"Both the Islamic community of interpretation and the Western or American community

as formed mainly by the mass media have tragically staked much of their energies on the narrow point of confrontation between them, and in the process have ignored what did not concern this confrontation. Since we have been all too ready to believe this about Muslims opposing "satanic" America, it is worthwhile to pay attention to some of what has actually happened. While it is undoubtedly true that control of "news" and "images" in the West is not in Muslim hands, it is no less true that only an overall Muslim delay in understanding the reasons for Muslim dependence prevents their doing something about it. The oil-rich states, for their part, cannot complain that resources are lacking. What is lacking is some concerted political decision to enter the world in earnest, a lack that proves that far from being a unified force the Muslim states are not yet politically mobilized or coherent. There are many talents that need to be encouraged first, not least among them the capacity to produce and articulate a conscious and forceful self-image. But this means a serious assessment of the positive (not merely the reactive and defensive) values for which Muslims, in many different ways, stand. A great debate on this subject, usually in the form of discussions of turath (that is, specifically Islamic heritage) has been going on in the Muslim world.: [66] now its findings and its issues need to be communicated to the rest of the world. There is no longer much excuse for bewailing the hostility of "the West" towards the Arabs and Islam and then sitting back in outraged righteousness. When the reasons for this hostility and those aspects "of the West" that encourage it are fearlessly analsyzed, an important step has been taken toward changing it, but that is by no means the whole way: something must be put in its place if a new mass of anti-Islamic propaganda is not to result. Certainly there are great dangers todays in actually following, actually fulfilling, the prevailing hostile image of Islam, though that has thus far only been the doing of some Muslims and some Arabs and some black Africans. But such fulfillments underline the importancec of what still has to be done.

-Edward Said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World p. 67