Reporting Islam in Australian newspapers: the case of the proposed Elermore Vale mosque

Abstract

This paper uses the local case study of a proposed mosque development in the Newcastle suburb of Elermore Vale as an example of how Islam has been reported in the Australian media. The media reports analysed were published in Newcastle's local newspaper The Herald between February 2010, when the Newcastle Muslim Association purchased the land for the proposed development, and March 2012, when the Land and Environment Court ruled against the proposal. The discourses evident in the newspaper content reveal a clear undercurrent of racism within the local reporting against the Muslim community and, it may be argued, are representative of a larger trend of Islamophobia in the West. While the key community protest group Elermore Vale Community for Appropriate Residential and Environment Strategies (EV CARES) attempted to discuss the mosque proposal by raising planning issues appropriate property development matters, antiMuslim sentiment was clearly evident in many of the articles.Illustrations of Edward Said's (1978, 2004) concept of 'Orientalism' emerged through the reporting, where Islam, and by extension the Newcastle Muslim Association, was portrayed as being different, strange and threatening to the local community. The fact that this kind of antiMuslim sentiment can be identified in local media products is indicative of the challenges for local media groups covering local media events, as it represents how a local matter can become contentious due to globally recognised concerns. In this instance, those concerns are the perceived threat of Muslim fundamentalism and Islam to the West. Discursive analysis of The Herald's reports demonstrates that discourses of power, religion, 'the Other', 'community' and 'the victim' are prevalently portrayed. Furthermore, these portrayals contribute to antiMuslim attitudes communicated by key parties in the articles, who use the Islamic religion as an identifier; the marginalisation of the Muslim community as 'Other'; and an 'us' vs. 'them' dichotomy to manifest perhaps more nationally held concerns at a local level