Since the events of 9/11, the range of debate on issues pertaining to Muslims or Islam has narrowed to a point where Orientalist modes of thought are once again dominant. The “clash of civilizations” thesis eschewed by the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations, was adopted and promoted by the Bush Jr. administration. Since this ideological shift was articulated by the "primary definers of news" in a climate of fear and intimidation, it acquired the status of "commonsense," i.e. a largely unopposed dominant political logic. This paper outlines five key taken-for-granted frames that underpin discussions of Islam and Muslims in the post 9/11 world: Islam is a monolithic religion, Islam is a uniquely sexist religion, the “Muslim mind” is incapable of rationality and science, Islam is inherently violent, the West spreads democracy, while Islam spawns terrorism. In addition to identifying these hegemonic commonsensical frames, the essay also sets out to debunk their veracity and to expose their fictional and fictitious accounts of the world of “Islam.” It does so by employing a historical and comparative approach that draws on 14 centuries of contact between the “East” and the “West.” While the article focuses on discursive frames that were established during the Bush II era, it concludes by pointing to their continued dominance post-Bush thereby highlighting the need for engaged scholarship that can forge a counter-hegemonic politics.
Abrahamian, E. ( 2008). A history of modern Iran. Cambridge , UK: Cambridge University Press.
2.
Achcar, G. ( 2003). Eastern cauldron: Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq in a Marxist mirror. New York: Monthly Review Press.
3.
Ahmed, L. ( 1992). Women and gender in Islam. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
4.
Aizenman, N.C. ( 2006, November 28). Nicaragua’s total ban on abortion spurs critics. Washington Post Foreign Service. Retrieved October 28, 2009, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/27/AR2006112701577.html
5.
Alcorn, G. ( 2001, November 22). US politicians rush to embrace women’s rights in Afghanistan. The Age (Melbourne, Australia). Retrieved October 26, 2008, from Lexis-Nexis.
6.
Ali, T. ( 2002). Clash of fundamentalisms. New York : Verso.
7.
Asad, T. ( 2007). On suicide bombing. New York : Columbia University Press.
8.
Ayoob, M. ( 2008). The many faces of political Islam: Religion and politics in the Muslim world. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
9.
Barlas, A. ( 2002). "Believing women" in Islam: Unreading patriarchal interpretations of the Qur’an. Austin: University of Texas Press.
10.
Beinin, J., & Stork, J. ( 1997). Political Islam: Essays from Middle East report . Berkeley: University of California Press.
11.
Benedict XVI ( 2006 ). Lecture of the holy father. BBC News Online . Retrieved October 25, 2008, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/15_09_06_pope.pdf
12.
Blackburn, R. ( 1997). The making of New World slavery. New York: Verso.
13.
Blum, W. ( 2000). Rogue state. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press.
14.
Bouteldja, N. ( 2005). French hijab ban: One year on. Red Pepper Europe. http://www.redpepper.org.uk/french_hijab_ban_one_year_c
15.
Bronson, R. ( 2006). Thicker than Oil: America’s uneasy partnership with Saudi Arabia. New York: Oxford University Press.
16.
Bush, G. ( 2006). President’s address to the nation (September 11, 2006). Retrieved October 30, 2008, from http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060911-3.html
17.
Bush, L. ( 2001). Radio address by Laura Bush to the nation. Retrieved January 18, 2010, from http://avalon.law.yale.edu/sept11/fl_001.asp
18.
Cooley, J. ( 2002). Unholy wars: Afghanistan, America, and international terrorism (3rd ed.). London: Pluto.
19.
Cowell, A. ( 2004, April 12). Blair defends the war in Iraq as part of a "historic struggle."New York Times. Retrieved October 26, 2008, from Lexis-Nexis, http://www.lexisnexis.co.universe.
20.
Curry, A. ( 2005, August 23). The first holy war. U.S. News and World Report, pp. 38-43.
21.
DiMaggio, A. ( 2009). Fort Hood fallout: Cultural racism and deteriorating public discourse on Islam. Znet. Retrieved January 18, 2010, from http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/23283
22.
Dreyfus, R. ( 2005). Devil’s game: How the United States helped unleash fundamentalist Islam. New York: Henry Holt.
23.
Engels, F. ( 1972). The origin of the family, private property and the state . New York: International Publishers .
24.
Esposito, J.L. ( 1999). The Islamic threat: Myth or reality (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
25.
Federal News Service. (2007, September 11). Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Subject: Iraq (The Crocker-Petraeus Report). Retrieved October 26, 2008, from Lexis-Nexis.
26.
Fredrickson, G. ( 2002). Racism: A short history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
27.
Goldschmidt, A. Jr. and Davidson, L. (2006). A Concise History of the Middle East (8th edition). Boulder, Co: Westview Press.
28.
Gerghes, F. ( 1999). America and political Islam: Clash of cultures or clash of interests. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
29.
Gerghes, F. ( 2006). Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim nilitancy . Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace .
30.
Gaubatz, D. ( 2009). Muslim mafia: Inside the secret underworld that’s conspiring to Islamize America. New York: WND Books.
31.
Goldenberg, S. ( 2006, March 10). Islamophobia worse in America now than after 9/11, survey finds. The Guardian (International) . Retrieved October 26, 2008, from Lexis-Nexis
32.
Gramsci, A. ( 1971). Selections from the prison notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith, Trans.). New York: International Publishers.
33.
Greenwald, G. ( 2009a). GOP House members call for investigation of Muslim political activity. Salon. com. Retrieved October 29, 2009, from http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/15/investigation/index.html
34.
Greenwald, G. ( 2009b, December 30). Making "Islam" synonymous with "Terrorism."Salon.com. Retrieved January 18, 2010 , from http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/30/terrorism/index.html
35.
Hall, S. ( 1998). The rediscovery of ‘ideology’. In J. Rivkin & M. Ryan (Eds.), Literary theory: An anthology (pp. 1050-1064). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
36.
Hall, S. ( 2003). The Whites of their eyes: Racist ideologies in the media . In G. Dines & J. M. Humez (Eds.), Gender, race, and class in the media (2nd ed., pp. 135-158). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
37.
Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J., & Roberts, B. ( 1978). Policing the crisis: Mugging, the state, and law and order. New York: MacMillan.
38.
Hiro, D. ( 1989). Holy wars: The rise of Islamic fundamentalism . New York: Routledge.
39.
Islam by country. (2009). Retrieved October 31, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country#By_country
40.
Karim, H.K. ( 2003). Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence. New York: Black Rose Books.
41.
Huntington, S. ( 1996). The Clash of Civilization and the remaking of world order . New York:Simon and Schuster.
42.
Kepel, G. ( 2003). Jihad: The trail of political Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
43.
Kinzer, S. ( 2006). Overthrow: America’s century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq. New York: Henry Holt.
44.
Koning, H. ( 1993). The conquest of America: How the Indian nations lost their continent. New York: Cornerstone Press.
45.
Kumar, D. ( 2008). Heroes, victims, and veils: Women’s liberation and the rhetoric of empire post 9/11. Forum on Public Policy: Journal of the Oxford Roundtable, pp. 23-32.
46.
Kumar, D. ( 2009a). Obama’s Cairo speech: A rhetorical shift in US imperialism. MRzine. Retrieved October 29, 2009, from http://mrzine.monthlyreview/2009/120609.html
47.
Kumar, D. ( 2009b, November 10). "Why the US has to go" (interview with the Afghan member of parliament Malalai Joya). SW online . Retrieved January 18, 2010, from http://socialistworker.org/2009/11/10/why-us-has-go
48.
Kumar, D. ( 2009c, December 9). Islamophobia and the war on Afghanistan . Lecture at New York University. Retrieved January 18, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFRNtSZ7QG0
49.
Kundnani, A. ( 2008). Islamism and the roots of Liberal Rage. Race and Class, 50, 40-68.
50.
Laqueur, W. ( 1956). Communism and nationalism in the Middle East. Westport, CT: Praeger.
51.
Lens, S. ( 2003). The forging of the American empire. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
52.
Little, D. ( 2002). American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
53.
Lockman, Z. ( 2004). Contending visions of the Middle East: The history and politics of Orientalism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
54.
Mamdani, M. ( 2005). Good Muslim, bad Muslim. New York : Doubleday.
55.
Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A report on the size and distribution of the world’s Muslim population. (2009 ). The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Retrieved October 29, 2009, from http://pewforum.org/newassets/images/reports/Muslimpopulation/Muslimpopulation.pdf
56.
Quotes from Republican Debate. (2007, May 4). The Associated Press. Retrieved February 10, 2010 from http://www.boston.com/news/nuhon/articles/2007/05/04quotes_from_republican_debate/
57.
Qureshi, E., & Sells, M. ( 2003). The new crusades: Constructing the Muslim enemy . New York: Columbia University Press.
58.
Rice, C. ( 2005). Rice urges Iraqis to pursue inclusive political process . Retrieved January 18, 2010, from http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2005/May/20050516154257ndyblehs0.6042139.html
59.
Rodinson, M. ( 1979). The Arabs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
60.
Rodinson, M. ( 1981). Marxism and Muslim world. New York : Monthly Review Press.
61.
Rodinson, M. ( 2006). Europe and the mystique of Islam. London: I.B. Tauris.
62.
Rodinson, M. ( 2002). Muhammad. New York: New Press.
63.
Roy, O. ( 1994). The failure of political Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
64.
Rumbelow, H. ( 2001, November 20). Cherie’s veiled criticism. The Times (London). Retrieved October 26, 2008, from Lexis-Nexis.
65.
Said, E. ( 1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
66.
Said, E. ( 1997). Covering Islam. New York: Vintage Books.
67.
Salaita, S. ( 2008). The uncultured wars: Arabs, Muslims and the poverty of liberal thought. New York: Zed Books .
68.
Saliba, G. ( 2007). Islamic science and the making of the European renaissance . Cambridge: MIT Press .
69.
Salucci, I. ( 2005). A people’s history of Iraq: The Iraqi Communist Party, workers’ movements, and the left 1924-2004. Chicago: Haymarket Books.
70.
Sammon, B. ( 2001). Bush urges Afghans to help oust Taliban. Washington Times, September 26. Retrieved October 26, 2009 , from Lexis-Nexis
71.
Secrets of Islam (Collector’s Edition). (2005, August 23). U.S. News and World Report.
72.
Shaheen, J. ( 2001). Reel bad Arabs: How Hollywood vilifies a people . Northampton, MA: Interlink.
73.
Spurr, D. ( 1993). The rhetoric of empire. Durham : Duke University Press.
74.
Stabile, C., & Kumar, D. ( 2005). Unveiling imperialism: Media, gender, and the war on Afghanistan. Media, Culture, and Society, 27, 765-782.
75.
Theoharis, J. ( 2009). Guantanamo at home. The Nation . Retrieved October 31, 2009, from http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090420/theoharis
76.
Tyrrell, E. ( 2006, August 10). Defanging the nihilists. The New York Sun, p. 9. Retrieved October 26, 2008, from Lexis-Nexis.
77.
Varadarajan, T. ( 2009). Going Muslim. Forbes. Retrieved January 18, 2009, from http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/08/fort-hood-nidal-malik-hasan-muslims-opinions-columnists-tunkuvaradarajan.html
78.
Watt, M. ( 1956). Muhammad at Medina. Oxford , UK: Clarendon.
79.
Williams, E. ( 1994). Capitalism and slavery. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press.
80.
Yergin, D. ( 1992). The prize: The epic quest for oil, money, and power. New York: Free Press.
