Policy Perspectives

 Political Islam and the Media

Pervaiz Nazir

 

Abstract   

[This article analyses some of the issues generated by the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in a Danish newspaper in 2005. Tracing the contrasts in coverage of this issue in the Pakistani and British press, the article attempts to highlight the continuing limitation of the Western press in dealing with issues relating to ‘political Islam,’ especially since the current resurgent trends in Islam are perceived as a threat. This limitation is attributed to the Eurocentric assumptions made by the Western press about the relationship between Islam and politics in particular, and about Muslim societies and history in general. Judging Muslim societies through the prism of the West’s own history, particularly its experience of secularizaton, delimits the potential for understanding, especially when this framework is construed to be objective when it, in fact, embodies prejudices embedded in history and inequalities in the power relations between Muslim societies and the West. – Author]

 

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