大象传媒

In 1981, the Jerusalem-born intellectual Edward Said published a book that examined how ideas of Islam are disseminated in the western news media by commentators and experts. It was called Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World.

Forty years on, columnist and author Nesrine Malik examines how Said's ideas - and the responses to them - stack up. Through his blistering public lectures and interviews, we hear not only Said鈥檚 irrepressible erudition and his humour but the prescience of Said鈥檚 ideas today - ones that speak to questions of identity and coexistence.

Covering Islam emerged from Said鈥檚 observations of the western media鈥檚 coverage of the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Reflecting later, Said said the media's 'arsenal of images' created an impression of "the utmost negative sort of evil emanation...as if the main business of Muslims was to threaten and try to kill Americans.鈥� When he came to update Covering Islam 17 years later, after the Gulf War, Said believed the situation to be even worse.

Nesrine Malik explores how Said鈥檚 scholarship and public intellectualism sought to dismantle the idea of a 鈥渃lash of civilisations鈥� between 鈥楾he West鈥� and 鈥業slam鈥� through the 80s and 90s to his death in 2003 - and how these tropes have played out and twisted since. Nesrine also considers what Said鈥檚 ideas might offer us now, and how he might have dealt with social media and its dissemination of his ideas.

With contributions from Timothy Brennan, the author of the biography Places of Mind, a Life of Edward Said; D D Guttenplan, the editor of The Nation Magazine; Rizwana Hamid, the Director of the Muslim Council of Britain's Centre for Media Monitoring; and Asad Haider, on of the founding editors of Viewpoint magazine and the author of Mistaken Identity.

Producer: Katherine Godfrey
Assistant Producer: Dahaba Ali-Hussen
Mixing Editor: Sami El-Enany
Executive Producer: Steven Rajam

An Overcoat Media production for 大象传媒 Radio 4