The changing image of Arab men

Kavitha Rajagopalan is the author of “Muslims of Metropolis: The Stories of Three Immigrant Families in the West.”

Over the last few weeks, the news media have been filled with images of a different kind of Arab youth. Unlike his frequent front-page and on-air counterpart - the militant of the West Bank and Gaza or Iraq -- the pro-democracy protesters of Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya are not seen as enemies of the West.

But even if the protesters demand free elections while militants presumably seek theocracy, the visual tapestry is largely the same - masses of young men shouting and throwing rocks amid smoke and flame. How far can the extensive coverage of pro-democracy demonstrations across the Arab world go toward humanizing the image of the young Arab male?

It was in 1978 that Edward Said published his seminal volume, "Orientalism," arguing that Western scholarship toward Arab and Islamic cultures rested on fundamental prejudices and misrepresentations, which served to justify Western colonial ambitions and military actions in the Middle East.

Since then, many scholars and media monitoring groups have studied stereotypes of and prejudices toward Arabs and Muslims in Western media, popular culture and scholarship. Although some have focused on Hollywood images of sinister Arab villains or megalomaniacal Muslim terrorists, some others have pointed to an imbalance in Western media coverage of such conflicts as the Iraq wars, Israeli-Arab conflicts or of Muslims in the West.

These groups and others accuse hallowed Western media outlets like the BBC, The New York Times, CNN and Die Zeit of unevenly portraying the Israeli perspective over the Arab one, explaining violence in the Middle East and Muslim communities in the West as the result of "traditional" cultural values, giving greater voice to Islamophobic politicians and talking heads and fundamentalist Islamists than moderate Muslims, and of publishing more images of Arabs taking to the streets in masses or in riots, with guns, and veiled in headscarves or traditional Bedouin headwraps than of individual, thoughtful Arab and Muslim men and women. The fewer stories and images we see of individual Arabs and Muslims, the more likely we are to see them as a volatile -- and incomprehensible -- mass.

While it is true that Arab populations are disproportionately young and unemployed -- Middle East experts point out that the majority of protesters were in fact, both young and unemployed -- there are many more faces in the Arab world than that of the volatile young man.

The pro-democracy protesters have largely been cast in mainstream media coverage in a positive light, as an Internet-savvy, proactive, optimistic bunch. But while a massive public protest will usually include images of thronging crowds waving flags or withstanding police and military attacks, mere buzzwords like "Internet" and "young" cannot offset the image of the faceless crowd. We need comprehensive profiles of the people now entrusted to redefine political life in the Arab world.

Journalists from all over the world have battled tremendous odds to offer insightful coverage from these different countries. Press freedom has come under assault throughout this wave of protest - even the Arab news outlet Al Jazeera's offices in Cairo were attacked in early February, and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi issued a blanket ban on the foreign press. Given these challenges, the extent and volume of professional reportage has been remarkable.

But it is crucial that international journalists remain to cover what happens after the media spectacle, and that the stories of the turbulent masses give way to the stories of individuals.