The Visual Divide Between Islam and the West: Image Perception Within Cross-cultural Contexts

This book aims at addressing the question of how do Muslims view the way they are being viewed, not viewed, or incorrectly viewed by the West? The book inquires about a possible "will-to-visibility" that drives and divides the representation of Muslims in Western media from the desire of the Muslim/Arab to be "seen" and to register as a human life. Hatem N. Akil attributes this failure to a "delirious crisis of the Real" resulting in a state of desperation that inextricably and symmetrically ties visibility to violence. [This book] critically engages with questions about "ways of seeing" within cross-cultural contexts: why and how is an image seen in two opposing ways by people from different cultural backgrounds; and why and how do certain cartoons, photographs, and videos become both the cause and target of bloody political violence -- as witnessed by the deadly attacks against Charlie Hebdo in France and in the swift military response by the US and Jordan to videotaped violence by ISIS. -- Back cover.