Communication and Conflict: Iraq and Syria conference
7 May 2016
Organized by Dina Matar, Centre for Media Studies, SOAS
Morning Keynote Address
Title: Reimagining “the Other”:
Mediatization of the Islamic State War and Perceptions of the Arab World
Professor Philip Seib, University of Southern California
This keynote address is designed to sow seeds of ideas related to the many topics to be
discussed at this conference. I hope they will bloom into fruitful discussions as the day proceeds.
I would like to talk today about reality and perceptions of reality. They are not
necessarily the same thing. And that seems to particularly be the case when the topic at hand is
the Arab world.
This disparity is partly due to the way events are communicated… the means as well as
the substance of communication. This disparity is also at the heart of the “othering” that Edward
Said identified and has since been notable for its persistence at the center of definitions of the
Arab world. Said wrote nearly forty years ago about “contemporary Orientalist attitudes [that]
flood the press and the popular mind.”1 These attitudes may have changed in their specifics, but
they retain much from the past, notably condescension, sweeping oversimplification, and
inaccuracy. They remain at flood level.
The nature of communication also more broadly shapes our agenda. Why have Iraq and
Syria come to be so central in today’s geopolitical universe? Sadness and loss seem so attached
to these two countries, one that saw a vicious dictator replaced by a vicious war, and the other
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led by a mass murderer who belongs in a prisoner’s dock in The Hague rather than ruling what
was once a nation from Damascus.
There are those who shrug and say: “What can you expect? This is the Arab world. It will
always be chaotic and bloody.” This is the latest manifestation of “othering.” Arabs are no longer
exotic; they are savage. I would bet that if you were to do a word-association test on a street
corner in much of the United Kingdom or United States with the word “Arab” (or, for that
matter, “Muslim”), the most frequent matching word to be offered would be “terrorist.” The
accomplishments of Arab and Muslim civilizations have receded from the public’s field of
vision.
Media contribute significantly to this. They tend to focus on sensation more than
substance as they compete to keep up the public’s changing habits of information consumption.
The line between “news” and “entertainment” becomes ever fuzzier, and that affects the integrity
of the information delivered to us. In fact, we have reached the point at which entertainment
programming from the likes of Jon Stewart and John Oliver has become more informative than
purported “news” bulletins.
Although terrorism is perhaps more central in the public consciousness than it needs to
be, understanding “terrorism,” with its many definitions and manifestations, is an essential
element in understanding the Islamic State war in Syria and Iraq (and beyond) and how this war
is viewed throughout the world. If the Islamic State had confined its brutality to the Arab world,
rather than extending it to Paris, Brussels, and elsewhere, would the rest of the world be paying it
so much attention? I suspect not.
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The processes of communication are integral to how the world looks at the Islamic State
war and at terrorism more broadly. Further, media are at the forefront of efforts to respond to this
conflict and to terrorism.
Warfare, as conducted in Syria and Iraq, has merged with terrorism in much of the
public’s view. Rather than being seen as a series of loosely related or unrelated acts, terrorism
has become a continuing presence with a mediatized identity unlike that of its earlier
incarnations. Not too many years ago, “terrorism” was frequently equated with airplane
hijackings during which few casualties were incurred. As part of our contemporary incarnation
of terrorism, Islamic State has taken on an identity different from that of predecessors such as Al
Qaeda. Its “caliphate” has a physical presence that changes it not just as a matter of military and
political realities, but also as it is perceived by the news media and the public.
In efforts to counter Islamic State and its brethren, various media venues have come to
the fore in ways that are unprecedented in countering extremist organizations.
Here is a case that illustrates the importance attached to communication, but also some of
the misconceptions about the potential effectiveness of media tools in these matters:
In 2015, with considerable fanfare, the United States and the United Arab Emirates
unveiled the Sawab Center, a joint project designed to counter the online messaging of Islamic
State. “Sawab,” means “the right path,” and the center’s mission is to convince young Muslims
that they should not follow the path to Islamic State, and that Islamic State’s appeals for recruits
should be rejected.
In their statement inaugurating the center, U.S. Under Secretary of State Richard Stengel
and UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash repeatedly cited Islamic State’s violent
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online content: “using sensationalist brutality,” “use of graphic violence to shock some and
attract others,” “ISIL’s grotesque propaganda,” and so on.
But the social media messaging with which Islamic State has found most success is
presumably not about its beheadings or battlefield conquests, but rather its call to young people
to join in building the caliphate that Islamic State claims to champion. Emphasis is not on
wielding a rifle or a sword, but rather on creating a Muslim state in which religion is uncorrupted
by Western influences.
Islamic State’s online videos include one that shows the organization’s fighters with their
children enjoying a playground; no weapons or violence in sight. Another video depicts a wellequipped pediatric ward in an Islamic State hospital. News reports have indicated that among the
Western Muslims joining Islamic State in Syria have been young physicians and medical
students. There is nothing in the background of these women and men to suggest an affinity for
violence. The message from Islamic State that they found convincing was not “Come kill,” but
rather “Come create.”
The call to join in building a new nation that is at the heart of such messages is not
unique to Islamic State. In mid-19th century America, the notion of “manifest destiny” inspired
the advice, “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.” The chance to be a pioneer
always piques interest that when nurtured, as Islamic State does through its pervasive online
presence, can lead to people setting out on what promises to be a constructive adventure. Such
messaging is particularly effective among young Muslims in the Middle East and in the Arab
diaspora who see their lives as being without hope – no job, no stable home, and no respect
shown to their religion or themselves. This latter insult is perceived in news coverage, in
entertainment media, and in casual encounters in the non-Muslim world.
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This underscores yet again the need to take seriously communication as part of our
consideration of the war in Syria and Iraq. Communication also affects our judgments about
what is called “counterterrorism,” but is seen by many as being a much more sweeping
civilizational judgment.
It must be kept in mind that although Islamic State’s promises may glitter, they are built
on lies, and those who respond to the “build the caliphate” message will likely find themselves
sucked into the real work of Islamic State: murder, rape, enslavement. To those of us who only
see Islamic State’s bloody activities recounted in news reports, the group’s evil is self-evident.
But Islamic State’s shrewdness in using various media venues – especially social media – to
define itself as a positive enterprise must not be underestimated.
Exposing the true Islamic State first requires debunking the caliphate-building message.
That can best be done by taking it on directly. Although anti-Islamic State messaging should
make clear that Islamic State’s bloodlust betrays the ummah, it must also confront the Islamic
State premise that Islam is best served when Muslims isolate themselves from the rest of the
world, which is what the Islamic State caliphate promises.
Barack Obama has said that this entity is not Islamic and is not a state. Whether it is a
“state” is a relatively esoteric matter for academics to debate. Whether it is “Islamic” is,
however, much more important because Islamic State seeks to impose its identity on an entire
religion.
To an extent, this is othering turned on its head. If othering, as described by Said, is
meant to separate Arabs from the global mainstream and to suppress Arab ambition for societal
advancement, the Islamic State is an accessory to doing just that.
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Islamic State has accomplices in this. In our world order, those who have power want to
keep it. They enjoy hegemony. And so marginalizing – othering – Arabs and Muslims is
accompanied by a more sweeping othering of the Global South. Just as in many industrial
nations the gap between haves and have-nots is widening, so too is the distance between “us”
and “them” becoming greater throughout the world. This is another reason that the conflict in
Syria and Iraq, and the content of communication about it, should not be viewed in isolation.
Othering is a contagion.
But to focus for now on countering the Islamic State’s case for its caliphate … this is a
much more complicated task than just challenging violence. With the anti-Islamic State coalition
launching new counterterrorism messaging projects, the task of undermining Islamic State’s
social media content should be analyzed anew, with emphasis on destroying any legitimacy that
Islamic State may try to attach to its purported caliphate. Islamic State is a smart and resilient
enemy, and defeating it requires a smart and resilient strategy.
That strategy must be credible. When we hear talk about better using social media to
compete with the messaging of Islamic State, we should remember the importance of moral
consistency. I have heard diplomats condemn Islamic State and in the next breath reflexively
defend purported “allies” that consider human rights to be nothing more than a nuisance.
As millions of young Arabs watch the world around them, they see Saudi Arabia ordering
a thousand lashes and ten years in prison for a blogger who encouraged online debate about
religious and political issues. They see an Egyptian government taking police powers to new
extremes. They see Yemen being torn apart. They see Libya teetering on the brink of chaos. And
what does rest of the world do? Very little, beyond shaking its head about the behavior of “those
Arabs”…the behavior of “the other.”
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Communicating with young people in the Middle East and in the Arab diaspora is the key
to choking off the recruiting pathways relied upon by Islamic State and other extremist groups.
Much effort is being put into messaging through social media and other venues designed to
convince this audience that the violence in the region is un-Islamic and that a democratic process
is the better way to bring about change.
To Western ears, that sounds good. To the vast audience for whom the messages are
designed, however, the words ring false. Where are the Western leaders who would stand up and
tell the Saudi, Egyptian, and other governments that they must respect human rights or see severe
damage to their relationships with the West. That kind of rhetoric, coupled with visible action,
would get the attention of young Arabs and would let them see that if they want change, they can
find allies other than extremists. But instead, whether because of a thirst for oil or a reflexive
dismissal of Arabs’ interest in democracy, little pressure for change is brought to bear on those
who perpetuate injustice.
When representatives of human rights organizations raise this issue within government
circles, they are listened to politely and then just as politely ignored. The talk reverts to
traditional formulas of hard and soft power, tactics that have consistently proved ineffective.
Of course, Western governments have their priorities. Arms sales to the Saudis and others
provide great economic benefits to the United States and other countries. Egypt is now seen as
“stable,” whatever that means. Monarchies in the region continue to host Western military bases.
Ignoring how these regimes treat their own people might seem a reasonable trade-off.
But the young people the Western powers are trying to court with their anti-extremism
messaging are not stupid. They are being told to be good and accept things as they are. They
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have stopped listening to those “words of wisdom” and instead talk amongst themselves through
social media.
A few years ago, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice observed that in the Middle
East the United States has sought stability at the expense of democracy, and achieved neither.
We are now seeing the latest version of that approach: arguing against extremism while refusing
to champion human rights. It won’t work. Illogical messaging produces dissonance that neither
defeats enemies nor wins friends.
Meanwhile, the Islamic State endures military punishment but proceeds. If Islamic
State’s brutal activities were confined to its original home in Iraq and Syria, a minimal amount of
optimism on the part of counterterrorism strategists might be justified. Air strikes by the United
States and its allies have taken their toll, not only in reducing the number of Islamic State
fighters in the field, but also in damaging its administrative infrastructure, such as by blowing up
cash warehouses and oil tanker-trucks.
But the residual strength of the Islamic State is its ability to metastasize and expand. It
has an estimated 6,500 fighters in Libya; it is actively recruiting in Pakistan, Tajikistan, and
elsewhere; it is competing for influence with the Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Shabaab in
Somalia; and it has alliances of sorts with terrorist groups ranging from central Africa to
Southeast Asia. It is important to recognize that the Islamic State war is more than the Syria-Iraq
war.
We hear from top officials in the U.S. government, such as Special Presidential Envoy
Brett McGurk, that the “caliphate is shrinking.” In truth, it is growing and becoming more
dangerous. Consider the threat to Tunisia, which is the one country to emerge from the so-called
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“Arab spring” on a path toward democracy. Islamic State fighters from Libya have infiltrated
into Tunisia, where they launched an attack in March that left at least 53 persons dead.
The Obama administration has been considering a campaign of air strikes to hit Islamic
State in Libya. That is a tactical response, not a strategy. So too is the notion that the United
States and its allies can kill Islamic State fighters faster than the organization can recruit new
ones. There is no evidence, outside the Iraq/Syria theater of operations, that this is happening.
As we have seen in Islamic State recruiting, idealism, however misplaced, can be more
powerful than bloodthirstiness, and it must be offset by counter-messaging that shows that the
idealism is being betrayed. This in turn requires undermining the notion that the global
community of 1.6 billion Muslims is under siege by the West. The Islamic State has been
successful in selling this idea to young Muslims for whom their faith is the most stable part of
their lives. Media messaging in much of the world is often subtly or overtly anti-Muslim, and
this does not go unnoticed by Islamic State and those it targets in its recruiting. (And it should be
noted that the American presidential campaign provides daily reinforcement for Islamic State’s
message.)
To put this in terms U.S. officials might understand, we need a surge of media content.
To be effective, this should be crafted by indigenous sources, not by the State Department or
Hollywood. Rather than Sony or Disney, the producers should be the young Muslim filmmakers
who know how to reach their peers. Then it must be delivered so persistently that the lies of the
Islamic State can be drowned out.
Many players are involved in all this. In addition to governments, extremist
organizations, and the victims of extremist acts, the news media are part of the process because
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how they depict terrorism-related issues does much to develop the context in which terrorism is
perceived and countered.
The individual and collective feelings about injustice that spread through parts of the
Muslim world (including the Arab diaspora) do much to foster the alienation in which extremism
can take root. News coverage of conflict in the Middle East during which Western militaries
inflict civilian casualties can fuel a desire to respond, especially when the violence is presented
without adequate explanation of the causes and complexities of the fighting.
News organizations should remember that explaining terrorism is not justifying terrorism.
The corollary to that is that merely condemning terrorism is not enough to help people
understand it. It is easy for news media to be swept up in the emotional reaction to a terror attack
and settle for catering to angry public opinion.
Rare are the exceptions to this. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Susan Sontag wrote
in The New Yorker that those “licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a
campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a ‘cowardly’
attack on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world,’ but an attack on the world’s
self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and
actions?”2
Such viewpoints tend to be disparaged and marginalized. Few mainstream news
organizations are confident enough to publish this kind of material. The news media are sensitive
to the opinions of their audience and their advertisers, especially when emotion-driven, and so
are likely to avoid contrarian probing. That is good for business, if not good for journalism.
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This can be seen in coverage of the Islamic State war. Serious issues are set aside and the
conflict is presented as an action movie – Fast and Furious Arabs – with little attention paid to
nuance.
Any claim that news coverage in itself causes violent extremism is wrong, but it can be a
contributing factor to discontent in the homeland and in the countries that host diasporic
populations. For the latter, this is affected by advances in media technology that allow many
members of a diaspora to consume news from their homelands in real time, with all the
emotional impact that accompanies speed. In her study of watching Arabic television in Europe,
Christina Slade noted that “news from the country of origin is no longer, as it used to be, months
old, nor is it mediated by others and shot through with nostalgic framing. Instead, it is
immediate, aired in the country of origin and the host country at the same time.”3
Even when an act of terrorism occurs in Paris, Brussels, or California, the story is often
framed with its roots in the Arab homeland. And yet, those who profess to be “countering violent
extremism” – the term chosen to replace “global war on terror” – make this connection in
superficial ways.
Journalist Rami Khouri took this argument farther, citing “the causal influence of
Western policies in this grim cycle of global violence.” Specifically, wrote Khouri:
“the countering violent extremism approach ignores four of the most important
drivers of political violence and terrorism in the Middle East: 1) sustained
socioeconomic stress, deprivation and marginalization, including rampant official
corruption, that leaves several hundred million people destitute and powerless; 2)
chronic, Western-supported authoritarianism and dictatorships that leave citizens
without any political rights in most of the societies that generate terrorism; 3) the
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impact of sustained Western militarism in the region over the last few decades,
especially the Anglo-American war in Iraq; and 4) the persistent radicalizing
impact for the past half-century of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israeli colonization of
Arab lands, and U.S.-led Western acquiescence in Israeli policies.”4
In addition to Khouri’s points, as the policies related to countering violent extremism develop
further, challenging questions should be asked about the presumption that a Western model of
political life is suitable throughout the world. This matters because if those who want to
counter extremism offer alternatives that lack appeal to contested audiences, the outcome will
be predictable.
Islamic State has done much to shape the context in which terrorism is addressed. Unlike
many other terrorist organizations it has committed itself to seizing and holding territory. The
United States, Russia, and other Islamic State foes have thus been able to use their sophisticated
air power against Islamic State centers such as Raqqa, Syria. But aside from the inevitability of
inflicting civilian casualties by attacking towns within the Islamic State domain, the air attacks
have produced little evidence that they are significantly contributing to the overall defeat of
Islamic State, or severely impairing operations that are IS-directed or IS-inspired and take place
far away.
Among extremists’ long-distance ventures are radicalization efforts. Writing about
radicalization, Shiraz Maher noted that when Mohammed Sidique Khan orchestrated the 2005
London bombings, he said he was doing so to retaliate for “the bombing, gassing, imprisonment,
and torture of my people.” But who were “my people”? Khan was born and educated in the UK,
but, as Maher states, “he identified with the citizens of Iraq – a country he had not even traveled
to and whose language he could not speak.” This is a matter of identity, wrote Maher, which has
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“long been recognized as being central to radicalization and not unique to Muslims….The
underlying ingredients are always the same: righteous indignation, defiance, a sense of
persecution, and a refusal to conform,” and they may lead to “violent – or at least confrontational
-- extremism.”5
This is a product of what might be called “identity drift.” It is partly a function of
globalized media connections that allow virtual linkage to whatever “homeland” one considers to
be his or her own. Everything from accessing that homeland’s news media to joining online
political communities can be accomplished easily, contributing to a sense of belonging despite
physical distance.
But distance does matter, because knowledge of events and ideologies acquired in this
way may be distorted. When someone like Mohammed Sidique Khan proclaims, “I am a
soldier,” his militancy has been nurtured not by on-the-ground training (which was the case with
several of the 2015 Paris attackers), but rather through radicalizing tools crafted by those who
know that enlisting recruits depends on the alluring case they can build in cyberspace. Those
who want to counter violent extremism will need to become far more adept at working within
this same environment.
At the outset, I mentioned differences between reality and perceptions of reality, and
how, in mediatized conflict, these different versions of reality sometimes become jumbled. From
such confusion comes perpetuation of the “othering” that is usually purposeful but sometimes a
product of inadequate or contradictory information. When in doubt, denigrate those whom you
do not understand. When you don’t understand, surrender your skepticism and follow the path of
least intellectual resistance.
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Think of the diverse messages emanating from the topics I’ve been discussing here.
These are so numerous and sometimes so conflicting that the public may succumb to puzzlement
and then anger in response. Common purpose for constructive change becomes exceptionally
difficult to establish.
All this is fine to simply watch if we are happy being mere observers, which is a privilege
to which many academics cling. Alternatively, we can take our role as public intellectuals
seriously and try to influence those publics and policies that now are influenced by mediatized
versions of reality that are often incomplete and inaccurate. The mediatized world is our world of
the future; there is no doubt about that. But as with other aspects of societal development, it can
be improved. Nuance and depth can be added.
So, that is what I will leave you with: a suggestion – or maybe even a mandate – to take
some responsibility for bringing clarity to these issues. If you care about making Islamic State
and even “othering” itself eventually obsolete, interjecting your influence as intellectual leaders
in various forums about these matters would be a good first step.
It won’t be easy, but I hope you will accept this challenge.
Professor Philip Seib is Professor of Journalism and Public Diplomacy and
Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California. He has
served as director of USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy from 2009-2013. He is
author and editor of numerous books, including Headline Diplomacy; Beyond the Front
Lines; New Media and the New Middle East; The Al Jazeera Effect; Toward A New Public
Diplomacy; Global Terrorism and New Media; and Real-Time Diplomacy: Politics and Power in
the Social Media Era. His next books are The Future of Diplomacy (Polity, summer 2016)
and Countering Violent Extremism: What It Means and Where It Leads (2017). His
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commentaries on foreign policy appear frequently in Huffington Post and other
publications.
1
Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1994), 108.
Susan Sontag, “First Reactions,” The New Yorker, September24, 2001, 42.
3
Christina Slade, Watching Arabic Television in Europe (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 13.
4
Rami G. Khouri, “Beware the Hoax of Countering Violent Extremism,” Al Jazeera America, September 29, 2015,
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/9/beware-the-hoax-of-countering-violent-extremism.html.
5
Shiraz Maher, “The Roots of Radicalization? It’s Identity, Stupid,” Guardian, June 17, 2015.
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