Abstract
How does the deployment of the label of “radical” to refer to Muslims and Islam operate within contemporary British and, more generally, Western culture as a way of governing, controlling, and policing Muslims? Taking this question as its starting point, this chapter explores the ways in which the very notion of radical Islam or Muslims is constructed in contemporary culture as a core facet of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and a key mechanism of othering Muslims as a threat or menace that needs to be brought to heel. Part of this chapter frames this discourse in light of the well-known “propaganda model” of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky first articulated in their 1988 classic, Manufacturing Consent. In the main, this chapter illustrates the ways in which the media and political classes work in concert to discursively construct the perception of a “Muslim problem.”
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Notes
- 1.
Some scholars criticise using terms like “Islam” and the “West” or “Western civilisation” as essentialist. It is not my intention to suggest that either of these terms refer to fixed and unchanging essences not amenable to change or adaptation. Rather, I treat these ideas as socially constructed, that is to say, emerging out of discourse produced by human beings rather than naturally occurring phenomena that are studied in biology, for example. Following Kevin Schilbrack (2012, 100), however, I do not feel that a phenomenon’s social construction reduces the extent to which it feels real to people who deal in those phenomena. Money, national borders, and the national government are all socially constructed in this sense, but are inescapable realities of modern life. This is why I am content to keep on using these terms.
- 2.
The discussion over the next few paragraphs draws on this interview.
- 3.
Jason Hickel makes a case for something like this in his important study of inequality between the Global North and Global South (Hickel 2018).
- 4.
Google Ngram Viewer: ‘[radical islam]’, ‘[moderate islam]’, 1990–2019 in English, available at: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=radical+islam%2C+moderate+islam&year_start=1990&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&.
- 5.
For examples of this in the form of a collection of video clips, see: MacLeod (2022).
- 6.
For a less conservative estimate, see: Ahmed (2021).
- 7.
Note, this turn of phrase is not used in the actual interview. Rather it is the title of the clip given on what is Tharoor’s official YouTube channel.
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al-Azami, U. (2023). The Embedding of an Islamophobic Trope in the Media: Radical Versus Moderate Muslims. In: Al-Azami, S. (eds) Media Language on Islam and Muslims. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37462-3_8
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