Mediated Islam: Narrating Islam as a Media Text

The constant narration of Islam through mediated world events such 9/11 and the Danish cartoons has reduced Islam to a polarized media narrative in a globalized world. This paper argues that Islam as an ideological discourse in a post 9/11 world deprives it of the rich cultural trajectories in terms of its histories, cultural diversity and practices in different cultural contexts. The new niche media and blogs as well as the forms of alternative expressions that occur on such web spaces may be providing new ways to understand Islamic cultures as more composite rather than monolithic entities.