Solat Jumaat depan Capitol Hill

Utusan Online 27 September 2009 / 8 Syawal 1430

UMAT Islam Amerika Syarikat bersembahyang fardu Jumaat di hadapan bangunan Capitol Hill, Washington, kelmarin. - AFP

BERIBU-ribu umat Islam Amerika Syarikat mengadakan solat Jumaat di hadapan bangunan Capitol Hill di Washington kelmarin, bertujuan memberi inspirasi kepada penganut Islam dan juga bukan Islam di negara itu.

Penganjur acara itu, Abdul Malik berkata, umat Islam datang dari seluruh AS, malah ada antaranya dari Britain dan Kanada.

Menurutnya, acara itu bukan suatu bentuk protes, sebaliknya hari untuk bersembahyang, mengabdikan diri kepada Tuhan dengan doa supaya semua lapisan rakyat Amerika boleh hidup bersama untuk kemajuan sejagat.

Muslims in the media: Representation of Muslims in a Malaysian English daily after the 7/7 London Bombings

by Hishamuddin Salim

Presented at the International Conference on the Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media 2008. (ICORM '08).

ABSTRACT

Muslims have been making the headlines ever since the 70’s mainly due to the Iranian Revolution and of late, the September 11 attack in 2001 on the New York World Trade Centre. After the 9-11 attack (as it is famously known), the number of hate attacks on Muslims have increased worldwide. One of the reasons this happens is due to the negative representation given to the Muslims by the media. This study investigates how the media represents Muslims in a Muslim country like Malaysia. One might presume that Muslims would be represented in a positive manner in a country where they are dominant. However, it should be noted that most of the foreign news in a country like Malaysia is obtained from western-based news agencies. Bearing this in mind, the
researcher employed various instruments under Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) which
goes deeper than the surface level of language use to find out whether this negative representation occurs in the Malaysian media. This study gathered data from the New
Straits Times in a two-week period after the 7/7/2005 London bombings. This comprised
36 news reports, 4 opinion articles, 2 feature articles and one editorial using various theories in Critical Discourse Analysis. The findings showed that while trying to be neutral in its reporting, the newspaper did publish opinion articles which gave negative representation of Muslims. This study also shows that even the print media in a Muslim country might contribute to this negative representation of Muslims. This is due to the fact that the language used in articles carries many underlying meanings which sometimes is overlooked by the untrained eye.