In light of this view, how can the media portray the different cultural and religious groups without falling into generalizations?
Shukrallah:I have a very serious problem with how the media portrays the cultural and religious groups. But first we have to know that redefining the world in terms of religious and cultural identities has its roots that goes back to the 90s of the 20th century, and even to the 80s, although there was a revival of these phenomena since the 70s of the same century. Q: Do you mean since the Iranian Revolution in 1979? Shukrallah:Actually it [redefining the world in terms of cultural and religious identities] began as early as the early70s on conceptual level, but of course after the collapse of the Soviet Union (the end of the Cold War), it became the fashion. In 1991, Bernard Lewis wrote his famous article that describes the Muslim civilization as the rival of the Western civilization, and after that he was copied by Huntington with the “Clash of Civilizations” and the media jumped on as if it’s an answer to a prayer. Before we discuss the media, I do not think that you can define human
