Today, a dangerous campaign against Islam is being waged by the Western media. There is a consensus that Islam represents a threat to Western civilisation. Like the red menace of the Cold War era, the green peril (green being the colour of Islam) is described as a cancer spreading around the globe, undermining the legitimacy of Western values. Muslims and Arabs are essentially covered, discussed and perceived in the Western media either as oil suppliers or as potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab Muslim life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report on the Islamic world. Consequently, a specific image of Islam has been supplied, and its meaning or message has on the whole continued to be circumscribed and stereotyped. The Western media has often projected individuals of Arab descent in a negative manner. Arabs are seen as terrorists and murderers due to how the media presents them. Newspapers use key words such as “extremists,” “terrorists” and “fanatics” to describe Arabs. According to US academic Jack Shaheen, “The present-day Arab stereotype parallels the image of Jews in pre-Nazi Germany, where Jews were painted as dark, shifty-eyed, venal and threateningly different people.” These distortions of the Arab people have created a general mistrust and dislike for Arabs among many Americans. Although Western news agencies do provide real-time news reporting from the Arab region, the coverage tends to be limited in scope, focussing on conflict, natural disasters and major events like the Palestinian-Israeli peace process and official visits. Insightful and local reporting about the major issues affecting the Middle East's 16 and North Africa's six countries in particular, as well as their economies and business prospects, is scarce. Additionally, many people who are of Middle Eastern origin and those who have an interest in the Middle East and North Africa (regardless of their geographical location) do not give the mainstream Western media high scores for coverage. Many readers believe that the reporting is superficial and in many cases biased and inaccurate, and of course it is always analysed from an American/Western perspective. Furthermore, the Western media's overwhelming desire to provide instantaneous information, even at the expense of credibility, has led to its becoming a tool for prejudice and distortion. What's more disturbing is that the American media structure, while it sustains a wide array of expressions, has become concentrated in its control by a very few large corporations. It is inevitable that these corporations will have their own agenda in order to influence the reader, as is the case in the United States and some European countries. The point worth emphasising here is the fact that the flow of information about the Arab region flows in only one direction from West to East. As such, it is essential for those in the media business to reverse this process and give the opportunity to the people of the Middle East to voice their opinions, report their news and write their analyses for consumption in the Western world. Most Americans learn about national and international events not from public forums or friends, but from the mass media, meaning newspapers, radio and especially television. Therefore, the media can and does contribute to conflict escalation, either directly or indirectly. In regard to the Middle East, the American media plays a major role. Media coverage of conflicts plays a key role in turning US public opinion against the Arabs, Palestinians and Muslims and in shaping US foreign policy. The American government, which gains its support from citizens who in turn are influenced by the media, has real power to bring to an end the conflicts now plaguing the Middle East. The one-sided media coverage and attitudes towards the Middle East not only affect the public's perceptions of it. Such lobbying also directly influences government, as the US president and Congress read the Washington Post and New York Times and do not have easy access to a counterbalancing side of the story. Moreover, the influence of television shows on the propagation of stereotypes in programmes geared toward adults and mainstream America alike cannot be ignored. US television writers and executives have employed and still employ myths about Arabs including themes such as the Arabs are buying up America, OPEC is synonymous with Arabs, Iranians are Arabs, all Arabs are Muslims, Arabs are white slavers and uncivilised, all Palestinians are terrorists, and the Arabs are the world's enemies. Obviously, these myths have no basis whatsoever in reality. Arabs as enemies: To identify Arabs with terrorism is to classify them as enemies. In research conducted by the US academic L John Martin, the results showed that the word “terrorism” was used by the US press in describing events and individuals it disapproved of, yet when describing these same acts by individuals who were not Arabs the media was careful to appear neutral and unbiased. A good example of media coverage that presented the facts of an actual event in a prejudicial manner was the Oklahoma City bombing in the US in 1995. Within minutes of the event, news reporters were insinuating that the bombing was the act of terrorists. Raised with unpopular stereotypes of the Arabs, the American public was also quick to develop images of Arab terrorists destroying American property. These views were fuelled by the fact that the Oklahoma City building targeted contained several government agencies. “Steven Emerson, a terrorism expert, told viewers not to believe Islamic groups when they denied involvement,” said one commentator. Furthermore, CNN, a major news channel, gave the actual names of Arab suspects being detained for questioning in connection with the bombing. This type of reporting was a departure from the stance CNN usually takes to protect the identity of individuals involved in criminal activity until the facts have been confirmed. It was impossible for the American public to conceive of the word “terrorist” in application to citizens of their own country. The word “terrorism” is synonymous with the Arabs. The few exceptions in regard to public impressions of the Arabs come from those Arab countries that are viewed as pro-Western. These positive images only exist as long as these countries remain positively affiliated with the United States on foreign policy issues. It is worth noting that the Arabs have also been portrayed in the Western media in other distorted ways. Prior to the creation of the state of Israel, the Arabs were often thought of in terms of camels, belly-dancers and pyramids. Following the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the West came to view the Arab as someone who was “backward, fanatical, dishonest, fatalistic and lazy,” according to one scholar. After the 1967 War, another dimension was added that of “corrupt leaders” and fanatical mobs. With the rise of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) a new image was created that of the fanatical, blood-thirsty Arab terrorist. With little or no understanding of Islamic history or of the root causes of anti-Western feelings in the Islamic world, many Western strategists have identified a new enemy of the West, a new demon that has replaced the red menace of the Cold War, in radical Islam. These strategists call for a “Western jihad” against Islamic fundamentalism in a gesture that oversimplifies and ignores the genuine complexities of the Islamic world. If communism has often been described as a “disease,” Islamic fundamentalism is best described as a “plague” infecting the Islamic world from Morocco to India. Islam is also often seen as a “green menace” and a potential replacement for the destructive East-West competition between the former Soviet Union and the United States. There is much anti-Muslim propaganda current in pro-Israel circles in the West these days. The “Islamic threat” is replacing the Soviet threat as an excuse for hostilities, and there is a constant refrain that Islam is the “natural enemy” of the West. In recent decades, especially since events in Iran in 1979 caught European and American attention so strongly, Western media has not so much covered Islam, as has portrayed it, characterised it, analysed it, given instant courses on it and consequently made it “known”. But this coverage has been misleading, and a great deal has been based on far from objective material. Menace of Islam: Islam has long been seen as a particular menace to the West, and there is a consensus in some parts of the West that Islam represents a threat to Western civilisation. Such negative images of Islam are prevalent, and they do not correspond to what Islam is, but rather to what prominent sectors of particular societies think it to be. Such sectors have the power to propagate a particular image of Islam. The US academic John L Esposito's book The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality is a historical, cultural and political elaboration on the question of whether there is in fact an “Islamic threat”. Esposito tells us that the answer to this question lies not so much in the Islamic world as in the West itself. He argues that if the Western powers continue to defend the unjust status quo in the Middle East in the name of an illusory or fleeting stability, then Islam will continue to be a threat. If the Western powers begin to appreciate the legitimacy of the grievances in the Middle East, however, the Islamist movements could become partners in building a just world order. Esposito says that the Islamist movements, even and especially when they come to power through elections, should be given the opportunity to succeed or fail. He admits that as long as political Islam remains the option that is denied to many voters, its politics will never be held accountable to the people whose interests it claims to seek. This trend of thought is also expressed by the writers Robin Wright, in her article “Islam, Democracy, and the West”, and Ghassan Salama, in his “Islam and the West”. Wright thinks that the West would be far better served by encouraging real democratic openings that include the Islamists rather than tolerating authoritarian systems that exclude them. Shee concludes her analysis by saying that the Islamic resurgence clearly presents a challenge to the West, but it also provides an enormous opportunity. Salama raises the question of what the West can do beyond its repression of Islamist-inspired violence, suggesting that Western governments should seek to know who the Islamist groups are and what they are doing. This cannot be achieved if the West views the Islamist challenge solely from the perspective of a security threat. It would be both unfair and self-deluding to lump together the Islamist groups as a single threat to Western interests. This would be to ignore the diversity of the Islamists and implicitly assume that they are the only anti-Western force in their societies. Clearly, the current state of affairs is counter-productive for both the West and the Middle East. Hence, the anti-Middle East rhetoric and the American mindset need to be changed in accordance with the realities of the Middle East as the cradle of Christianity, Judaism and Islam and the birthplace of some of the earliest human civilisations, such as those of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and Persia. Unfortunately, the Western media tends to simplify, sensationalise, generalise and, in the process, dehumanise an entire region by not only portraying the Middle East as a dangerous place, but also as a place where terrorists are born, raised and trained. There is a need for it to discover the reality of Islam and to be able to project that. This is also something that should be crucial to Muslim scholars. The negative stereotypes of Islam as a religion of anarchy, cruelty and obscurity that prevail in the Western media may continue unless Muslim scholars are able to project the true core features of Islam. To confront the campaign that stereotypes Arabs as aggressive, violent and uncivilised, the presence of some extremists should be recognised, but it should be made clear that their extremism does not result from Islam, that they are not in the majority in Islamic communities or in Islamic movements, and that their activities are against the essence of Islam. But there is no magic formula for changing the negative attitudes of people, mainly Westerners, regarding the Middle East. What is clear is that creating a favourable image or impression requires knowledge of mass communication processes, public relations, interpersonal communication, intercultural communication and nonverbal communication, coupled with careful research, planning, coordination and implementation. Images, or what others think of us, are social constructions, and the tools used to construct such images lie mainly in the mass media. It is no wonder that today a huge industry exists in the United States and elsewhere whose job is to transform unknowns into celebrities, build or enhance images, destroy images, package candidates for political office, change appearances, and in the process change or modify public perceptions. In the final analysis, there is only one reality and that reality is perception, and the basis for perception comes from the mass media. The events cited in this article, including the Oklahoma City bombing, provide many lessons, including about the mass media's dependency on government and vice versa, as well as propaganda techniques aimed at manipulating public opinion, reinforcing and globalising stereotypical images of the Middle East and manufacturing or altering public perceptions. Other lessons are that, in the final analysis, when it comes to politics and a nation's self-interest, ordinary citizens do not really matter they can easily be sacrificed in battles for political and economic gain by those who own and control the world's communication channels. Finally, despite the fact that the mass media's version of events usually differs from reality, it is the concocted media version, or the manufactured reality, that is internalised by people as reality. Such stereotypes then become the basis for human interactions. What the Middle East, the Arabs and the Muslims need today is an honest, clear and transparent effort to create additional space in the Western media for their perspectives. They need news coverage produced by professional journalists who live in the region and who have the proper background and experience to provide contextual, honest and fair reporting for the consumption of the Western world. What is stopping the Arabs from accomplishing this very important goal? Half-hearted attempts are not enough and will not work. Clear and convincing conviction is required, and those who have this conviction have the responsibility to act and to act now. The writer is a professor at Cairo University.
