Neoliberal representations of Muslims and the Islamic world: a discourse analysis of imaginative geographies in Brazilian local and regional print media

ABSTRACT

Since 9/11, representations of Muslims and the Islamic world in Western mass media have received much scholarly attention, not least because such representations influence how Muslims are perceived by and integrated into Western societies. Most existing studies have shown that Muslims and Islam tend to be framed negatively through orientalist and Islamophobic discourses. However, this paper argues that in specific contexts, neoliberal ideology has generated mass-media representations of Muslims and the Islamic world that differ from orientalist versions. In contexts relating to the globalised halal market, for example, neoliberal discourses portray Muslims and the Islamic world as economically useful and/or exploitable rather than culturally threatening. This argument is supported by an analysis of representations of Muslims and the Islamic world in local and regional newspapers in Brazil, one of the largest halal meat and poultry exporters in the world. Drawing on theories of neoliberalism, a discourse theoretical approach and the notion of imaginative geographies, the study examines newspaper articles on the halal business. Based on the findings, this paper suggests that scholars should subject neoliberal ideology (and its interaction with orientalism and Islamophobia) to greater scrutiny in future research on representations of Muslims and the Islamic world.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• discourse analysis
• media representations
• Muslims and Islam
• Brazil

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors as well as André de Melo Araújo for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of the article, helping me to greatly improve it. I also thank Gabriel Salvador Silva for his research assistance. Finally, I am grateful to the Brazilian Federal District Research Foundation FAPDF (Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Distrito Federal) for its support of the research for this article. All errors are, of course, mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In this paper, all quotes from sources in Portuguese were translated into English by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação de Apoio à Pesquisa do Distrito Federal (FAPDF): [Grant Number 0193.001271/2016].