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Summary: A MUST READ BOOK
Review: A landmark work in destroying the current media myths about Islam in a very objective and rational manner. The book shed the light on the American media habits to deliberately demonize and dehumanize Islam based on irrational generalizations and contradictions. The book challenges most of the well-known and mainsteam journalism relentless efforts to defend Israel no matter what and at all costs even if this goes beyond rationality and integrity in attacking Islam and the Arabs...
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Summary: Possibly the best book on media and foreign policy
Review: A MUST read for anyone who believes himself to be a journalist, historian, political commentator, public official or policy-maker. Edward, writing in his own detached, scholarly style, exposes the blinkered views and "expert opinion" mainstream media and politicians propagate for their own self-interest and to humanity's disadvantage. An interesting and necessary perspective to everyone who believes in the First Amendment
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Summary: excellent book
Review: An excellent book about the mis-portrayal of Islam by the western media.Should be read by anyone who wants to understand Islam and go beyond the racist stereotypes.
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Summary: A Book of Enormous Import
Review: An important tenet of many contemporary criticisms of conventional international relations theory is that the major causes of crises in US foreign policy are determined not so much by the existence of "real threats" so much as they are determined by our perception of these threats. The goings-on outside of our borders are certainly highly complex and potentially dangerous, but these goings-on are always rendered intelligible in terms of a set of prefigured normative criteria that determine what is "good," "peaceful," and "dangerous."Nobody, Edward Said points out, saw the Joneboro massacre and determined that it was an event representative of the way things are in "America" or "Christendom." However, whenever an instance of violence breaks out in the Middle East, we immediately attribute this violence to a monolithic construction called "Islam." Said shows how our labelling of the Middle East as collectively constituting "Islam" regulates our the way we have constructed the Middle East in our geopolitical imagination. For the American media, the Middle East is a backwards area, mired in religious fundamentalism, and events involving countries as different from one another as Libya, Iran, and Palestine who all share the label "Islam." "Covering Islam" is a brilliant extension of the studies Said pursued in his groundbreaking 1979 classic "Orientalism." Starting from the framework he introduced in 1979, Said aims a powerful and convincing critique at the American media's role in shaping our geo-cultural understanding. While there certainly is a large group of almost exclusively Islamic nations spread throughout the Middle East, their collective recognition under the name "Islam" is about as silly and arbitrary as lumping together China, Japan, Vietnam, and Korea as nations of "Chinese people." Edward Said lucidly discusses the way in which this totalizing understanding of the Middle East enables the mobilization of ethno-national enmities between the United States and nations of the Middle East. Central to Said's work is the influence of philosopher-historian Michel Foucault. Said follows in Foucault's methodological footsteps by explaining that "Islam" as we understand it is actually created by the very same discursive practices that purport to represent it. This is true both on the level of theory and practice. On the level of theory, "Islam" comes into being as an entity at the moment that we construct it through a process of differentiation and totalization. On the level of practice, our fear of "Islam" as a threat tends to precede any actual aggression on the part of Middle Eastern nations. By treating Muslims as potential terrorists (our airport search policies are, thanks to the Gore Commission, decidedly racist) we polarize the Muslim peoples and the peoples of the "free world," and in doing so forge the very bifurcation between the West and Islam that our cultural assumptions take to be a pre-discursive entity. Said's critique is significant because it destabilizes these cultural assumptions, and opens up the identities of Middle Eastern nations to permanent political contestation. "Covering Islam" is an excellent book both for students of politics, cultural studies, or philosophy, and for general interest reading. I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Unmitigated Propaganda
Review: As propaganda, this is a brilliant work, evidence being the number of adherents that buy its thesis. Said neglects to mention the ongoing conflicts in Sudan, Nigeria and Indonesia where Christians are politically, physically and criminally assaulted do solely to their faith by Muslims. He fails to mention that Jordan has considered and rejected a ban on "honor killings" of women. Said's entire career is intended to shield Islamic "culture" from the acknowledgment of its abject failure. Twenty per cent of the world's population and 50% of the world's illiterates. Islamic countries suffer terrible brain drain for a reason. Said lived in the United States didn't he didn't choose to live in any Islamic country, did he?
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Summary: Outstanding look at media misrepresentation
Review: Beware of some of the comments you may see here. Some represent nothing more than ad hominem ravings by people with a visceral -- and racist -- hatred of Said. Why should they feel so? He was the greatest Palestinian intellectual in the world -- and one of the world's greatest intellectuals, period. Thus, he represented a threat to racists bent on oppression generally and on oppression of the Palestinian people specifically. That said, Covering Islam may not be the most enjoyable read, but it is an essential part of the body of works examining how media, especially American media, systematically misrepresent -- and lie about -- Islam. Said brings to bear his skill as a literary theorist in much the same way that Chomsky does his skill as a linguist. Here and in other writings, Said dissects the gross and subtle distortions of the people and institutions that are widely accepted as final authorities (e.g., the New York Times, Bernard Lewis, etc.) This book is all the more important now when we see a resurgence of legally sanctioned and officially promoted racism here in the United States.
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Summary: An Inquiry Into the Origins of "NIGHTLINE"
Review: Edward Said has long been one of my favorite authors when it comes to commenting on the difference between perception and reality, especially vis-a-vis the "Western world" and the Middle East. I read "Covering Islam" after "Culture and Imperialism," and it was refreshing to see Said apply his conclusions from his literary criticism to modern journalism and pop culture. His analysis of how NIGHTLINE became a hit due to the 1979-80 Tehran hostage crisis was particularly illuminating. As anybody who's ever seen any American movie dealing with the Middle East or terrorists, the attitudes Said describes in his book are still very much with us today. I give this book four stars simply because I would like to see it updated in the aftermath of the growth of domestic American terrorism (Oklahoma City, Operation Rescue and its more zealous advocates, and even Columbine) and how those developments cannot be easily dismissed by blaming them on common Arab (or Iranian) stereotypes. This book is a prime example of cultural studies at their best.
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Summary: Finally! An explanation of the media by a brilliant scholar
Review: Edward Said is brilliant and one of the few critical thinkers out there who can talk about Islam without speaking in cliches and platitudes and canned stereotypes. In this book, he explains the entire mythology of Islam that exists in the West and why it's there, pointing out that the media irresponsibly uses "Islam" to mean every thing from Morocco to India to Palestine to Saudi Arabia to Nigeria to the Gulf. He takes not only general themes but specific examples to show how the media manipulates everything we perceive about Islam. For example, Said points out that the Iranian resistance to Iraq's invasion in 1980 (something we all should be able to understand) was characterized by the media as "the Shi'a penchant for martyrdom," immediately portraying a country defending itself as something alien and negative. He tells us how inept the media is, too; of the 300 reporters during the Iran hostage crisis, for example, not one spoke Persian. How can we possibly get an accurate idea of what's going on if we don't even know the language? Get this book. It's beautifully and passionately written, his arguments are water-tight, and none of his analysis is superficial. Even if you just read the introduction, it will be worth getting this book; you'll be astounded and enlightened.
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Summary: Even More Relevant Today
Review: Edward Said's book does precisely what the title claims. This book is an evaluation of the U.S. media through quotes and excerpts of what actually constitutes journalism in this country. Despite Said's Palestinian (although Christian) roots, he provides an extremely balanced critique of all factions at work in the perversion of American mass media. So many "works" on the Middle East take a hostile stand toward either Jews or Muslims - that it is hard to find a single reliable source. This is one of those reliable sources. An honest reader will be able to seriously evaluate which stereotypes they themselves have fallen victim to - and, a reader more familiar with the topic of mass media will realize what a depressing state of affairs still exists today. A reader already prejudiced by their own bias, will find little use for this book. The introduction is best saved for last, so as not to influence your first reading of Said's argument. Also, the early pages of the first chapter are somewhat inaccesible to the average reader - but as Said picks up the pace, his writing becomes more fluid and understandable. Give it a chance, and you won't be able to put it down. Also, be prepared to disagree with some of the things that Said says - but remember that is the point. After each thesis, and each argument in support of that thesis, what Said is really asking you to do is to question what you are told. This is a primer on responsible media consumption more than anything else.
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Summary: AN EXCELLENT BOOK -> UNCOVERING HIDDEN AGENDAS
Review: FINALLY!! NOW HERE'S A BOOK THAT PORTRAYS THE TRUTH...I recommend this book to anyone who has ever felt the media's portrayal of Islam and Muslims was anywhere near reality. This book takes on the long-feared task of exposing American media agendas and its sources, and how this portrayal has hurt and been totally unfair to the Second Largest Religion in the World where more than a billion Muslims live and practice a religion that has become the target of media distortion and the tool for American foreign policy and hidden agendas. An expose' of multibillion dollar campaigns to distort the image of a civilized, down-to-earth, honest religion, this book gives the real scoop on the high moral values of Muslim people, and their sincerety, and the media's distortion of them as terrorists and war-criminals.A must read for all political analysts
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