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Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Australian
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 Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 26, No. 3, December 2006

Representation of Islam and Muslims in the

Australian Media, 2001 – 20051
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NAHID KABIR

Abstract
Muslim Australians believe that prevailing media attitudes towards them and their
religion, Islam, disadvantages them both economically and socially. The Western
media is alleged to have aggravated anti-Muslim sentiment since the 1990 –1991
Gulf Crises, and after September 11, 2001 and the Bali tragedy in 2002, effectively
divided the world into the Muslim terrorists (“evil”) and the civilised Christians
(“good”). Within the framework of national interest and security, this paper exam-
ines whether Muslims’ allegation of media bias is valid. If so, then, it will address
the question, why is the media demonising this group of people, and who is to blame
for this phenomenon—the media, its audience or the militant Islamic groups? This
paper is based on primary and secondary sources including oral testimonies.

Introduction
Muslim Australians are an ethnically diverse group of people, yet the tone of certain
media reports implies that all Muslims are the same. A stereotype of hysteria, inherent
violence and barbaric practices often seems to be deliberately perpetuated, either to marg-
inalise Muslim people as the uncivilised “Other” in the dichotomy between Eastern and
Western culture, or for purely commercial reasons—sensational stories guarantee higher
newspaper sales.
This negative representation gives the impression that all Muslims are fundamenta-
lists, and therefore senseless terrorists who want to destroy everything non-Muslim.
Most of the time this is not balanced with a positive counter image and the consequence
is predictably dire for ethnic community relations in this country. Many of Australia’s
281,578 Muslims—1.5% of the total population (2001)—believe that as a result of
this media bias, they are vilified in society, and particularly in the workplace. The
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures appear to support this claim: in 1996 the unem-
ployment rate for Muslim Australians was 25%, compared to 9% for the national
total. In 2001 it came down to 18.5% (compared to the 6.8% for the national total)
but the ratio of people in unprivileged position in the labour market remained almost
three times higher than for the wider society.2
The effect on moderate Muslims of these misconceptions—apart from the social and
economic disadvantage that such discrimination inevitably incurs—is frustration, anger
and sadness. This is obvious in the following comments from Australian Muslims inter-
viewed for this study:

I think the Australian media are quite prejudiced, and they only do show one
side of the story, which is quite pro-Bush, pro-Howard, pro-war. Probably
the least prejudiced media would be ABC or SBS, but the most pro-Jewish,

ISSN 1360-2004 print=ISSN 1469-9591 online/06=030313-16 # 2006 Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs
DOI: 10.1080=13602000601141281
 314 Nahid Kabir

pro-America, would be Channel Seven, Channel Nine, Channel Ten. They

only ever show things from one side of the story.3
I think that Australian media is very biased. They only take the view, or the side
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of the Australian government. They do not portray the Muslims as good people.
They portray Muslims as the bad guys, doing all the wrong things in the whole
world. I can see it, because whenever you see the media portraying anything,
they always come up with the same, Indonesian, terrorist training camp, it
always comes up whatever the issue is, so you feel like it is very biased.4
After September 11th, the media was showing that the Palestinian Muslim
women wearing scarves were happy, and laughing, at the incident. That
means Muslim people are happy about what happened to America. I didn’t
like that. Actually, it was not that, I heard that picture was for something
else, those women were happy for something else, but they showed the
picture at that time, to put Muslim people down. That Muslim people are so
mean, that lots of people died in America, and we are happy. That’s not true.5
The media’s focus on Islam and Muslims has been particularly intense since September
2001. Labelling of the religious or cultural Other in headlines and other media images
was common even before the September 11 tragedy, but since then it has been persist-
ent. As the last comment demonstrates, it is easy to exploit the community’s fear of ter-
rorism by using unconnected images to confuse readers and suggest that all Muslim
people approve of terrorist activities. By not placing the published pictures in their
correct context, the media encouraged readers to draw their own (mistaken)
conclusions. The anxiety that this focus manipulates helps to maintain support for
government policies of mandatory detention, surveillance, and its military actions
such as the war in Iraq.
This paper is drawn from the oral testimonies of Muslims of diverse ethnic back-
ground. Since 1998, as part of PhD and post-doctoral research on Muslims in Australia,
the author conducted 130 face-to-face, in-depth taped interviews of Muslims, aged 18 –
90, both male and female. While speaking about their settlement experience, several
interviewees made unsolicited remarks about Western/Australian media, all of them
making the point that Muslims were being demonised. Consequently, the author
researched several broadsheet newspapers, particularly Australian national newspaper
The Australian and the state newspaper The West Australian, dates ranging from 2001
to 2004. The author found that some print media reports Muslim news with provocative
headlines often associated with images that showed Islam as a violent religion.

Representation of Muslims Pre- and Post-9/11

This study found that even before the 9/11 tragedy, the media portrayed Muslims as
“savage”. For example, in early 2001, when news headlines such as “Circumcision,
Islam Forced on Christians” appeared with images of a destroyed Christian area and a
church, it gave the reader an immediate impression of the sectarian conflict in certain
regions of Indonesia. It implied that acceptance of Islam would lead to the destruction
of Christianity (as symbolised by the image of the church), and it generalised a religion
and the motives of those who practise it.
It was also contradicted by reality. The report following on from this particular head-
line claimed hundreds of Christians, including pregnant women and infant girls, were
 Islam and Muslims in the Australian Media 315

forcibly circumcised by local Muslim clerics. Moderate Muslim leaders denied any
such campaign of forcible conversion, and refugees from Kesui later told a Governor’s
investigation team that they were not forced to change their religion.6 So why had the
journalist reported it (and the media published it) as fact?
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While sectarian conflict between the Christians and Muslims was an issue in the
Malaku Islands, the Australian print media took the side of the Christians and reported
the incident without further investigation. Such selective reporting and publishing also
does not make clear that female circumcision has a cultural and historical dimension,
rather than a religious one. Nicki Marshall, Community Development Worker from
the Ecumenical Migration Centre, Australia, states that female circumcision has
occurred for thousands of years; however in the minds of many people, it is automatically
associated with Islam. The practice in fact predates both Christianity and Islam and there
are a number of Islamic countries in which circumcision is not practised—for example,
Saudi Arabia.7 Some second- and third-generation Australian-born women of Javanese
origin confirm that this practice is cultural and had been performed in Australia,8 yet the
Western media insists on promoting the myth that it is an Islamic ritual.
Olfat Hassan Agha believes that part of the reason for the widespread ignorance about
Islam is that reporters who are assigned to cover the Muslim world (and especially any
negative incident involving Muslims) often know very little about it. Without any real
knowledge of the history and meaning of Islam, these reporters present a distorted
image that Western culture perceives as truth.9
Media representation of Muslims as barbaric people was especially prevalent in the
wake of the September 11 attacks. Under such headlines as “Delighted”10 the image
of Palestinians rejoicing at the tragedy was portrayed in major newspapers and on tele-
vision. As the Palestinians are predominantly Muslim, these reports encouraged
readers and viewers to assume that all Muslims approved of the terrorists’ actions. It
was not reported that some American Muslims also died in the terrorist attacks—or
that terrorism is not part of the Islamic faith, and is deplored by the vast majority of
peace-loving, moderate Muslims.
To believe that such media images do not impact upon readers’ perceptions is naive:
one reader commented in the Letters page that he/she lost support for the Palestinian
cause at the sight of people dancing on the streets.11 It can also be argued that the repeat-
edly broadcast/published images of Muslim women wailing in grief is another way of
reinforcing the perception of uncontrolled hysteria that many Westerners have come to
accept as typical Muslim behaviour. Because these images of distress are usually pre-
sented as part of a confusing mélange of screaming, bloodshed and confusion following
terrorist attacks in the Middle East, readers and viewers absorb an impression that
violence and chaos are familiar Muslim environments.
Further alienating the West from the Other, the West Australian front-page headline of
14 September 2001, “Good vs Evil”, effectively divided the world into the “Good civilised
West” and the “Evil Muslims”. This theme was reinforced through images. In a crowd of
mourning American people, a little girl, Alana Milawski, aged four, was holding the US
flag representing the “good” people; at the corner of the image were photographs of
terrorists who were “evil”. The next day the same picture of Alana Milawski was shown
with a veiled Muslim girl holding a candle.12 By replacing the terrorist images with that
of the Muslim girl, it implied that both belong to the same group—militant Islamists.
A year later, following the Bali bombings in 2002, the school and home of the Imam at
Rooty Hill Mosque in New South Wales and the East Doncaster Mosque in Victoria were
vandalised (on 15 and 17 October 2002, respectively). Reports of subsequent vandalism
 316 Nahid Kabir

attacks against Muslim homes and places of worship were not reported as major news,13
and it can be argued that this is because violence against Muslims is considered by
the media as less important—or even as justifiable retaliation—than acts of violence
committed by a Muslim.
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Veiled Women: An Easy Target

The perception of media bias against Islam is not only held by Muslims. Some Western
scholars have also claimed that the media seems intent on projecting Muslims and Islam
negatively. From his research on Muslim representation through images from 1950 to
2000, Howard V. Brasted observed that Islam has received a less than fair and at times
a farcical press through the portrayal of images of mosques, bearded mullahs, Muslim
crowds, and veiled women, which have collectively come to symbolise irrationality, fana-
ticism, intolerance and discrimination on an almost medieval scale.14
This trend continued after September 11, 2001, but with the added implication that
Islam equals terrorism. In the West Australian “War on Terror” news page, there were
images of Osama bin Laden and veiled Muslim women,15 and while the press reported
sympathetically on the women, the images were inappropriately associated with other
news to give readers the impression that the nature of “Muslimness” is violence.
Similarly the cover page of the Weekend Australian magazine had an image of a female
Palestinian suicide bomber with a Kalashnikov in one hand, and her three-year-old
daughter—holding a mortar round—in the other. Both had Hamas sacrificial headbands
with the Kalima written on them, and the image was accompanied by the words: “She
looked pregnant, otherwise she was completely normal. She looked at me. She smiled
. . . and then she exploded”. The line below read, “How a young mother became a
suicide bomber” (see Figure 1).16
This image on the cover page of Australia’s national newspaper magazine implies an
association between veiled Muslim woman leading normal family lives with terrorism.
An interviewee for this study believes that such images reinforce a sense of righteous-
ness in perpetrators of physical assault towards Muslim woman. The suggestion that the
woman’s veils could be hiding weapons and explosives would strengthen the attacker’s
perception that women who dress this way are likely to be enemies of the state, and there-
fore “deserving” of retaliation.17
This trend of associating veiled woman with terrorism is not restricted to the popular
press; it has even carried through to university magazines. In 2005, a medical student
who wears the hijab—the traditional headscarf—stated:
In a publication of mine, of the medical students society [magazine], they took
my picture, and they put my picture in the background of a picture of the twin
towers, and the twin towers were in flames, and there was, me, I think holding a
bomb or something. The caption was something like “I want to eat your chil-
dren . . .”—something about me eating other people’s children.18
The motive for this association is explained in Edward Said’s discourse, Orientalism.19
Said argued that through a discursive conception of the Orient, the West was able to con-
struct an image of its own identity—that is, that the West is the negative of “Oriental”,
comprising what the Other does not. In this sense, Orientalism involves a binary opposi-
tion that finds the West as central to modern, enlightened thought, and the Orient as
the mysterious and often dangerous Other. Like any opposition, this binary relies on a
series of cultural constructions that in this instance can be understood as biological
 Islam and Muslims in the Australian Media 317
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FIGURE 1. Young Mother. Source: News Limited, 13–14 November 2004.

essentialism, as well as racial, religious and cultural prejudices.20 Therefore, through the
image of a veiled woman, the West attempts to construct the position of women in
Islamic society, a position that is deemed to be backward, subservient, and totally at
odds with the kind of equality and rights Western women have managed to achieve
throughout the twentieth century. The messages originating from these images are expli-
cit: conformity, repression, subordination, control. What is missing in all cases, however,
is context. While veiling is considered a sign of virtue, rather than subjugation—or worse,
menace—the distinction is seldom made clear in the press.21

Muslim Men and Weaponry

It is understandable to print images of an enemy who is using Islam for nationalistic
goals—such as Osama bin Laden with firearms by his side, Iraqi insurgents in sajda
 318 Nahid Kabir

(prostration) with firearms in front of them, or a Palestinian suicide bomber kissing a

rifle.22 But to present images of Muslim allies praying with firearms in front of them
would confuse a reader who might fail to differentiate between friend and foe. For
example, members of a US ally, Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, with firearms in
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front of them were photographed when they were praying during the Muslim holy
month of Ramadan.23 The juxtaposition of religious practice (praying) and weaponry
is a clear attempt to imply that there is a correlation between the Islamic religion and
armed violence. The majority of readers/viewers of the news, who would have a
limited or no understanding of Islam, are susceptible to accepting the myths that such
media images generate. With the “time poor” nature of many contemporary lifestyles,
the presentation of news in accessible and easily digestible “bites”—as opposed to
comprehensive analysis—has become more popular. For many media users there is
little opportunity—or inclination—to research further.
The Iraqi hostage crisis provides yet another vehicle for misunderstanding the tenets of
Islam, as the media publishes images posted by the militants on various websites. Before
committing heinous crimes in the name of Islam, the extremists usually position blind-
folded hostages with the words of the first pillar of Islam, Kalima written in Arabic,
“La ilaha il-lal-lahu, Muhammadur Rasoo-lul-lah” behind them. It means: “I testify
(confess) that there is no God but the one God; and I testify that Muhammad is the
Messenger of God”.24 Although this brutality is not consistent with Islamic teachings,
it is repeatedly presented unaccompanied by any explanation. Hence readers and
viewers could reasonably assume that such terrorism is a part of Islam. Again, without
any knowledge of the language, they can easily absorb the intended impression of
Islamic beliefs being intermingled with chaos and violence.
The Australian newspaper is a good example of this exploitation of community ignor-
ance about what Muslims believe. It frequently publishes such images, which serve to
reinforce to readers that Islam is the enemy of the West. One such example was of
Iraqi Shi’ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr’s veiled militiamen, standing in front of a mosque
with Qur’anic writing on it, holding a machine gun in one hand and a US soldier’s
helmet in the other. Below the report and an image of Islamic militants was the headline:
“Popular Writer Stokes Italy’s Anti-Muslim Flames”.25
This report referred to Italian author Oriana Fallaci’s book, The Rage and the Pride
(La Rabbia e l’Orgoglio), which in scathing rhetoric reveals the writer’s anti-Muslim
bias. First published in the country’s leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, the book
version sold half a million copies within hours of its release. It exposed a fear of
foreigners in a country that has experienced mass migration in recent decades, and
whose second-largest religious group is Muslim. By reading the first report and visualis-
ing the image of a Muslim militant, the reader might conclude that the popularity of
Fallaci is significant, although her anti-Muslim stance has been widely criticised. Her
defence of her writings, “On Jew-Hatred in Europe”, was published in the Italian
magazine Panorama on 17 April 2002. In the invective she blamed “European anti-
Semitism” for any support of the Palestinians, whom she labels “the scoundrels with
turban or kaffiyeh”.
Even smaller, independently owned local newspapers will use images to promote the
concept of an association between Muslims and violence. On its cover page, Perth’s
Voice News printed a photograph of an Australian who complained about 14 letterbox
bombings by local children. Its caption predicted that “the next thing they’ll be throwing
lit matches into cars and bombing Chinese restaurants”. The page also featured a larger
image of two Muslim men wearing topis (Muslim men’s cap), with the caption: “Mosque
 Islam and Muslims in the Australian Media 319

Open Day: Muslims Sufyaan Khalifa and David Verney are keen to share their religion
with the community. The mosque in William Street is having an open day this
weekend so if you’ve got questions about Islam in Australia, why not go along and
take an inside look . . .” The welcoming tone of the caption was undermined by the
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image’s placement near the “Letterbox Bombing Spree Hits Mt Lawley” story (see
Figure 2).26 The headline “Letterbox Bombing” beside the Muslim image suggests a
connection between the two completely unrelated reports.

FIGURE 2. Letterbox Bombing. Source: Voice News, Perth News, Perth People, No. 314, 19– 26 June 2004.
 320 Nahid Kabir

Islam and Muslims Vilified

In June 2002, the West Australian printed a copy of a fifteenth century wall hanging that
showed Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) being tortured. This was published
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with the report that Islamic terrorists linked to al-Qaeda planned to destroy Bologna’s
fourteenth century cathedral because it contained a medieval fresco depicting the
Prophet Mohammad in hell.27
The publication of the two images was particularly offensive to some Muslims. This
prompted an objection from an Islamic leader who held that publishing the photograph
with the report caused profound hurt, stress and anger among the Muslim community in
Western Australia, and that the press should respect religious sensitivities. Such images
could once again generate the division and hatred that existed during the Crusades.28
The Islamic leader’s view was in turn criticised by a reader who claimed that if the
picture was offensive to Muslims, then by all means it should be removed from view—
but that it should be remembered that a lot of non-Muslims who live in this country
would be interested in seeing a picture of the Prophet Mohammad. Therefore, the
Muslims should not dictate to Australians what they can or cannot look at.29 This effec-
tively asserts that the religious sensitivities of Muslims are of lesser importance than those
of the general community.
A couple of years later the press printed an image of a woman with verses of the Holy
Qur’an written on her back. It related to the Dutch film by Theo Van Gogh, Submission,
which exhibited the verses of the Qur’an across the bodies of women in see-through robes
and talking about the abuse they had suffered under Islam. Van Gogh was a critic of Islam
and a supporter of a Member of Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (originally a Somalian
asylum seeker), who advocated a reduction in immigration into Holland, especially by
Muslims. Both Van Gogh and Hirsi Ali—who co-scripted and co-produced the film—
received “low-level fatwas, or death edicts”, since the film attacked Islam as “a medieval,
misogynist cult incapable of self-criticism and blind to science”.30
On 4 November 2004, the press reported the murder of Van Gogh by a 26-year-old
Amsterdam man, identified as having dual Dutch and Moroccan nationality. The West
Australian published people’s opinions on this tragedy, including one that was a
general condemnation of Islam and Muslims because of the vicious act of one Islamic
extremist. Muslims were also criticised for not collectively taking the blame for Septem-
ber 11 and most of global terrorism today.31 Although this letter is not representative of
all readers, it does demonstrate how—in response to certain articles and images—an
entire religious group can be blamed for the act of a single militant. Whether such articles
incite fresh prejudices or reinforce existing ones, they can be interpreted by some as vali-
dating racial and religious intolerance.

Muslims and Media Bias

The press is often accused of stereotyping minorities but even when it does it usually
refrains from identifying groups by their religion. Andrew Markus argues that preference
to one’s cultural kind is universal,32 therefore the media will be less critical of its own
culture. For example, while some British immigrants complain that the press brands
them as “Poms”, their religion is not mentioned.33 Although the media branded
Sydney’s south-west as a home of “Lebanese-Muslim crime”, it selectively failed to
link other crimes committed by the gangs of the wider community with their race and
religion.34 In one such case, The West Australian cover page showed a report of child
 Islam and Muslims in the Australian Media 321

pornography with the headline “Our Sick Society”.35 There were condemnations of such
aberrant behaviour in the Letters page but it was for a very short period—and made no
mention of the religion of the perpetrators. Even if the religion of the perpetrators was
identified, there would have been no suggestion that the crimes were linked to their
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faith. When, for example, case of child molestation by a Catholic priest or priests is
publicised, it is never implied that paedophilia is in any way acceptable or common to
Catholics.
Likewise, in the US when fundamentalist Christians commit violent crimes against
others, particularly in the name of Christianity (for example, the bombing of family plan-
ning clinics), there is no slur cast on the Christian faith itself. In the case of the April 1995
bombing of the Edward Murrah Building in Oklahoma, which killed 168 people, the
convicted bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was both a Christian and an American. Initial
media reports of the attack, however, assumed “Libyan Muslim extremists” were respon-
sible. Once the truth—that a “home-grown” terrorist had perpetrated the horror—
became known, however, he was simply referred to as Timothy McVeigh. Not “Christian
Timothy McVeigh” or “American Timothy McVeigh”—he was considered an individual,
and his crime was considered as specific to him. Even when his affiliation with a Chris-
tian-based militia movement was publicised, his name was not prefaced with either his
religion or his nationality.
This selective criticism is a feature of the mass media. In 2002 Australian Senate can-
didate Daniel Nalliah of the Family First political party—and an ordained minister of the
Assemblies of God and president of the Christian evangelical organisation, Catch the
Fire Ministries Inc—called on his supporters to “spot Satan’s strongholds” in the area
they live. These he identified as “brothels, gambling places, bottleshops, mosque [sic],
temples, witchcraft”.36 The Australian briefly reported that Mr Nalliah was found
guilty by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal of breaching Victoria’s
Racial Discrimination Act for vilifying Muslims.37 However, the wider implications of
Nalliah claiming that religious houses of worship were the moral equivalent of brothels,
etc. was not criticised.
During the Abu Ghraib scandals when US soldiers ruthlessly tortured the Iraqi prison-
ers, press reports and headlines indicated that it was a lesser threat than the other enemy
images and reports published on the same page. A report on US soldier Private Lynndie
England showed her holding a leash strapped around the neck of a naked Iraqi prisoner.
On the same page, there were also reports of the radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr,
who told worshippers they could keep any female British soldiers as slaves—and another
report on a “20-minute recording [that] sounded like bin Laden and was laced with
Koranic verse”.38 The recording offered gold rewards for the killing of United States
and United Nations officials in Iraq or the citizens of any nation fighting there.
The placement of these news reports on one page implied that while the Abu Ghraib
prison abuses were atrocious, they were less so than the actions of Muslims against the
West. Private England’s actions were effectively presented in a context of retaliation
for terrorist acts, and, even if widely condemned, they were therefore understandable.
Several months later this strategy was repeated when another report on the Abu
Ghraib prison showed the torture of an Iraqi prisoner by a US soldier together with
reports on the Palestinian Hamas group and Osama bin Laden. It was once again a
reminder of a bigger threat compared to “the acts of an isolated few” at Abu Ghraib.39
It is no accident that readers can infer certain associations from the way stories are laid
out in newspapers. The psychology of perception and how the visual arrangement and
relative size of press articles can most effectively communicate ideas is well understood
 322 Nahid Kabir

by the media. When a report on gang rapists (Aboriginal and Muslim) was presented
with a report on Constable Maha Sukkar, the first Victoria Police officer to wear a
traditional Muslim hijab (headscarf) as part of her uniform, it encouraged readers
to believe that the differences in custom and dress of the “Other” could symbolise some-
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thing potentially more ominous—that is, the existence of another racial or religious
criminal group in Australia.40

Is the Media Prejudice Justified?

Now the question arises: why does the media specifically targets Muslims or their religion
through press headlines, images and commentaries? Since the late 1970s the Islamic
world has been in the news, beginning with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when
Ayotallah Khomeini described the US as the “Great Satan”. It was followed by: the
Iranian hostage crisis from 1979 to 1981, when 51 American hostages were held at the
US consulate in Tehran by some Iranian students; the seizure of the Grand Mosque in
Mecca in 1979; the Lockerbie bombing in 1988; Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against
Salman Rushdie in 1989; Saddam Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990, followed
by the 1991 Gulf War; the rise of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network; the Taliban and the
Ja’amah Islamiyah.41 While these separate incidents did bring disaster to the US and
its allies, they were reported in such a way that the impression was of an ever-encroaching
threat from a common enemy—Islam.
Other incidents involving Islamic extremists reinforced this perception: the 1993
World Trade Center bombing, the 1996 Khobar Twin Towers bombing in Saudi
Arabia, the US Consulate bombing in Somalia in 1998, the USS Cole attack in 2000,
the destruction of the Buddhist statue by the Taliban, and the capture of eight aid
workers (including two Australians) in 2001, the September 11 Twin Tower attacks in
2001, and finally the Bali tragedy in 2002. The news of the Moscow hostage crisis and
the death sentence by stoning of the convicted Nigerian woman Amina Lawal in 2002
were other disastrous news items from the Muslim world. Since 2001, there have also
been several attacks on Australian interests by alleged Ja’amah Islamiyah members.42
The 2003 Istanbul and Riyadh bombings, the 2004 Madrid bombing, the Australian
Embassy bombing in Jakarta and the Beslan tragedy have also impacted on Western
audiences/readers, as did the attack on the US consulate in Jeddah by Islamic militants
on 6 December 2004. Finally, the London bombing on 7 July 2005 revealed the possi-
bilities of home-grown terrorism.
The US occupation of Iraq resulted in the rise of Al-Zarqawi’s Tawhid and Jihad
group, which beheaded some civilians in the last year. On 1 May 2004, Australian
Tony Mason became Australia’s 101st victim of terror since September 11, 2001. He
was killed in Saudi Arabia, where he worked as an engineer, after four gunmen
opened fire on foreign workers at the weekend. A few weeks later, an Australian resident
and Swedish national, Magnus Johansson, who was working as a chef in Khobar, Saudi
Arabia, was one of 22 people killed by Islamic militants. In October 2004 and May 2005,
Australian journalist John Martinkus and Australian-born business man Douglas Wood
were taken hostages (and later freed) and three Australian soldiers were wounded in a car
bombing that targeted an Australian army convoy in Baghdad. The Tawhid and Jihad
group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The media has used these incidents of terrorist acts when they report on new event.
The recent bombings in parts of the London public transport system will be the latest
item to add to the “big picture” of strikes against the West. The assumption that all
 Islam and Muslims in the Australian Media 323

these incidents are related is not questioned, and that big picture becomes one of an
unrelenting assault on Us by Them. When headlines such as “Al-Qa’ida Bombs
Diggers”43 are used, the insinuation is clear: it’s the foreign menace vs. the Australian
tradition. (And of course such a headline disregards the fact that the invasion of Iraq
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by the US/Australia was “illegal”.)

Focus on the “Other”

There is no doubt that a small minority of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims are impacting
negatively on Western interests, and the actions of this small percentage are to be
deplored. However, by constantly presenting headlines, articles and images that
remind readers of this new “enemy of the West”, the press reinforces perceptions that
all Muslims (including the moderates) deserve the label of “enemy”. Andrew Padgett;
Beatrice Allen and Julianne Schultz, and Martin Hirst and Robert Schutze argue that pri-
vately owned media have commercial constraints that, for profit making purposes, need
to focus on certain issues that resonate with the audience and manipulate current con-
cerns.44 Just as during the Cold War period the Soviet “Other” was demonised by the
media, this arbiter of public opinion now focuses obsessively on the Muslim “Other”.
Tuen Van Dijk believes that the media places too much emphasis on current global
events (such as the war on terror) rather than addressing larger and long term issues
such as the preservation of ecological landscapes that support all forms of life.45 It is
also easier to nominate an external threat as being the biggest problem a society
faces—by looking outside the realm of our control, we do not have to examine the
causes and consequences of domestic or environmental issues too closely.
This narrowed focus exploits a fascination with “instant” contemporary issues that
appear to interest the wider community, and is highlighted by the following comment
of a mainstream Australian:
I don’t think press focus on communism has been replaced by Islamic funda-
mentalism. I think you’ve still got the issue of the old communist regime in
Russia and the problems that they’ve been going through in terms of changing
to democratic, capitalistic society and then you’ve got the issue of China with
1.3 billion people and the fact that they are still communists, although they
have become more liberal over recent time, there is a lot of press about
[Muslim] fundamentalists but unfortunately it’s difficult to get away from
when there are so many bad things associated with it, you know, Iran, Iraq,
Afghanistan.46
The power of the media to shape public perceptions is acknowledged by analysts who
point out that during wartime, audiences stay indoors to keep themselves in touch
with war news. During the 1991 Gulf War, some Americans described themselves as
“war news addicts”, tuning in at all hours to CNN’s around-the-clock coverage and
buying up newspapers by the millions. The nature of news during this time differed
from that of previous wars—for the first time, the media brought the war directly into
living rooms around the globe, making it the first truly “televised war”. The US media
coverage was more tightly managed by the Pentagon on the battlefield, and its public
information office was highly successful at home,47 ensuring portrayal of the enemy as
the most immediate threat to global peace and stability.
A second-generation Muslim journalist explains the filtering of this audience-focused
media:
 324 Nahid Kabir

. . . The particular medium (e.g. Channel X) subscribes to the networks such as

BBC, CNN, Reuters etc. When the international news comes to the computer
screen of that particular medium . . . the journalist in Australia takes the report
on the screen . . . Supposing US President’s speech that is “high evidence” is
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noted by some journalist—these are “actuality”. Then the journalists pick

and select the news according to the audience/readers . . . Channel X would
focus on the news that their audiences like and ethnic channels would choose
the news as their audience like . . . if you add anything that is commentary, any-
thing commentary becomes editorial. When we write a report, it is edited and
reviewed thoroughly through several angles. Supposing it has to go through
seven angles, if the six angles are all right and the seventh angle is declared
wrong, then the report has to be written again.48
Similarly journalist Lynette Sheridan Burns says that the position from which the
journalist observes the “facts” unfold determines the presentation of the “truth”. This
truth is, in turn, a calculated reinforcement of the position thought to be held by the audi-
ence. The effect is stories often written from only one, often narrow, point of view.
Alternative outlooks are ignored or dismissed. Those who challenge or confront the pre-
ferred image of society are marginalised or not heard.49

The Emergence of “Unfreedom”

Since September 11, 2001, this relentless media focus on “Islam” or “Muslims” has
encouraged an indoctrinated “one-dimensional” society that cannot take criticism of
its foreign policies. The media appeals directly to an audience that wants to hear news
of the “current enemy”, and the focus in the Letters pages on Islam and Muslims
shows the level of reader interest in this contemporary news topic. Some do write in
favour of minorities and do attempt to address the root causes of global conflict, but
others are very critical of Australian Muslim grievances.
Numerous writers such as Noam Chomsky and Phillip Knightley have criticised the
media for refusing to question the state’s position, fearing being branded “unpatriotic”.
This sudden “unfreedom” perpetuated through the media is, it seems, in contrast to the
“freedom” that prevailed prior to September 11, 2001. Once more, the world is divided
between those who are good—the Coalition of the Willing—and those who are evil—the
Axis of Evil, those who harbour terrorists, and so on.50 Yet again, the media has been
drawn into the mire of propagating “slave morality”. Those who had previously been
mere “Others” within a society suddenly became suspected terrorist sympathisers.
Once more, as with the Evil Empire, the media reporters are reluctant to try to
explain to their audience this new, fearsome “Other”. On 10 September 2001, it was
not unreasonable to argue that there existed motives for a possible terrorist attack on
America. It was taken for granted that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center,
and the Pentagon, signified not only the liberalism but also the abuses of Western
market democracy. Acknowledging this, surely it follows that al-Qaeda’s motives were
entirely “rational”. By what means, then, did the media find it within themselves to trans-
form these rational motives into an irrational terror? Why was this logic, entirely accep-
table on 10 September, absent just 24 hours later?51
Some Muslim Australians also ask the same question—why does the media not
address the root cause of international terrorism? As one Muslim commented about
the Beslan massacre:
 Islam and Muslims in the Australian Media 325

. . . we don’t know the real history, but I know they were suffering for a long
time. That is why they did that, but this is not a good thing to do. That is the
worst thing to do. But all the time, most of the days you will see in the afternoon
and the evening they are broadcasting what happened there. And the children
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from there say I will be a freedom fighter, or I will be an army officer, to protect
their country. So here, the children are listening to that program. And they are
learning to hate Muslims [sic].52

Another added:

And what happened to Somalia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Palestine? Day by

day, year after year, they are torturing them. What happened to them? They
never broadcast like that. They are also innocent people, innocent children, I
mean, everyone is dying there. And they know from their birth self-defence
to protect them. This is definitely media bias.53

Some Australians were also critical of the media’s unbalanced reporting. For example,
one reader remarked negatively on the media’s minimal coverage of the Siev X tragedy
in October 2001 when 350 asylum seekers, including 150 children (mostly Muslims),
drowned on Australian shores compared with the excessive coverage given to one
Beslan hostage situation in September 2004.54
Apart from its failure to address the core issues of conflict between the West and
Muslim extremists, the media is also allegedly guilty of connecting any act of violence
with “Muslims”. A Muslim observer stated:

There was a news item just a few months after September 11, in Sydney when
some of the mosques were vandalised, and there was a procession against that.
In the procession, a group of youths turned violent and one of the channels,
Channel X, portrayed it, saying the Muslim youth were trying to destroy the
houses. I think it was the radio station or TV station they were trying to get
into. I could see from the news that there was a whole big procession of a thou-
sand people—white Australians, Aboriginal Australians, and all different colour
people—and I was thinking, how they know that they were Muslim youth. I
could not tell their creed or their religion.55

Scott Poynting, et al., believe that it has become almost a conviction amongst some com-
mentators that we are living in a time of great fear and anxiety. They argue that media
commentators and politicians often talk about the pervasive “fear of crime”, “fears of
cultural rift”, “the politics of fear”, “worry about war and terrorism”. There is talk of
anxiety, insecurity and lack of safety, uncertainty, and even paranoia.56 As mentioned,
media reports of crime are often race-based and discriminatory, and fuel the belief
that we are living in a time of increasing violence. Although the reality is that violent
crime in Australia has decreased and that the murder rates for New South Wales are
the lowest for 20 years,57 the media persists in headlines of “spiraling crime”, “crime
waves” and “taking back the streets from criminals”. Sensationalising individual crime
and then insisting that it is widespread and out of control feeds into existing community
anxieties about personal safety; when this tactic is used to report terrorism it has the same
effect of making terror strikes seem an immediate threat to people. Although the chance
of becoming a victim of terrorists is extremely low, the media’s relentless bombardment
of images and stories on the subject gives the impression that “you’re next”.
 326 Nahid Kabir

Surveys demonstrate that despite the reality of this situation, the threat of terrorism is
an issue of concern in Australia, with 62% of respondents to one survey seeing this
country as a target. The Sun-Herald headline “Terror Threat Grips a Nation” reported
that 60% of Australians believe their “relaxed way of life” has been changed forever,
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while more than a quarter suffered “general paranoia” in what has been known as the
“lucky country”.58 Those who fear loss of freedom through actual invasion are easily
convinced that Muslim dress and other customs represent cultural invasion—and that
welcoming such difference through multiculturalism will equal the loss of what it
means to be Australian.
The West Australian news poll also revealed that one out of four people say that
Muslims are a terrorist risk.59 In the US, a survey conducted by Cornell University
found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were
more apt to support curtailing Muslims’ civil liberties than Democrats or people who
are less religious. In Australia, The Age reported that nearly half of all Americans
believe the US government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans,
according to a nationwide poll. Researchers also found that respondents who paid
more attention to television news were more likely to fear terrorist attacks and support
limiting the rights of Muslim Americans.60 Thus, in this existing climate of fear, the
media’s generalised linking of violence with Muslims is counterproductive to any mean-
ingful dialogue between Muslims and the wider community.
Reports compiled by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the
Anti-Discrimination Board of New South Wales were also critical of media stereotyping
of Arab and Muslim Australians. They argued that there is a history in the Australian
media of non-white racial and ethnic minority groups being presented as posing a
threat to the nation and to ordinary Australians. There have been familiar assertions
of “them” being different, and therefore “un-Australian”.
In many media portrayals in recent months, “Arabic”, “Middle Eastern” and
“Muslim” have become connected with “criminal” and “terrorist” in often unsubstan-
tiated and damaging ways. The Anti-Discrimination Board disapproved of the media’s
inflammatory rather than explanatory reporting, and recommended that the Australian
Press Council and the Australian Broadcasting Authority encourage media outlets to give
space or airtime to minority groups when they have been subjected to sustained negative
reporting.61

Conclusion
In researching this study, it became clear that contemporary media representation of
Islam and Muslims focuses on Islamic militants, effectively demonising all Muslim
people, and does not counter this with balanced coverage. There does not seem to be
any likelihood that this approach will be reassessed and tempered in the future either:
the media’s commercial motivation appears to favour irresponsible journalism that
does not acknowledge the negative impact that such a focus has on moderate
Muslims, but rather exploits anti-Muslim feelings with a barrage of reports and refer-
ences that keep Islam as the focus of topical discourse.
Research from the Factiva database supports the contention that this focus will con-
tinue; news items mentioning “Islam” or “Muslims” have increased many-fold since
2001. From 1 January 1997 to 1 January 2001, the number of news items that mentioned
these key words was as follows: The West Australian (excluding letters)—379; The West
Australian including The Sunday Times (Perth)—389; and the Australian–New Zealand
 Islam and Muslims in the Australian Media 327

major newspapers—10,098. In the following four years, from 1 January 2001 to 1

January 2005, these figures rose dramatically: The West Australian (excluding letters)
increased by 60% to 608; The West Australian including The Sunday Times (Perth)
increased by 199% to 1,165; and the Australian –New Zealand major newspapers
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increased by 167% to 26,953.62

The media’s cultural superiority implies—through headlines and images and the way
they are presented—that the customs, dress and religious practices of Muslims have
sinister associations with the terrorist activities of Islamic militants. Rather than addres-
sing and refuting misconceptions about the Islamic faith, and analysing the root causes of
terrorism, the media is more interested in maintaining the community anxiety that seeks
convenient scapegoats for social ills. Through its constant connection of moderate
Muslims with extremists’ images or headlines on violence, the media has placed
Muslim Australians between a rock and a hard place.

NOTES
1. The author is indebted to the interviewees whose testimony helped shape this article. From 1998 to
2005, the author conducted the interviews of Muslim Australians of diverse ethnic backgrounds and
mainstream Australians.
2. N. Kabir, “Depiction of Muslims in Selected Australian Media: Free Speech or Taking Sides”,
Journal of Media and Culture, Vol. 9, No. 2, September 2006, available online at: <http://www.media--
culture.org.au/>.
3. Interview with Australian-born, Perth, 8 January 2005.
4. Interview with overseas-born, Perth, 8 January 2005.
5. Interview with overseas-born, Perth, 8 January 2005.
6. The West Australian, 27 January 2001, p. 20.
7. N. Marshall, “Female Circumcision: A Response to the Current Debate”, Migration Action, Vol. XVI,
No. 1, May 1994, p. 19.
8. Interviews with Muslim women of Javanese origin, Mackay, 24 April 1999.
9. O. H. Agha, “Islamic Fundamentalism and Its Image in the Western Media”, available online at:
<http://www.islamfortoday.com/media.htm>.
10. The West Australian, 13 September 2001, p. 18.
11. Letters to the Editor, The West Australian, 15 September 2001, p. 25.
12. The West Australian, 15 September 2001, p. 26.
13. The Age, 21 September 2002, p. 20; Australia Fair, November 2004, p. 8; Human Rights and Equal
Opportunity Commission (HREOC), Isma—Listen: National Consultations on Eliminating Prejudice
Against Arab and Muslim Australians, Sydney: HREOC, 2004, p. 49.
14. H. V. Brasted, “Contested Representations in Historical Perspective: Images of Islam and the
Australian Press, 1950–2000”, in Muslim Communities in Australia, eds Abdullah Saeed and
Shahram Akbarzadeh, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2001, pp. 206–207.
15. The West Australian, 29 September 2001, p. 12; The West Australian, 1 November 2001, p. 10;
The Sunday Age, 24 November 2002, p. 15.
16. News Limited, 13–14 November 2004.
17. Interview with overseas-born, Perth, 15 November 2004.
18. Interview with Australian-born, Perth, 8 January 2005.
19. Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, London: Penguin, 1995.
20. J. Hartley, Communications, Cultural and Media Studies: The Key Concepts, London: Routledge Taylor
& Francis Group, 2002, p. 170.
21. H. V. Brasted, “The Politics of Stereotyping: Western Images of Islam”, Manushi, Vol. 98, January–
February 1997, pp. 6 –16.
22. The West Australian, 28 December 2001, p. 19; 13 August 2004, p. 10; 3 November 2004, p. 27.
23. The West Australian, 17 November 2001, p. 12.
24. The West Australian, 24 September 2004, p. 6; 28 October 2004, p. 23.
25. The Weekend Australian, 14–15 August 2004, p. 25.
26. Voice News, Perth News, Perth People, Vol. 16, No. 314, 19–26 June 2004, p. 1.
 328 Nahid Kabir

27. The West Australian, 25 June 2002, p. 22.

28. Letters to the Editor, The West Australian, 2 July 2002, p. 13.
29. Letters to the Editor, The West Australian, 8 July 2002, p. 14.
30. The West Australian, 2 September 2004, p. 26; 4 November 2004, p. 27; The Weekend Australian, 6 –7
Downloaded By: [Kabir, Nahid] At: 03:01 21 April 2007

November 2004, p. 25.

31. Letters to the Editor, The West Australian, 6 November 2004, p. 20.
32. A. Markus, Race: John Howard and the Remaking of Australia, Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin,
2004, pp. 7 –8.
33. Letters to the Editor, The West Australian, 27 September 2004, p. 20; 7 October 2004, p. 20.
34. P. White, “Media Savages Lebanese-Australian Youth”, Australia Fair, October 2004, p. 5.
35. “Our Sick Society”, The West Australian, 1 October 2004.
36. Salam, September–October 2004, p. 17.
37. The Australian, 20 December 2004, p. 5.
38. The West Australian, 8 May 2004, p. 7.
39. The West Australian, 6 December 2004, p. 29.
40. The West Australian, 27 November 2004, p. 15.
41. For further details, see N. Kabir, Muslims in Australia: Immigration, Race Relations and Cultural
History, London: Kegan Paul, 2005.
42. The West Australian, 10 September 2004, p. 7.
43. The Australian, 26 October 2004, p. 1.
44. A. Padgett and B. Allen, “Fear’s Slave: The Mass Media and Islam after September 11”, Media Inter-
national Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, No. 109, November 2003, p. 39; J. Schultz, “The
Press”, in The Media and Communications in Australia, eds Stuart Cunningham and Graeme Turner,
Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2002, p. 106; M. Hirst and R. Schutze, “Allies Down Under? The
Australian at War and the Big Lie”, in Global Media Go to War: Role of News and Entertainment
Media During the 2003 Iraq War, ed. R. Berenger, Spokane, Western Australia: MB Marquette
Books, 2004, pp. 171 –187.
45. T. A. Van Dijk, Racism and the Press, London: Routledge, 1991, pp. 203–205.
46. Interview with mainstream Australian, Brisbane, 20 November 1998.
47. C. G. Christians et al., Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, 6th edn, London: Longman, 2001,
p. 211.
48. Interview with overseas-born, Brisbane, 27 September 1998.
49. L. S. Burns, “There’s a Name for People Like You”, Australian Mosaic, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2004, p. 3.
50. N. Chomsky, “Confronting the Monster”, Index on Censorship, Vol. XXXI, No. 1, 2002, pp. 58–59;
P. Knightley, “Losing Friends and Influencing People”, Index on Censorship, Vol. XXXI, No.1, 2002,
pp. 146 –155.
51. Padgett and Allen, “Fear’s Slave”, op. cit., pp. 37–38.
52. Interview with overseas-born, Perth, 26 November 2004.
53. Interview with overseas-born, Perth, 26 November 2004.
54. The Age, 6 September 2004. Letters to the Editor, The West Australian, 8 September 2004, p. 20.
55. Telephone interview with overseas-born, Perth–Brisbane, 27 November 2004.
56. S. Poynting, G. Noble, P. Tabar and J. Collins, Bin Laden in the Suburbs: Criminalising the Arab Other,
Sydney: Sydney Institute of Criminology Series, 2004, pp. 211– 212.
57. NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics Figures, available online at: <http://www.lawlink.nsw.gov.au>
(accessed 8 July 2005).
58. Poynting, Bin Laden in the Suburb, op. cit.
59. The West Australian, 14 April 2004, p. 5.
60. The Age, 18 December 2004, available online at: <http://www.theage.com.au>.
61. Anti-Discrimination Board, Race for the Headlines: Racism and Media Discourse, Sydney: ADB, 2003;
HREOC, Isma, op. cit.
62. Retrieved on 14 February 2005. The Factiva database has grouped the major Australian and
New Zealand newspapers together. It included The Australian, The Age, The Sydney Morning
Herald, Canberra Times, Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, Hobart Mercury, The Advertiser, New Zealand
Herald and Dominion Post.