The Iranian Revolution moved political Islam to the top of global media agendas

Evidence

These televised images were the first time that the ‘conceptual’ threat of a newly resurgent Islam had been brought into the very epicentre of the West. not only did it bring this conceptual threat – one that evoked and reinvigorated many of the historical meanings and understandings about Islam and Muslims that many believed had been subjugated under colonial rule – but it did so through the medium of television: a medium that existed inside the previously safe confines of Western homes. Despite the physical distance that existed between Iran and the West, the dissemination of images into the very heart of Western living seemed to conceptually eradicate that same distance and the safety this afforded simultaneously. … Through Khomeini and his association with what was increasingly being reported as the most extreme and untenable form of Islam, so a new discourse relating to ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ or just ‘fundamentalism’ was conceived and born: a discourse entirely derivative of a media driven agenda that was conceptually closer, more urgent, more damning and far more real than anything that had proceeded it in terms of the threat posed by Islam and Muslims. — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 219 (#expands, via linked claim)

It was again being reiterated that a resurgent Islam was being spread by the sword, a spread that was also undeniably threatening. Islam was also being represented as a religion that was irrational, backward, static, dogmatic, regressive and manipulative. Such justifications were also posited by various commentators as being significant in being the root causes of why – and even how – the situation in Iran had developed in the way that it had, both of which were reductive and dismissive of any actual or real factors. It was though the identification and association of Islam with violence and militancy that had the greatest impact. — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 221 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Islam organizations were US allies before the 1979 Iranian Revolution — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 389; Iran’s 1979 revolution shifted the frame from Arabs to Islamism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 455; Political Islam was not uniformly seen as an enemy before the Iranian Revolution (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Televised coverage of the Iranian revolution created the modern discourse of Islamic fundamentalism #expands (0.92) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 219
• Media reattributed the Iranian situation to timeless Muslim traits rather than real causes #complicates (0.74) — Chris Allen, Islamophobia, 221