Contested Representations in Historical Perspective: Images of Islam and Australian Press, 1950-2000

Abstract

Over the last fifty years, newspapers have provided Australians with much of what they know, or rather apprehend, about Islam as a religious system and about Muslim culture in general. This stands to reason. On the one hand, very few non-Muslims would bother going to the length of consulting the Koran, the prime source of Islamic theology, to discover for themselves the prescriptions for life that it lays down and embodies. On the other hand, the press has long superseded all other forms of literature as the instrument of mass communication, a register of current national and international information, and the medium through which the world's changing landscape can be regularly viewed. It follows that the popular conception of Islam, and things Islamic, is for the most part derived from journalistic coverage of events in the Muslim world as they unfold as news on a daily basis. Reports, feature articles, editorials, bold headlines, and the mandatory photograph, illustration, or cartoon supply a montage of intelligence and imagery that collectively sum up Islam and all that it seems to stand for. The question is, what does Islam seem to stand for, based on the kind of reports it has been, and continues to be accorded by the Australian press?