CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The United States of America and its allies are involved in a worldwide war on

terror both militarily and psychologically from 16th September 2001. Like the actual

armed war in response to the terrorist attack 9/11, that took the lives of more than three

thousand innocent people (Kean, 2011). As a result, America is involved in using the

most effective tool in representing the incident; which we called dominant discourse.

Both America and extremists struggle to win the hearts and minds of the mainstream

Muslim by discursively legitimating their own actions and delegitimizing other’s

actions. Faizullah Jan (2015) quoted Bets, that words and images are used to construct

the status and position are more operative and appropriate to earn the hearts and minds

of common people. These words and images established the sociopolitical reality of the

world by inculcating events with meaning and defining who ‘we’ are and who ‘they’

are (Jan, 2015). In result ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ are constructed with organizing discourse.

It is the discourse which formulates understandings and interprets the events, which

then influence and impact our actions and doings. Consequently, we establish discursive

tools in understanding the world and fix our position and status in it by taking one action

or event and ignoring the other.

The characterization of 9/11 as an act of war created a discursive justification of

metaphorical “war on terror” (Hodges, 2010). Thus, the ascription of meaning in

discourses work to constitute the social world and inform our reaction to social reality

(Jan, 2015). Social reality, according to constructionist tradition, is created in language

as a representation and not as a reflection of pre-existing reality. Faizullah Jan (2015)

further explain the concept in the words of Laclau and Mouffe event, action and even