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 | | Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World by Edward W. Said ISBN-10: 9780679758907 ISBN-10: 0-679-75890-9 ISBN-13: 9780679758907 ISBN-13: 978-0-679-75890-7 Paperback 1997-03-11 Vintage Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description From the Iranian hostage crisis through the Gulf War and the bombing of the World Trade Center, the American news media have portrayed "Islam" as a monolithic entity, synonymous with terrorism and religious hysteria. In this classic work, now updated, the author of Culture and Imperialism reveals the hidden agendas and distortions of fact that underlie even the most "objective" coverage of the Islamic world. | ||
Amazon.com Review While the 16 years that have passed since the first edition of this book hit the stands have been marked by an increase in sensitivity toward many ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities, the easy acceptance of stereotypes and prejudices in the portrayal, depiction of, and reporting about Islamic peoples has remained largely constant. In this updated version of this rigorous but engaging volume Edward Said looks at how American popular media has used and perpetuated a narrow and unfavorable image of Islamic peoples, and how this has prevented understanding while providing a fictitious common enemy for the diverse American populace. | ||
Reviews | ||
Wes Brot ich ess, des Lied ich sing Reading Said is a strange experience. My own first encounter was 'Orientalism'. I was quite willing to buy his thesis: oriental sciences were knowledge for power; of course, what else? Orientalists helped European colonial powers to do their job, administer their dominions. Exactly. The problem that I had with the book was that the man never got to the point. You know his point half way through the introduction, and there he was still going on with his introduction. What the hell. You skip the rest, because you think you know it anyway. Maybe. My second attempt: Covering Islam, written first after the Teheran embassy hostage taking, updated in the mid 90s. The subject? Covering Islam, of course. His point: there is no such thing as 'Islam', not, at least, in the sense that the Western Press likes us to think there is. Reading against the grain, what Said is really telling us is this: the experts (academics, journalists and spies) had lost the knack. Nobody in the US was remotely smart enough to expect the Lebanon civil war. Or the Iranian revolution. Or the Intifada. If orientalists are power knowledge handlers, the new generation are flops. They have no clue. Experts sing the song of the guy who pays for the music. That's what kills quality. That's what saw WMDs where none could be found. The problem however is this: Said was a Palestinian American, and he attacked Israel for occupation policies; that's why he could be pushed aside and labeled. He was not a Muslim, but he was antagonized by the stupidity of the Western standard depiction of Islam. There is no 'Islam'. He says this so often that one gets restless: if there is no Islam, when is the man going to tell us what he thinks there is that is called 'Islam'. We don't get away that easy though. Once I was 'in' the book, I realized how much one can miss by not listening when somebody is slow at getting to the point. Among the aspects that he does not spell out clearly are these: 'Islam' as it is used in the media is an artificial concept; the reality is more complex, therefore the simplification is wrong. Also: the Western observation ascribes things to 'Islam' which are basically not religious, eg the Palestinian resistance against occupation, and also the Iranian revolution against the Shah regime. Said tells us early on that he knows all the bad things that Muslims have done. But still... This reminded me of the brilliant scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian, where the Jewish anti-Roman guerilla discusses 'what the Romans brought us'. Schools, hospitals, roads, sanitation, sewage, peace? Yes, yes, but what else did they bring? | ||
Excellent An excellent analysis of U.S. media incompetence and bias in their coverage of the Islamicate world during the past 30 years. | ||
A Must Read For The Uneducated Westerner Edward Said is one of my favorite social writers when it comes to Middle Eastern politics. Being a Palestenian Christian, it is obvious he wouldn't simply side with the East because of his religious ties with Islam. The book is very fair in showing exactly how the West's propaganda against the Middle East is a self-fulfilled prophecy. It's undoing will certainly be its downfall. This is a must read for anyone who wants to understand some tenets of journalism and is definately a must read for anyone who has ever taken an anthropology class. Pick it up! | ||
Interesting but flawed thesis In the latter stages of `Orientalism', Edward Said's monumental and controversial treatise on the `otherness' of Eastern cultures as perceived by Western writers and colonial figures, the German anti-Islamist Gustave von Grunbaum - writing some five decades ago - is taken to task. Said notes his `essentially reductive, negative generalisations' about Islam and supplies quotations to substantiate the charge. Despite Said's strictures, though, von Grunebaum's statements concerning the `basic anti-humanism of Islamic civilization' which `does not separate the things of Caesar from those of God' have a definite bearing on one side of the current debate in the light of more recent catastrophic events. This view of Islam as prescriptive, authoritarian, resistant to change is by its nature `Orientalist', in the pejorative sense which Said implies, because it is held by an outsider whose Western intellectual baggage must inevitably compromise any attempt on his part to be objective. Much as I usually defer to Said's prodigious scholarship I find myself in serious disagreement with him here. Likewise, the sequel `Culture and Imperialism' contains a discussion of W.B. Yeats in which Said objects to two American commentators on post '79 Iran quoting Yeats in their reports. He feels that the words of Ireland's greatest poet about `the worst being full of passionate intensity' would be better applied to the Western colonial intervention of 1953 than to those caught up in, or leading, the upheaval which would be its eventual outcome. Of course, many would take the view that Yeats' `Second Coming' could quite legitimately be referred to when the subject of the Ayatollah Khomeini's bloodstained Islamofascist regime is under discussion. Unfortunately this propensity for denial and omission to some extent pervades `Covering Islam'. Written in the wake of Iran's 1979 `revolution' and the ensuing hostage crisis it deals with Western media perception of Islam and the Islamic world. Essentially what is presented is a further ramification of the argument in `Orientalism', which is referred back to, concerning the problem of negative, sometimes racist, Muslim stereotypes in mainly the US media. `I have no quarrel with the view that the Islamic world is in a dreadful state', Said concedes, acknowledging that at least some of the criticism might be justified. He also admits that most Islamic societies are `poor, tyrannical, militarily inept' and `incompetent, crude dictatorships', although without any attempt to analyse the possible underlying reasons for this. When even a respected authority like Bernard Lewis refers to Islam as something `static, determinist and authoritarian' - as distinct from the rationalist, secular West - he is in effect shouted down, possibly because Said senses in the remark some hint of an explanation which Lewis would like to offer for the inherent backwardness of Islamic countries. John Kifner of the New York Times gets similar treatment for an article in which he contrasts the Western mind - post-Reformation - with Islam, noting that the latter observes no separation of Church and State and remarking on the difficulty we in the West are bound to have in grasping the power exerted by Islam. Again, these seem to me pertinent observations although Said disallows them. The main focus of the book is Iran and the various references to Khomeini, far from being critical, seem calculated not to offend his supporters whose hysterical adulation was dramatically pointed up at the time by the Western media. Incredibly, as an example of the hostile media slant Said even mentions an edition of Khomeini's `Islamic Government', published under the title `Khomeini's Mein Kampf' and carrying a preface by one George Capozi Jnr of the New York Post which compares Khomeini with Hitler. Given the nature of the regime and the psychology of its leader this would seem fair comment, but Said chooses instead to focus on Khomeini's reputation at home as a great reader of Islamic law who thus, as the nation's guide, fulfils the requirements of Iran's new constitution. His moral teachings are mentioned in passing along with his call for an Islamic republic which should `institutionalize righteousness' and act in the best interests of the oppressed. Sadly, these reassuring indications of the tyrant's honourable intentions merely disguise the brutal reality of a system which claimed many innocent lives. Nor, with the benefit of hindsight, is this regretted in the revised 1991 introduction. We have to look elsewhere to be informed about the regime's routine murder of gays, atheists, apostates, prostitutes and adulterers, not to mention the righteous Mullah's revolting prescriptions regarding bestiality and sex with children. Said also states, at various points, his opinions on what qualifies anyone to report from Muslim countries or comment from the outside looking in. He regrets the fact that those who express negative opinions about the Islamic world often have no grasp of Islamic jurisprudence and are unfamiliar with the languages of the region. Zionist author Michael Walzer, for example, is referred to in this light. I would not normally defend Walzer (his characterisation of the Palestinian resistance as religious rather than political is patently absurd) but this seems a little unfair. By the same logic it might be argued that, in the `30s and `40s, to have criticised Hitler one should ideally have been a German speaker and possessed an in-depth knowledge of Germany's history and culture, also its legal system. I have too high a regard for Professor Said to dismiss his thesis out of hand. It is valid up to a point. He is right to condemn the media charade of the hostage crisis following the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, the whole point of which was to force the return of the exiled Shah from the States to face trial. Over the 444-day period of the standoff a cavalcade of network `pundits', with their 3-minute soundbite approach to history, did little to advance public awareness of the background to the crisis. Of the struggle unfolding between the clergy and various political groupings in Iran very little was said. Of course, had there been serious analysis of this and other important issues it would probably have detracted from the entertainment value of the discussions centering upon conspiracy theories rather than facts. Thus, George Ball of the Washington Post's claim that the embassy takeover was `orchestrated by well-known Marxists' (how well known or who they were, exactly, was not specified) typified the general ambience of rumour and paranoia. Other equally informed contributors to the debate alleged PLO involvement and, because the Cold War still had a decade to run, inevitably the Soviet Union must have had a hand in it also. That the Iranian people might actually have suffered under the Pahlavi dynasty and therefore wished to bring its deposed head to account seems scarcely to have been considered. When the crisis was finally resolved rumours of torture and ill-treatment inflicted on the hostages by their captors were shown to have been a cynical lie conceived as part of the media's sensationalist agenda. This attention-grabbing, racist stereotype of the Muslim whose moral backwardness is bound to lead to uncivilized behaviour - played upon at length during the seige - unfortunately continues to have wide currency. Said also notes hypocrisy in the charge that Islamic societies are theologically backward-looking if it is not equally applied to Israel. The terrorist Begin's citing of Biblical precedent to justify his war on the Palestinians is brought to mind. Indeed, the plethora of pro-Israeli books and journals masquerading as serious scholarship and responsible journalism, in their eagerness to portray Israel as a victim of Islamic violence, say little or nothing about the bombing and invasion of several Islamic countries by Israel and the US, or Palestinian dispossession. This is familiar territory and all of a piece with, elsewhere, Said's excoriating and entirely proper denunciations of Israeli oppression in the occupied territories. Various examples of hate propaganda in American right-wing publications are mentioned, one particularly repellent example being Martin Peretz of the `New Atlantic' who is shown nailing his racist, anti-Arab colours firmly to the mast in a theatre review. Such unpleasant media stereotypes seem to have multiplied following the OPEC price rises of 1974 and the increase in the cost of imported oil. This strand of Said's argument ultimately connects with his analysis, in the concluding chapter, of the corporate or government-driven agenda which dictates the angle of Islamic studies in American universities and the careers open to graduates in the subject area. In sum, more than twenty-five years after its initial publication `Covering Islam' remains thought-provoking and merits reconsideration in the context of the post 9/11 debate. For the sake of balance, however, I would strongly recommend Muslim apostate scholar Ibn Warraq's rigorous critique of Islam `Why I Am Not A Muslim' as a powerful refutation of Said's assertion in his introduction that the religion is `doctrinally blameless' vis-à-vis the absence of personal freedoms in many Islamic societies. Also, those who might be persuaded of Islam's allegedly benign attitude towards women could do worse than read `Price Of Honour', Jan Goodwin' chilling account of its practical realization in some of these very societies. Of particular relevance to this discussion is her chapter on Iran entitled `There Is No Fun In Islam' - those being the Ayatollah's very words - which shows how the initial euphoria following the Shah's overthrow soon gave way tragically to the realization that one barbaric torture state had been swept away only to be replaced by another. | ||
Contrarian worth reading . . . First published in 1981 and updated in 1997, Said's critique of the media's coverage of Islam, particularly in the Middle East, is a thought-provoking challenge to any reader's perceptions of what is reported as news from that war-torn part of the world. Written before 9/11, subsequent military intervention in Afghanistan, and the current conflict in Iraq, the book's interpretation of events unfolding there (the aftermath of the Islamic revolution in Iran) are often prophetic. An understanding of Islam based solely on Western "interest," he argues, will lead to further and protracted conflict rather than resolution of differences. Despite a carping tone that becomes irritating and a tendency to make its points with a thoroughness that seems like overkill, the book throws a searching light on how Islam is represented by news gatherers, experts, and policy makers. Emphasis on violence, anti-American rhetoric, and resistance to "modernization," for example, belie the fact that there is not a single monolithic Islam but many Islams and that what news organizations perpetuate is an undifferentiated form of cultural stereotyping - as if it were sufficient to say about the Dutch that they all wear wooden shoes. Said's arguments are dismissed (see other reviews here) for reasons that may have some validity (as a Palestinian-American, his sympathies are clearly not pro-Israeli), but readers can benefit nonetheless from his contrarian views, especially since they throw into question assumptions about the Middle East, which so far show a tendency (as in the case of Iran and Iraq) to seriously misjudge political and cultural realities. | ||