Contested representations in historical Perspective: Images of Islam and the Australian Press 1950-2000

Over the last 50 years, newspapers have provided Australians with much of what they know, or rather apprehend, about Islam as a religious system and Muslim culture in general. This stands to reason. On the one hand, very few non-Muslims would bother going to the length of consulting the Qur'an, the prime source of Islamic theology, to discover for themselves the prescriptions for life it lays down and embodies. On the other hand, the press has long superseded all other forms of literature as the instrument of mass communication, a register of current national and international information, and the medium through which the world's changing landscape can be regularly viewed

Islam and Identity in South Asia: at the crossroads of confusion and confrontation?

In May 2002 Salman Rushdie described the Indian subcontinent as 'the most dangerous place in the world'. 1 This was no overstatement. Having gone to war on three previous occasions - in 1948, 1965 and 1971 - India and Pakistan seemed poised to go to total war over Kashmir. A fierce military skirmish in the mountainous Kargil sector dividing Indian and Pakistani Kashmir had set the scene for this in 1999. This time they confronted each other not only with conventional armed force, with more than a million troops massing along their joint border, 2 but also with nuclear missiles strategically targeted to inflict maximum destruction. India's Bharitya Janata Party (hereafter BJP) government, which had previously acknowledged an Indian pledge never to be the first to launch an attack, provocatively demanded the right to conduct a 'defensive' pre-emptive strike reminiscent of the doctrine George W. Bush had enunciated justifying unilateral US intervention against regimes it considered hostile. 3 The prospect of the world's first nuclear war loomed large

A New World Disorder in the Making?: An Historical Assessment

If seven days is said to be a long time in politics, fifteen years must constitute an eternity in international relations. This is a period beginning in 1991 with President George H.W.Bush [Bush Snr.] confidently and repeatedly proclaiming that a "New World Order" of peace and security lay in prospect, and arriving at the beginning of 2006 when the spectre of war and insecurity under President George W. Bush [Bush Jnr.] looks more likely to materialise as an integral part of a New World Disorder instead. This paper attempts to provide not only an historical commentary of the turn of events of the last fifteen years, but also an explanation for them. Today, with the United States looking vulnerable rather than invincible and Islamist terrorism threatening to become ubiquitous, a world order of harmonious international relations based on any single universalist prescription of norms, rules and values - American or otherwise - looks decidedly distant

Women, Labour Standards, and Labour Organisation

The provision of adequate labour standards is of vital significance to women workers in Asia's industrial work forces. Women form a significant proportion of the total labour force - except in South Asia - and in some industries, notably garments, are an overwhelming percentage. Since women generally work in the lowest-paid jobs, with the lowest security of employment, and often work long hours in unsatisfactory working conditions, the acceptance and enforcement of good labour standards and practices has become a matter of critical concern. What is understood by labour standards and how do they become incorporated into national labour laws? What are some of the reasons why, despite considerable pressure for improvement from international and national groups, labour standards for women workers remain below acceptable norms in many Asian countries? How does the weakness of union representation for women workers contribute to the failure of organised labour to exert sufficient pressure for change

Diverging frames: A comparison of Indonesian and Australian press portrayals of terrorism and Islamic groups in Indonesia

Media coverage of terrorism in Indonesia shows substantial differences in the way Indonesian and Australian news media portray terrorists, Islamic groups and Indonesian attitudes towards terrorism. While the Australian media's framing of issues relating to terrorism and Islamic groups in Indonesia generates a hegemonic Orientalist image of Indonesian Muslims, Indonesian media treatment of the same issues is more moderate, presenting a very different picture. This comparative analysis of Australian and Indonesian mainstream news coverage, taken from the week following the 2002 Bali bombings, the 2004 Australian Embassy bombing in Jakarta and the 2005 Bali bombings, illustrates the ease with which stereotypical images can be created and reinforced in the media. At the same time, it shows how easily issues can be presented in a way that counters such generalizations