Salim Farrar, Coventry University

This paper utilises Stuart Hall's theory of the social construction of news to elucidate the manner in which the English media, and their sources, represent Islamic criminal justice in an attempt to offer an explanation for some of the images of Islam given in the press and electronic media. The process of media construction is explored by comparing media reporting (in terms of content, form and structure) of three "key events" in English-Saudi relations: "Death of a Princess," the case of Lucille McLachlan and Deborah Parry and the recent car bombings in Riyad. The paper argues that the social construction of news ensures that only majoritarian impressions of Islamic criminal justice are represented in the media, and that these reflect patterns of discrimination more widely in British society.

Daniel Vincent

During the period between the 1580s to the outbreak of the civil wars in the 1640s, celebrated by theatre historians as a Golden Age, dozens of plays were written about Muslims, and for many playwrights an Islamicate theme constituted their first success. There are, however, very few studies widely available on the subject of Islam and Muslims as they appear in these plays. This might perhaps be a reflection of the influence of ‘Shakespeare studies’ on trends of criticism, where studies attending to cultural ‘Other’s treat of either Jews and Judaism, or to the Calibans peopling the New World. More recently, studies (Matar, Vitkus) have appeared that concentrate on the appearance and portrayal of Islam and Muslims, such as Ottoman Turks, Persians and Moors. These demonstrate that methodologies of post-colonial theories used to examine representations of cultural Others fail to account for representations of Muslims. While Muslims were largely demonised in these plays, British dramatists reveal themselves to be writing from a position of potential subordination. Muslims appear not as subordinates but as allies or potential conquerors and quite markedly individualized characters. Because the dramatists believed their Muslim characters to have such a strong sense of identity, European or Christian characters interacting with them would find themselves confronted with a firm alternative to their own Christian identity. This would be in contrast with the European experience of a character like Caliban who had no definite religious identity and remained a character who could be conquered and onto whom the Europeans could project their own cultural expectations. Muslim characters, on the other hand, appear as characters who are not conquerable - I've yet to come across a male Muslim character who relinquishes his faith (unless Othello is considered to have been baptized, which is disputed), whereas conversion to Islam by Christian characters is a recurring threat (hence, the recurring term 'to turn Turk').

The Muslim characters stands in relation to Christian characters as potential conquerors ready to usurp their identity, in the same way as Prospero stands in relation to Caliban. Thus, a Christian identity is relativised by the presence of Muslim characters. Dramatists had to respond to the increasing knowledge of and, quite frequently, admiration for actual Muslims, while at the same time drawing from a dramatic convention that reduced Muslims to a type. The individuality given to Muslim characters, however, meant that the characters could not simply be dismissed as types, while their association with dramatic convention allowed for demonisation. The dramatists must have been troubled by the potential challenge posed by their own wish to give their characters psychological depth when that included giving Muslim characters an unconquerable identity, because it would entail a dangerous relativisation of Christian identity as well as a relinquishing of authorial authority over dramatic types. An examination of texts such as Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Shakespeare’s Othello, John Mason’s The Turk, Dekker’s Lusts Dominion and Massinger’s The Renegado will reveal that while the configuration of Muslim characters were shaped by dramatic conventions, they nevertheless assured the dramatists that the plays would have a dialogic impact on account of this relativisation.

Urban Hamid

In this paper I provide a brief historic background to the anti-Arab/Muslim images and conceptions that exist in Western pop-culture, literature, cinema and media today. My work focuses on cinema in general, and as can be inferred from the title of the paper, on American films in particular.

I have decided to do a case study of the period of the Gulf War in order to prove that the Bush Administration by tapping into the " cultural depositories" which contain the prevailing stereotypical images of the Middle East and its people, was able to "manufacture a consent" among the American people for the war against Iraq. It ought to be obvious to everyone by now that the war against Iraq was not to defend the democracy of Kuwait that Administration alleged to defend its attack on Iraq, but to quote Noam Chomsky, because "no indigenous force is permitted to gain substantial influence over the energy resources of the Middle East. That belongs to the United States, its oil companies and loyal clients" (Excerpt from a lecture: Harvard University-November 19, 1991). A view that is also shared by Edward Said in Orientalism and in Culture and Imperialism. Said claims: "For at least a decade movies about American commandos pitted a hulking Rambo or technically whiz-like Delta Force against Arab/Muslim terrorist-desperadoes; in 1991 it was as if an almost metaphysical intention to rout Iraq had sprung into being…because a small non-white country had disturbed or rankled a suddenly energized super-nation imbued with a fervor that could only be satisfied with compliance or subservience from 'sheiks', dictators and camel-jockeys"(Culture, page 294-5). I shall look at clips from films such as "Not Without My Daughter", "True Lies", "Three Kings", and "The Siege".