Abstract
This paper examines representations of Muslim youth in a major Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail, over a four-year period (2010 to 2013). The first part of the article reviews some of the relevant literature regarding Muslim representations in the Western, mainstream media, paying particular attention to representations of Muslim youth. Based on a close analysis of a corpus of 158 news stories, a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the coverage is presented. Using a postcolonial and critical race perspective, this article traces the ways in which Muslim youth are represented, illustrating the ways in which a racial logic inscribes them. The findings suggest that Muslim youth are cast not only as an enemy within the nation state, but also as a contaminating force that must be disciplined or ejected from the body politic. They are, in short, barbarians in and of the land. At the same time, these representations cohere to produce an image of the nation as benevolent and dedicated to universal standards of truth and justice.
Highlights
Since the time of Edward Said’s (1978; 1981) groundbreaking work documenting Orientalism, there is a wealth of literature that details Western media stereotypes of Muslims and Islam (e.g. Karim, 2000; Mamdani, 2004; Muscati, 2002; Razack, 2008; Steuter & Wills, 2009). Maira (2009, p. 29) cynically refers to this as the bourgeoning “post 9/11 area studies”
Framed within the dominant discourse of the “War on Terror”, many of these representations focus on young Muslim men as potential, if not actual, terrorists (Maira, 2009), and young Muslim women as caught within a cultural clash signified by their struggles against an oppressive Islam as embodied in the ultra-patriarchal practices of their fathers and brothers (Sensoy & Marshall, 2010; Zine, 2002; 2009). These representations fail to account for the history or social location of Muslim youth – one that is marked by underemployment, discrimination and targeting (Helly, 2004; Haque, 2010; Khalema & Wannas-Jones, 2003)
In parsing through the articles, we categorized them using the following descriptors: Radicalization & Terror for stories that discussed Muslim youth involved in terrorist activities or as having been radicalized; Surveillance for stories concerning state surveillance of Muslim youth; Immigration for those which commented on immigration issues involving Muslim youth; and, Honour Killings to reference and categorize Muslim victims of honour crimes
Summary
Since the time of Edward Said’s (1978; 1981) groundbreaking work documenting Orientalism, there is a wealth of literature that details Western media stereotypes of Muslims and Islam (e.g. Karim, 2000; Mamdani, 2004; Muscati, 2002; Razack, 2008; Steuter & Wills, 2009). Maira (2009, p. 29) cynically refers to this as the bourgeoning “post 9/11 area studies”. Framed within the dominant discourse of the “War on Terror”, many of these representations focus on young Muslim men as potential, if not actual, terrorists (Maira, 2009), and young Muslim women as caught within a cultural clash signified by their struggles against an oppressive Islam as embodied in the ultra-patriarchal practices of their fathers and brothers (Sensoy & Marshall, 2010; Zine, 2002; 2009). These representations fail to account for the history or social location of Muslim youth – one that is marked by underemployment, discrimination and targeting How are these stereotypes prevalent in contemporary press reporting of Muslim youth? In the sections that follow, we discuss some of the findings from our corpus of news articles from The Globe and Mail
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