Studies, Religious Studies, and Journalism.




Muslims and New Media in West Africa


Book Description

Although Islam is not new to West Africa, new patterns of domestic economies, the promise of political liberalization, and the proliferation of new media have led to increased scrutiny of Islam in the public sphere. Dorothea E. Schulz shows how new media have created religious communities that are far more publicly engaged than they were in the past. Muslims and New Media in West Africa expands ideas about religious life in West Africa, women's roles in religion, religion and popular culture, the meaning of religious experience in a charged environment, and how those who consume both religion and new media view their public and private selves.




The Qur’an, Translation and the Media


Book Description

This book aims to identify how the Qur’an is narrated in and by the press media through the use of translation, featuring examples from a corpus of newspaper articles from the UK and Europe across two decades. Drawing on work at the intersection of narrative theory and translation studies, the volume highlights the ways in which press media play an integral role in the construction, promotion, and circulation of narratives about events and communities, shedding light specifically on translations of Qur’anic verses across British, Italian, and Spanish newspapers between 2001 and 2019. Elimam and Fletcher examine how such translations have been used to create and disseminate narratives about the Qur’an and in turn, Islam and Muslims, unpacking the kinds of narratives evoked – personal, public, conceptual, and meta-narratives – and narrative strategies employed – selective appropriation, temporality, causal emplotment, and relationality – toward framing readers’ understanding of the Qur’an. The book will be of particular interest to scholars working at the intersection of translation studies and such areas as media studies, religion, politics, and sociology.




Arabs and Muslims in the Media


Book Description

After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of “the enemy” during the War on Terror. Evelyn Alsultany explains that a new standard in racial and cultural representations emerged out of the multicultural movement of the 1990s that involves balancing a negative representation with a positive one, what she refers to as “simplified complex representations.” This has meant that if the storyline of a TV drama or film represents an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist, then the storyline also includes a “positive” representation of an Arab, Muslim, Arab American, or Muslim American to offset the potential stereotype. Analyzing how TV dramas such as The Practice, 24, Law and Order, NYPD Blue, and Sleeper Cell, news-reporting, and non-profit advertising have represented Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans during the War on Terror, this book demonstrates how more diverse representations do not in themselves solve the problem of racial stereotyping and how even seemingly positive images can produce meanings that can justify exclusion and inequality.