Islam emerged as a media category only after the 1974 OPEC oil crisis

Evidence

It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that before the sudden OPEC price rises in early 1974, “Islam” as such scarcely figured either in the culture or in the media. One saw and heard of Arabs and Iranians, of Pakistanis and Turks, rarely of Muslims. But the dramatically higher cost of imported oil soon became associated in the public mind with a cluster of unpleasant things: American dependence on imported oil (which was usually referred to as “being at the mercy of foreign oil producers”); the apprehension that intransigence was being communicated from the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions to individual Americans; above all a signal — as if from a new, hitherto unidentified force — saying that energy was no longer “ours” for the taking. Words like “monopoly,” “cartel,” and “block” thereafter achieved a remarkably sudden if selective currency, although very rarely did anyone speak of the small group of American multinationals as a cartel, a designation reserved for the OPEC members. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 161

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: how the word ‘cartel’ was applied selectively to OPEC but never to the American multinationals that actually behaved as one.

Related

• Islam entered American awareness mainly through oil and terrorism news (similarity 0.79)