How Western media treats the ‘Islamic threat’
Edward Said, a Palestinian Christian scholar, wrote that those who control Western media are powerful and can be dangerous because they are able to shape peoples’ thoughts. Said’s book “Covering Islam” opened my eyes as a student and framed my engagement with the media.
In the post-cold-war era the West had moved from the “red scare” to the “green menace.” The flavour of the day, or more accurately flavour for the decades to come became the “Islamic threat.” Said’s Occident v. orient thesis popularized in his book, “Orientalism,” became more vivid.
Then as a lawyer in the wake of 9/11, Said’s thesis came alive again, but this time the zeitgeist broadened to go beyond foreign Muslims, to include Western Muslims like me. Through some Western eyes, even the “them” living among “us” can be the “enemy.”
Can be the enemy? We’re all those terror attacks listed by TROP committed by Christadelphians?
Islam is the enemy. It is a 5th Column whose goal is the destruction of the West.
