CONFERENCE TO DISCUSS WESTERN MEDIA'S GENERALLY BIASED REPORTING

The Western media’s generally biased reporting on Islam and the Muslim community and how it has affected the Muslim world will be the main topic of discussion in an international conference on representation of Islam and Muslims in the media. Organised by the Department of Communication Kuliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), the conference will look into various aspects of how Islam and Muslims are represented in the media. Head of IIUM Department of Communication, Dr Azmuddin Ibrahim said among areas to be looked into included the reporting on war and conflicts in Muslim countries and Islam in non-mainstream media in Muslim and Western societies. He said the conference would also touch on Islam in the orientalist literature (past and present), fictional representation of Muslims, Islam and the new media, Deconstructing and Reconstructing Islam, Representation of Islam as a Civilisation and Media Framing of Islam. Dr Azmuddin said the generally negative reporting on Islam and Muslims by the Western media worsened, particularly after the 2001 Sept 11 incident, whereby Islam and Muslims were usually associated with backwardness, extremist and fundamentalists, threatening and other negative images, thus putting Muslims under scrutiny by others.