Islam, the West, and the media

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Social Sciences Department Bagher al-Olum University

Abstract

After the fall of communism and the resultant mono-polarity of the world, the West needed another enemy for its own internal cohesion. Thus, they defined the Islamic world as a dangerous enemy replacing communism. The Islamic world, because of having a different school of thought and the long animosity with the West, was placed in an antagonistic relationship with the West. Thus, despite the existence of the constructionist approach to the Islamic world among the Western scholars, the essentialist approach to the Islamic world was propagated in the media and the Islamic world was introduced as a unitary whole and a threat to the West. The writer of this paper believes that the West’s antagonism toward the Islamic world as a unitary and dangerous whole is the West’s strategy to continue its domination over the world.

Keywords