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Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (Vintage)
Books: Text Books: Islam: Item 3
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Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (Vintage)by Edward W. Said
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47 of 75 people found the following review helpful: Essential reading, January 16, 2002 Reviewer:"bluemamma" (San Luis Obispo, CA USA) - This is one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking books I've ever read. The gist of Said's argument is that academic studies of the Muslim world are (like all academic studies) influenced by the culture that produces them. Because the first Westerners to study Islamic culture came from colonial powers, they tended to view things through colonialist, ethnocentric eyes. Although the United States has never had colonial ambitions in the Middle East, we've inherited many of those European attitudes. More importantly, because Middle Eastern studies in American universities lead so many people into careers as government consultants, or oil company employees (and because so much of the funding comes from government and oil companies), those studies usually do not focus on Muslim culture as something of interest and value in and of itself, but are concerned rather with how it relates to American power and business interests. We are not concerned, in other words, with how an institution in an Islamic country effects the local people, but only with whether it makes them more or less pro-American. According to Said, American journalists, who tend not to know the languages, or much about the culture of the places they report from, rely on such slanted academic studies for their understanding of the Islamic world, and allow it to color almost everything they write. As a result, reporting from Islamic countries is not only shallow, but often filled with insults and ethnic slurs that no editor would accept if the reporter were writing about any other group of people. I suppose the best way to judge a book like this is to test its thesis in the real world -- and even before I finished reading the whole thing, I realized how much more aware I was of the underlying bias and ethnocentrism in newspaper and magazine articles about the Middle East. I wasn't searching for that prejudice, but after reading Said, I could not miss the condescension in the articles, and the absence of positive articles. Most of all, I realized how very little information was actually contained in the articles I read. It's not just that Muslims are being slurred. As citizens, we're being cheated out of information we need to make informed decisions. This book should be required reading for every editor, every foreign correspondent, every commentator on foreign policy, and every American citizen.
Product Review
While the 16 years that have passed since the first edition of this book hit the stands have been marked by an increase in sensitivity toward many ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities, the easy acceptance of stereotypes and prejudices in the portrayal, depiction of, and reporting about Islamic peoples has remained largely constant. In this updated version of this rigorous but engaging volume Edward Said looks at how American popular media has used and perpetuated a narrow and unfavorable image of Islamic peoples, and how this has prevented understanding while providing a fictitious common enemy for the diverse American populace. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The New York Times Book Review, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
Professor Said is adept at holding a mirror up to American attitudes toward Islam. [He] skillfully traces the origins of American misinformation about Islam to the way that Orientalist scholarship is financed and organized in this country. And finally he pleads eloquently for the instrumentality of all historical knowledge and the needs of all scholars to be aware of their objectives in order to acquire that knowledge usefully. This plea amounts to a prescription for cultural self-awareness that will be wasted on none of us. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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