Multicultural_Brtain

What kind of threat to white society has been constructed by the British news media’s demonisation of Muslims' Introduction The presence of Muslims, in the ‘public sphere’ has increased steadily for the past few decades. British Muslim communities have become more visible and their concerns readily voiced. The ethnic assertiveness of British Muslims and their communities, characterized by the ‘Rushdie affair’ and more recently the printing of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, has been met with unease by the liberal left and outrage by the conservative right. Tahir Abbas points out, in an article for the Journal of Muslim Minority Affair, that while Islamaphobia is by no means a new phenomenon, it has at the end of the twentieth century become ever more prominent. Anti-Muslim sentiment is a consistent feature in the British press and has had implications for Muslims living in Briton and more importantly British Muslims. This essay will look at the kind of threat Muslims are presented as, by looking at how the British media has constructed Muslims in relation to the central issues of freedom of speech, education and interpersonal relations. First I will look at the international representation of Muslims as this is the background against which the British press constructs the Muslim threat. International representation The majority of the British public derives their knowledge of Islam from the pictures and stories provided them by the news media. Images of angry mobs burning flags, books and shouting anti-Western slogans are a familiar sight on our television screens; this is the Islam the British press shows us. Alternative images are not readily available as research by John E. Richardson shows. His analysis of representations of Islam and Muslims in British broadsheet newspapers between October 1997 and January 1998 showed that the majority of articles regarding Muslims are “international news”, around 80%. This was even less than a previous study carried out by Elizabeth Poole (1998-2000), which showed 15% of news regarding Muslims was domestic. These findings show us that the representation of Muslims and Islam is one of a predominantly foreign group, British Muslims are effectively excluded and this trend is increasing. This exclusion is understood by Richardson to act as a mechanism which distances the opinions of Muslims from those of ‘Us’ British. ’Our’ way of life and public domain is separated from the ‘Others’ and their ‘Ways’. Being Muslim is more readily associated with being foreign, because our main information regarding Muslims is in an international context. This furthermore cements their position as ‘Other’, rather than Islam being a religion it begins to denote an ethnic group. A prime example of this is offered by Sina Ali Miscati in his paper on Arab/Muslim ‘Otherness’ and the role its construction had, and is having, in Iraq. Miscati advocates that the coverage of the Gulf War did not give any platform for the views and opinions of Muslim groups, allowing the entire Arab world to be homogenized, instead of its true diversity of religion and experience being represented; “To many in the West, however, Islam and an ‘Arab psyche’ override all such aspects and reduce such societies to one conscious essence.” (Miscati p134.) Thus the archetypal evil Muslim, in the shape of Sadam Hussein (Miscati p133), is created, images of him and his irrational, unreasoning actions are shown to the world with no explanation given or historical context explored. Furthermore, scenes of Arabs/ Muslims acting violently and generally being irate are attractive to the news audience; they are entertained by the dramatic scenes, but at the same time are given an unreasoned or un-researched account of these people’s actions, which are naturalized as representations of all Muslims and act as the, “Irrational undertaking(s) that fuel stereotypes of Arab/Muslims primitiveness.” (Muscati p136). These images plus the global events concerning Muslims, The Gulf War (1990-1991), the attack on The World Trade Center (2001), the invasion of Iraq, and most salient for the British public, the London bombings (2005), all have the theme of ‘Islamic Fundamentalism’ running through them. When combined with a lack of alternative images and/or sources Muslims in Britain and abroad are homogenized; “Muslims in the media have no voice, no platform, so they cannot object or explain. Muslim expressions of cultural identity are dismissed as fanaticism, Muslim demands for legitimate rights seen as fundamentalism.” (Quoted by Abbas in Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol21 No 2, 2001 p254). A threat to secularism An example of how the negative image of Muslims abroad is transferred onto British Muslims is the ‘Rushdie affair’, in which certain Muslim groups took offence to a fictional book that they believed slighted the prophet Muhammad. This led to Muslim groups calling for Islam to be protected against smears to their religion and attacks on people because of their Islamic religion. This was transformed by the British press into an issue of Muslim’s demanding irrational changes in laws to protect their religion from public derision. Elizabeth Poole (2002) points out that this represented a rejection, by Muslims, of the confinement of religion to the private sphere, which instead of being seen as an attempt by the Muslim community to strengthen their own culture and become politically legitimate, was seen as an attack on Britain’s post-modern society of secularism and pluralism. (p129) “Muslims are represented as having separate and different values and therefore as posing a threat to the dominant values. This breads antipathy and social anxiety, thus preventing any changes to the preferred social system and hierarchy.” (Poole 2002 p130) A further threat was constructed by the more liberal media to freedom of speech, due to sections of the Muslim community calling for the offending text to be band because it was blasphemous. This allowed the debate to be reduced to one of censorship, that of course the British media have a vested interest in protecting, The Guardian viewed the Blasphemy law as in need of abolition and, ‘the only course compatible with freedom of belief in a modern society’ ( The Guardian, quoted from Poole 2002). The press constructed the issue as one of freedom of speech related to democracy and modernity; this only left the position of restrictive, archaic, primitivism open for Muslims to occupy. Relationships The focus of news about relationships is between non-Muslim and Muslim partners, usually commenting on the incompatible nature of these relationships, habitually due to Muslim ‘brutality’ suffered by women marrying abroad. Poole (2002) contends that the discourse usually focuses on the problems with converting to Islam, representing a fear of an ever expanding force, with its roots in historical images of black sexuality, and as a threat to white womanhood. An example is the story of Sarah Cook (1997) who married a Turkish Muslim, Musa Kameagac, whom she met while on holiday, despite Sarah being under age the couple married. In coverage of the story Sarah was constantly referred to as a ‘school girl’ or ‘childbride’ leading to a discourse being used regarding child abuse, in which she was the victim. Meanwhile Musa was described in relation to a discourse of deviance. The illegality of the marriage was continually referred to and the reason for the immoral behavior was ‘Mora’s Muslimness’; “One example of this was to quote Musa saying, ‘Before Allah and my people I am proved clean...’ (Mail, 10 October), a statement which, when juxtaposed against the trail and punishment and the newspapers’ derogatory evaluations, negativizes Muslim Belief.” (Poole 2002 p.114). This statement also proves Musa and by implication Muslims use religion for manipulative reasons, making their adherence to strict religious guidelines seem ever more morally bankrupt. (p114) The result is a description of Muslim beliefs and morals being contrary, and not compatible to, those of the West and conversion to Islam, that these relationships represent, a threat to these Western moralities; “The coverage of relationships is characterized by an Orientalist discourse relating to sexual deviance, primitivism, gender, generation, illegality, immorality and perfidy, which formulate a meta-discourse of cultural incompatibility.” (Poole 2002 p110). Education Education has been the source of much debate between minority groups and state institutions; Gilroy (1988) suggests that the reason for this is that education is part of national culture, a culture that is threatened by minorities, like Muslims, using it as a source of empowerment and a path to cultural acceptance. Problems arise when for instance Muslims wish to have their own state sponsored schools, this is seen as a direct threat to an education system which is presented as being Christian. Poole (2002) showed that papers such as The Times suggested that the promotion of Islam in education, as well as the decline of religion in secular Britain, is a danger to morality and Christendom; “The global coherence between articles leaves one feeling that the presence of Muslims has contributed to the demise of Christian values and thus moral disintegration.” (Poole 2002 p 118). Poole found that certain media portrayed Islam as a direct threat to Britain, by constructing Britain as a Christian country that was being subject to attack by a religious minority and were in fact the victims of ‘reverse racism’. This also served to highlight the differences between ‘Them’ and ‘Us’. Coupled with the naturalization of Muslims being foreign, as promoted by the majority or news about Muslims, we are led to a situation where their ‘demands’ are seen as unmanageable at best and damaging to majority interests at worst. Furthermore, the concerns of Muslims come into conflict with the same liberal opposition press encountered during the ‘Rushdie affair’; “In its support for balanced secularism, the Guardian constructs Muslim demands as uncompromising and irrational.” (Poole 2002 p122). Conclusion The British press constructs Muslims as being a threat to the British way of life; this menace is represented in two main ways. Firstly the conservative Christian right see Islam as a threat to a society that has Christianity at its center, this is seen as the norm from which Muslims are deviating. Due to their representation as foreign and culturally incompatible, Muslims are not seen as having the right to impose on this privileged white space, (Richardson, p289).Secondly the liberal press cannot reconcile its self to the religiosity that Islam is publicized to represent, since it contradicts the modern, secular and enlightened society it desires the West to be. Furthermore, any attempt by Muslims to negotiate their position, as in the ‘Rushdie affair’, is disregarded by association with the fundamentalist images of Islam internationally. British Muslims and Muslims abroad are homogenized; the media construct an Islamic nation that is a single entity, terrorists are connected to Islam, fundamentalists are linked with the Koran and all Muslims share the same values. This as a construct, no mater how false, is truly threatening to Western society. References Abbas, T. (2001). Media Capital and the Representation of South Asian Muslims in the British Press: An Ideological Analysis. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol 21, No 2. Carfax Publishing. Muscati, S, A. (2002). Arab/Muslim ‘Otherness’: The Role of Racial Construction in the Gulf War and the Continuing Crisis with Iraq. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. Col22 no 1 p131-148. Poole, E. (2002). Media Representations of British Muslims: Reporting Islam. I. B. Tauris. Richardson, J, E. (2001). British Muslims in the Broadsheet Press: a challenge to cultural hegemony' Journalistic Studies. Volume 2. Number 2. Pp221-242. Routledge.