“The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming, is itself a form of domination.” — Edward W Said
Historically, Islam has appeared in the news mostly during moments of crisis. Bombings, protests, revolutions—headlines have long repeated the same images: Angry men, veiled women, chanting crowds, smoke rising. Rarely do stories show the everyday lives, the art, the resilience, or the hope of Muslim communities. This pattern is no accident. Edward Said argued in Orientalism (1978) that the West has long seen the East not as it truly is, but as it must appear to define the West itself—a gaze built on hierarchy, fear, and power. For decades, these frames shaped not just perceptions, but policies, interventions, and public opinion. The media did not simply report; it narrated a world in which Muslims were almost always the “other,” reactive, and threatening.
Said showed that Western knowledge of the Orient was never neutral. Maps, travelogues, ethnographies, and novels presented the West as rational, modern, and progressive, while casting the East as mystical, backward, and irrational. Today, the vocabulary has shifted—civilization and progress have become freedom and security—but the structure remains. Islam becomes visible only when it burns.
Peaceful protests in Lahore, women coding in Jakarta, or literary festivals in Cairo rarely make global headlines. But a suicide attack, an embassy fire, or a riot spreads instantly. Islam, in these frames, becomes shorthand for danger and disruption. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 offers an early example. Western reporters reduced a complex anti-imperialist uprising to “fanatical mullahs” versus modern reformers. Ayatollah Khomeini became the symbol, erasing histories of colonialism and inequality. That pattern persists—from the Gulf War to 9/11, from the Arab Spring to Gaza. Religion became the convenient explanation; Muslims, the convenient villains.
After 9/11, the discourse hardened. Islam was no longer exotic; it was threatening. The “Oriental” gave way to the “terrorist.” Talal Asad, in On Suicide Bombing (2007), explains how this figure embodies Western moral anxiety. The “man bomb” collapses Muslim male identity into a single archetype: a body waiting to explode. Western violence, by contrast, is framed as lawful, strategic, and even necessary, even when it kills civilians. Muslim violence is irrational, barbaric, and religious. This double standard is political, not moral.
Journalism itself became embedded—not just physically, alongside soldiers, but intellectually, adopting the language of the state. Freedom versus terror, fact versus threat. CNN and Fox News, in many ways, became the new Orientalists. Tragedy became spectacle, horror became entertainment, and moral hierarchies were reaffirmed. Every image of a screaming crowd, every headline pairing Islam and terror, reassures audiences that the West is safe, in control, and morally superior.
This narrative is global. Most national dailies in the Global South rely on Reuters, AFP, or AP for international news. They reproduce Western frames—extremism, fundamentalism, security threat—because the vocabulary is already packaged. Dependence on advertisers, donors, or corporate ownership discourages deviation. Crisis becomes both local and global, repeated endlessly.
Chomsky and Herman, in Manufacturing Consent (1988), described five filters—ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak, and ideology—that shape news before it reaches readers. Stories that threaten power are suppressed; stories that align with it are amplified. Over decades, these filters shape perception: Muslim violence is structural and cultural; Western violence is strategic and regrettable. The moral scale is never balanced.
Yet social media is beginning to change the story. Over the past decade, it has torn apart the polite mask of conventional journalism, exposing biases, omissions, and blind spots. Creative, unconventional storytelling—through reels, vlogs, art, and citizen journalism—has shown that Muslims are not only oppressors but also the oppressed. Videos from Gaza, first-person accounts from Syria, and digital art campaigns reveal lives, resilience, and suffering that mainstream media rarely capture. People in the West can see the human behind the headlines.
This shift is tangible. When viewers watch children in refugee camps, or hear a woman recount survival during bombings, they respond. Young people in Europe and America, who once saw conflicts as distant, now mobilize campaigns, protests, and online activism. Social media has created spaces for empathy, solidarity, and conscience. The voiceless are finding microphones, and the story is no longer filtered solely through Western gatekeepers.
Journalism today must learn from this shift: To listen, not just broadcast; to contextualize, not just dramatize; to recognize that crisis is not the only story. Education, community resilience, art, and hope exist everywhere, but they require attention and care to surface. Only by including them can the reductive frames of Orientalism, embedded reporting, and crisis-centric coverage be challenged.
From the romantic colors of Orientalist paintings to the pixelated light of drone footage, the frame has stayed consistent for centuries. But slowly, the lens is shifting—pushed by individuals telling their own stories, not corporations or governments. Journalism can finally become a space not only for fear and crisis, but for connection, empathy, and humanity.
