Reel Bad Arabs

Explaining Islam to the public « The Immanent Frame. The expectation that Islamic studies scholars were prepared to “cover” the Islamic tradition and speak to its beliefs and practices on a normative, global basis was stressful for many of us. The idea that we could speak with authority about the practices of 1.4 billion people who speak dozens of languages and have inhabited the planet for the last 1400 years is absurd, of course. Like other academics, Islamic studies scholars are trained in certain fields of knowledge; in the best of programs, they are trained to be exceedingly careful about…

The Free Speech Blog: Official blog of Index on Censorship » Who was hijacked, the students or the journalists?. For years I have been teaching journalism students two things which often sit together uncomfortably: that journalism is mostly about news — men biting dogs and planes that crash — and that it is about describing the world as it is, about bearing witness to truth. But how true was the march coverage when it concentrated on the activities of the minority?