Induction Task 1

ISIS

An issue that has been in the news in recent weeks/month is the Islamic extremist group ISIS (Islamic State Of Iraq And Syria.) More specifically they are a Sunni Jihadist group. They are actively involved within the conflict in Syria and Iraq and have been a big topic within the news recently, the most notorious being the beheading of two American journalists, the videos were posted online and were done with the intention of getting a message across to the West and warning them of what is to come if they intervene. They recently said that the next beheading will be on a British hostage.

The representation that is most evident within all the reported news is race and religion. The manner in which Islam is represented is in a negative light, rightly or wrongly so. Other news has came from this, with right wing groups becoming more active and speaking out to combat Islam.

All though the fact stands that the views of ISIS are representative of  a tiny proportion of the religion, the media exaggerates the problem further with propaganda from right wing newspapers such as the daily mail making comments about these being the views of the religion as a whole.

The typical pictures you would see within newspaper articles are people dressed in the religions clothing, maybe to emphasize and create a feeling of hostility among others to the religion. Also the amount of coverage the topic gets can make the problem out to be larger than it is, new news articles or news on TV shows are reporting about this topic everyday. It is not uncommon for issues surrounding Islam to be in some peoples religion over exaggerated.

The British media in particular tries to bring the problem much closer to home than it may actually be, by claiming that around 500 British Jihadists have went over to join the group in the last 5 years or so. The representation by the British media definitely makes out a minority problem to be representative of the majority. For example there was a case of two Muslim girls from Manchester who collectively had around 36 GCSEs between them and were also aspiring doctors sneaking away from their parents to fly off and join the group ISIS, they have been active on Twitter while they have been away by writing tweets that suggest they still want to be doctors but become doctors for ISIS. As you can see from the story this was only two people out of all the Muslims in the UK however  this problem was possibly blown way out of proportion with the amount of coverage it got and the problem the newspaper said it causes.

The way in which others would react to this given the news stories and coverage may be with feelings of hostility to Muslims within the UK which may lead to racial tensions among the UK. On the opposite side people may react in a more positive way by seeing the problem as a chance to help and change the ways. Also the fact that the problem has been reported as being within the UK has lead to Muslim leaders and other speaking out and trying to stop the problem before it starts. Some Muslim leaders have made TV or Youtube appearances condemning the actions of ISIS and giving a speech about how there views are not representative of the rest of the Muslim Community.