BOOK REVIEW Orientalism in English Literature: Perception of Islam and Muslims.

Abstract

In Covering Islam (1981), Edward Said, in his characteristic display of intellectual courage and honesty, had emphasized the Orientalist conceit of the dominant, western-based global media and its tendency to reproduce damaging verbal and visual image of the Muslim world in the following words: ‘For the general public in America and Europe today, Islam is “news” of a particularly unpleasant sort. The media, the government, the geo-political strategists and – although they are marginal to the culture at large – the academic experts on Islam are all in concert: Islam is a threat to Western civilization. Now this is by no means the same as saying that only derogatory or racist caricatures are to be found in the West. I do not say that, nor would I agree with anyone who did. What I am saying is that negative images of Islam continue to be very much more prevalent than others, and that such images correspond not to what Islam “is” … but to what prominent sectors of a particular society take it to be. These sectors have the power and the will to propagate that particular image of Islam, and this image, therefore, becomes more prevalent, more present than others’.