10 April 2010; 11am – 5pm; Imperial College London.

The image of Islam in the popular media is just as pertinent a topic now as it was after 11 September 2001. Almost a decade on, and with the tragic conflation of Islam and terrorism still rife, a conference on the media entitled “Muslims are in the Media… what next?” was organised by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) on 10 April 2010.

Chair Qasim Rafiq, who is also FOSIS spokesman, set the tone by mentioning the challenges faced by FOSIS in dealing with media enquiries after the Christmas Day (2009) attempted aeroplane bombing by Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Several speakers, group workshops and project presentations lined the schedule in what proved to be an intellectually stimulating event throughout.

Dr Noureddine Miladi gave a short academic lecture on the manipulative aspects of media over British society. He recalled that while giving training workshops to recently graduated Police officers in Northampton, England, he would regularly ask the young Police officers how many Muslims they thought resided in Britain. The lowest answer he ever received was six million. The true number is of course closer to two million out of the total British population of approximately 62 million, but this anecdote highlights the media’s power to generate fear and perceptions of “Islamification.”

President of FOSIS, Dr Faisal Hanjra, insightfully spoke about how terminology, which is often carelessly thrown around in news stories and opinion columns often makes discussing the subject difficult. He also mentioned his belief that Muslim university students should inherently be “radical”, not in the commonly understood lexicon of the 7/7 terrorists, but in the student activism movements of the 1970s and 1980s which many of our current politicians like Jack Straw were involved in. Muslim students are also perfectly placed to re-inject activism back into the British student body at large.

After lunch and prayers, one innovative session saw two speakers on the podium feature in a two-way conversation; as if they were sitting together in a cafe having coffee and chatting (in fact hot beverages were brought for them from the refreshment table outside!). However the topic of discussion was not last night’s Champions League football match, but how ideas propagate and stick with readers or viewers, and the metaphor of an “echo” between media outlets to describe how a campaign spreads its message.

The two-way conversation between the speakers was a fantastic supplement to the conference schedule, and proved much more effective than another straight speech directed towards the audience. One short coming of the conference was perhaps the lack of a structured networking session. It is not every day that an event takes place with attendees from all parts of the country, and not just the local city.

Another improvement would be to invite Muslim journalist who work in the mainstream British news organisations like the BBC or The Guardian to speak, in addition to people in specifically Islamic media outlets.

Image credit: Event poster by FOSIS