Kyle Blankenship

Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World
Nov. 2, 2014

What does Islam mean to you? This question, often asked beneath the surface of news reports
and primetime broadcasts, has captured the imagination of the American people for decades.
Asking this question inevitably leads to more: What exactly is Islam? Who are the Muslims?
How does the West interact with the Islamic world? Below the surface lies an endless array of
questions that mine to the core of how Americans perceive the world around them and how our
perceptions guide our national policy.
According to Edward W. Said, in his novel Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts
Determine How We See the Rest of the World, the interaction between the West and the Islamic
world, both debatable constructs, has been one of ignorance, contempt and scholarly failure. At
the root have been the media and Islamic experts, whose reliance on status quos, laziness and
nationalistic allegiances has painted Islam as an atavistic, brutal and hegemonic cultural body.
The author, a Palestinian-American literary theorist considered one of the leaders in his field
before his death in 2003, compiles an amazing catalog of articles over decades of research to
compose an image of the American mass media that shows the typical and atypical journalists
astonishing lack of insight. As reviewer Michael Beard writes, [Said] documents with such
exactitude and thoroughness that Covering Islam becomes almost an encyclopedia of periodical
items. (Review, 129)
The contemporary view of Islam by Western media begins with the 1979 taking of the
American embassy in Iran, Said argues, because what makes the Iran crisis a good occasion for
examining the medias performance is its duration and the fact that what Iran came to
symbolize represented American relations with the Muslim world. (Covering Islam, 83) By
looking at how the West interacted with Iran through the media, the author argues we can begin
to trace the branches out towards todays representations of the Islamic World.
The key concept at play in Western reporting is what exactly is meant by Islam. Does
revolutionary Iran define Islam any more than Muslims living in the United States? As
educational theorist Liz Jackson writes, Mass media associates Islam and Muslims, by and
large, with terrorism, portraying the religion and the group most frequently as unreasonable,
fundamentalist, and/or prone to reactive violence. (p. 6)

How and why this single depiction of Islam is possible is best understood through both
cultural strategy and a lack of investigation. These mistakes are more fully exacerbated by what
Patrick Martin and Sean Phelan (Representing Islam, 266) call false universals, through
which the media attempts to draw all incongruities of a situation into one comprehensive

whole. In the case of the Iran crisis in 1979-80, the medias attempt to understand Islam led to a
portrait of the religion as terroristic, revolutionary and hegemonic.

As the hostage situation carried on for more than a year, legions of so-called experts on Iran
and Islam flooded the media, bringing with them opinions that often reinforced the dominant
image of Islam that was still in formation during that time. Even after the crisis end, these
images of Islam as culturally hegemonic and violent would carry on into the following
decades. As analyst Scott Savitz says, Most importantly, the Iranian experience is relevant
because it has the potential for repetition, particularly in the Gulf. (Reflections on the
Revolution, 8)

While Savitz was referencing the importance of Irans revolution on media in potential future
conflicts, the medias depiction of Islam has also distinctly flavored the treatment of Islam preand post-9/11. This book, whose second edition was published in 1997, doesnt handle the post9/11 representation of Muslims in the U.S., nor does it contemplate the current handling of the
ISIS movement in Iraq and Syria. It is easy to see, however, that the medias handling of Islam
hasnt strayed far from the path of demonization and misrepresentation from which it began.

In much the same way that great historical books seek to underline the recurring processes of
violence and hatred, this book compounds the cyclical nature of the medias lack of scholarship
and affinity for false universals, whether reporting on Muslims, North Koreans or Cold Warera Soviets. This is without the rise of social media and 24-hour news cycles that place a burden
on breaking news, often at the expense of long-term investigation and development of context.

For Muslims around the world, breaking this cycle is paramount. As Mohd Shuhaimi Bin
Haji Ishak and Sohirin Mohammad Solihin write, The media is a powerful and indeed very
influential and can be used to help differentiate between Islam and terrorism. In fact, violence
against innocent people violates Islam. The media must be able to show these differences and at
the same time portray the image of Islam according to the true tenets of Islamic teachings.
(Islam and Media, 269)

In this light, this book stands as an absolutely essential read for any aspiring journalist, but
also anyone who seeks to eliminate the insidious presence of apathy in their own view of the
world. By confronting our own misperceptions of Islam, there is much to be gained in the
furthering of justice and human dignity in a media environment so often devoid of both.

Bibliography (Chicago style):

Beard, Michael. "Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the
Rest of the World (review)." Minnesota Review18, no. 1 (1982): 128-130. http://muse.jhu.edu/
Ishak, Mohd Shuhaimi Bin Haji and Sohirin Mohammad Solihin. "Islam and Media." Asian
Social Science 8, no. 7 (06, 2012): 263-269,
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1020570177?accountid=7113
Jackson, Liz. Images of Islam in US Media and their Educational Implications. Educational
Studies 46, no. 1. (2010): 324, doi: 10.1080/00131940903480217
Martin, Patrick, and Sean Phelan. "Representing Islam in the Wake of September 11: A
Comparison of US Television and CNN Online Messageboard Discourses." Prometheus 20, no.
3 (2002): 263-269, doi:10.1080/08109020210141371.
Said, Edward W. Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the
Rest of the World. New York: Vintage Books, 1997.
Savitz, Scott. "Reflections on the Revolution in Iran." American Diplomacy (Sep 28, 2009): 8p,
http://search.proquest.com/docview/58835833?accountid=7113