The evolution of “Covering Islam Today.”

To date, one group has managed to evade the general finger-pointing associated with the attacks of September 11 and their aftermath: the news media and the pundits who populate its screens, Web sites, and news pages. U.S. intelligence, the military, the political leadership of all stripes have been roundly criticized for their failure to anticipate, prevent, and respond to those events in an effective manner.

The result is not only the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a worldwide decline of influence and standing on the part of the United States, the ignition of global tensions between Muslim and Western societies, and rising antipathy toward Muslims in predominantly non-Muslim countries with significant immigrant populations, such as France, Holland, and the United States.

Ignorance of the state of the Muslim world today, and of America’s central role in the political and economic lives of Muslims across much of the globe, has allowed the political elites to define the conflict in its own terms and to shape the so-called War on Terrorism toward its own ends. This same ignorance created the impression that the horrific attacks of September 11 had no context, no history, and thus no possible connection to any political, social, or religious developments brewing in the outside world. This same state of innocence on the part of the American public conditioned the nation’s exclusively militarized response, which has only exacerbated the problem

“Covering Islam Today,” which I created for the Communication Department at George Mason University, is my own response to the underlying institutional failure of the news media. It grew out of a series of one-day seminars I developed for Reuters journalists during my tenure as a senior editor in Washington. I then presented these seminars in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Singapore, and Sydney.

For a detailed course outline and list of readings, please see Covering Islam Today.