The Industry of the Mental Image by the Mass Media: The Image of the Prophet Muhammad Peace Be upon Him in the American Media

Abstract

The image of Islam and Muslims have been subject to alot of distortion and falsification and abuse through variousstages of history and there is no religion which underwentdistortion at the heart of faith and its religious symbols such aswitnessed in Islam in its many symbols and various rites at thehands of Western countries, whether by a religious, politicalinstitutions or media. For the purpose of comprehending themanner of how to make a distorted and offensive mentalpicture of Islam and Muslims in the U.S. media, this paperhave been written with a systematic and theoreticalframework to, firstly present the research methodology andsecondly to present the concepts of mental image andstereotypes and the difference between them as well as themethods of media in the formation of a mental image andelements and components of the image of Islam and Muslimsand the image of Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be uponhim ) and the analytical framework that extracts the mostimportant ideas of the offending symbols of Islam byanalyzing the content of the film ( The Innocence of Muslims), which produced the show in the U.S. to coincide with theevents of 11th of September , 2012 leaves the researcher tpose the opportunity to jealous sons of Arabism and Islam torespond to every distorting idea in depicting the symbols ofthe Islamic and according to the Quran and Sunnah .