These images and media, understood as ‘spectacles of terror’, not only created
a symbiotic relationship between terrorism and the media, but also enabled a rise
in Islamophobia (Kellner, 2004). This is a concept understood as the ‘unfounded
hostility towards Muslims and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims’
(Runnymede Trust, 1997). It can be argued that this fear of Muslims had an
onward effect in the justification of Osama bin Laden’s death in 2011. President
Obama, played on the fear still present within America and portrayed the al Qaeda
leader as a significant threat to safety and security. While Obama declared, like
President George W. Bush, that the US ‘war [was] not against Islam’, their
targeted killing, which changed the landscape of the norm against assassination,
undeniably reinforced the notion of Islamophobia in contemporary society due to
the pivotal instrumentalisation by the President (Obama, 2011).
From this, one can therefore argue that race plays a considerable role in
contemporary global conflicts as an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dichotomy has been
created, not only in America, but also in other Western states whereby the Muslim
community are often portrayed as a monolithic group whose culture is
incompatible with human rights and democracy (D. Bolger, personal
communication, March 28, 2023). This portrayal of Muslims in Western media
as the exotic and threatening other , can therefore be considered a product of
Islamism or new Orientalism, a contemporary progression from scholar Edward
Said’s seminal research area (El-Aswad, 2013, p.40). It has been argued that the
Orient has become a mirror image of what is the inferior and alien other to the
West and over more recent years, the Orient has become the ‘Islamic Orient’ or
even ‘Muslim East’ (El-Aswad, 2013, p.40). It can therefore be said that the
depiction of the Muslim community has manipulated public opinion and acted as
a justification for violence and conflict.
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