Islam in the West: A discourse analysis of American and British Muslim web content

This study sought to identify prominent discourses on four Islamic websites produced in the United States and Britain. The analysis looked specifically for discourses about identity, the religious ‘other’ and terrorism. The four Muslim organizations examined here – the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) and the UK Islamic Mission (UKIM) – used the Web to construct discourses that describe them as authentically Islamic, in service to Muslims, in cooperation with non-Muslims and enemies of terrorism. The Muslim-produced web content studied here offers up a set of discourses that can be considered counter-hegemonic insofar as they challenge discursive formations that are dominant in both entertainment and news media. For instance, rather than associate Islam with terrorism, the sites denounce it in strong terms and distance the religion from the crime.