Covering Islam Book Review
Covering Islam by Edward Said originally published in 1981 and an updated edition was printed in 1997. Said’s critique of the media’s coverage of Islam, is a thought-provoking book. He challenges the reader’s understanding of what is reported as news from the war-torn regions of the world.
The fascinating thing about the book is that it was published during the Iranian Revolution, so the majority of the incidents in the book discussed the 70s oil crisis and shed light on some episodes from the 80s and the 90s Gulf war. I’ve read the second edition that was published 4 years prior to 9/11, following the military campaigning in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. However, the book’s interpretations of events unfolding in the aftermath of the Islamic revolution in Iran are generally far-sighted.
The book is very persuasive in its arguments. Edward Said was a hardcore Academic man -He’s both articulate and elegant as usual in laying arguments with “supportive” evidence. Said claims that a particular picture of Islam has been created and that picture is limited and stereotyped. That picture helped to create an adversarial political situation fighting “us” against “Islam”. “Clichés, caricatures, ignorance, unqualified ethnocentrism and inaccuracy” (p.122) have been rampant.
He writes p/28–9. ‘The main difficulty with Islam, however, was that unlike India and China, it had never really been pacified or defeated’. For the general public in the United States and Europe today, Islam is “news” of a particularly unpleasant sort. The Mass media, the government, the geopolitical strategists, Analysts, columnists, and academic experts on Islam are of the view that Islam is a threat to western civilization.
For reasons which seemed always to defy the understanding of scholars, Islam (or some version of it) continued its influence over its believers, who, it came regularly to be argued, were unwilling to accept reality, or at least that part of reality in which the West’s superiority is obvious.
Nevertheless, this book was written 40 years ago, before two Gulf wars, before the end of the Iran-Iraq War, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the Gaza Wars, before 9/11 and the Afghanistan war, the Islamic State, and the Syrian, Yemeni, and Libyan civil wars. Did we learn anything from the past? Did we learn anything from all these wars and disasters? Damn little.
Professor Edward Said was an academic writer, he used to write in advance English, so if you’re not familiar with academic writing style then definitely it will be really difficult for you to finish such a potent book in one sitting or without using a dictionary; however, his arguments somehow remain simple and somewhat intuitive.
Summing up such a potent book in 500 words is not justifiable; however, for personal understanding review was necessary.
A must-read, for Journalism students, and media consumers.
