"Islamophobia for Dummies"

Jon Stewart Daily Show, P.1 Ground Zero Mosque Islamophobia -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUcHQmUEICc

The news media of the United States, particularly FOX News Network, are paramount in constructing a “fear mongering campaign”. This discourse essentially exacerbates, and disseminates, “Islamophobia”.

Last year, media frenzied over the decision to build a mosque at Ground Zero. What is interesting from the news reporting of this issue is the lack of focus on fact, and the centrality in exacerbating an Islamophobic discourse to exude “real-American” (non-Muslim) power. Journalists framed their reporting around the fact that it was too soon and insensitive to build a Mosque at Ground Zero. Their emphatic assertions are assumed to represent the “everyday American’s concerns” – this immediately casts Muslims as the “Other”. The issue is told from the point of view from primarily white Americans, from a “single privileged point” (Shohat and Stam) that characterises the White voice as omniscient. This effect of Orientalism, as Edward Said argues, illustrates that Muslims are not part of the fabric of American society.

The truth of the story is that a mosque was not to be built at Ground Zero, but an Islamic Cultural Centre – and there had already been a mosque in the same location which has been there for 40 years, with another two blocks away. It is interesting that it seems presumed that only non-Muslim Americans have the liberty to deliberate the appropriate distance of where a mosque could be built. FOX News included in their segment their “expert interview” Paster Waine DeVrou, who says, “There are some people that are afraid and they’re afraid for a good reason. Because Islamic philosophy and ideology starts in a mosque.” The discourse here has produced an ideology which associated Islam with deviance, threatening and cold people. The fact that no counter interview with an alternative viewpoint was provided by FOX, proliferates the production of the ideology of Islamophobia. This exercise of Orientalism shows that Muslim’s are not a “free subject of thought or action” (Said). Diane Sawyer of ABC News closes her segment by asking the viewers, “Should Muslims be allowed to build their mosques in the neighbourhoods of their choosing?” The question immediately places irrationalises Muslims and alienates them from deliberation.

The Eurocentric framing of news presents the European viewpoint as the rational, it utilises a fear-mongering ideology which in turn exacerbates the dehumanisation of the “Orient”.