Images of Islam in US Media and their Educational Implications

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Notes

1. I do not exaggerate bin Laden's effects as a single man in the world, but I do call attention to his notoriety as an actual person expressing anger and opposition to US society, who did, with 9/11, make apparent his potential to call upon others and inspire in them hatred and anti-American actions. Here, in the case of bin Laden's iconography, Islam is represented by a real, rather than a fictional, villain. This is a more powerful, more compelling sort of enemy than any in a movie or television show; however his effect and position are certainly exaggerated in fearful discourses that are normal and typical in mainstream US media. I mean to call attention to this use or framing of reality as it perpetuates fear—not to further this fearful discourse, myself.

2. Similar work is being done to protect other minorities from similarly negative media stereotyping by multicultural educators; see, as instances, Cortés (2005), “How the Media Teach” for stereotypes of Hispanics; the essays by Richard Butsch, Robert Lichter and Daniel Amundson, Peter Nardi and Debra Baker Beck in Ore (2007), Social Construction of Difference and Inequality, on critical media literacy and media stereotypes of class and gender, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, and feminists, respectively; and McCarthy (1998), “Reading the American Popular,” in Uses of Culture, on racial resentment in mass media.

3. Of course, one should not presume that teachers necessarily know much about cultural and religious diversity in such cases, themselves. Indeed, teacher preparation today seems highly inadequate for the purposes of training teachers to teach such lessons; see, for instance, Subedi (2006), “Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices”; Noddings (1993), Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief; and especially Sensoy (2006), “‘I Wouldn't Want to Be a Muslim Woman,’” which documents White female preservice teachers’ commonly biased views against hijab. Although I discuss this elsewhere, it is important to keep in mind here that teacher education students should gain experience studying phenomena related to minorities in-depth in the course of their own education in order to effectively teach their students.

4. Islam Today and Islam in Africa feature narratives by Muslim children; see the Council on Islamic Education, Teaching About Islam and Muslims for a wide variety of autobiographical, historical, and political works putting forward different Muslims’ perspectives.