Orientalism in reporting religion: Approaches to teaching journalism and Islam as a civilization

After years of discourse on the distortion of Islam by the media, this paper suggests that the link
in understanding the (mis)representation of Islam is in the corpus of Orientalism. It argues that
reporting on religions, or reporting on Islam, be adopted as critical components in the curricula of
journalism education. It notes that in Malaysia, despite a proliferation of journalism/communication
schools over more than three decades, there is no course on the reportage of religions/Islam. Such
a course could be embedded in the historical contexts of encounters between the West and Islam
and the assumption that the language of news and the language of religion are two incompatible
paradigms. This paper calls for overcoming this incompatibility. In what has been neglected as an
important component in intellectual production having spiritual and emotional ramifications, this
paper argues for re-examining the conceptual and ontological aspects of the reportage of Islam/
religion, the journalism curriculum and the intellectual production process in the university.