News Limited and the Construction of Howard Government Discourse about Muslims in Australia 2001-2007

The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre can be justifiably viewed as a turning point in relations between the Islamic world and the West, foregrounding a dominant pejorative representation of Muslims and Islam that continues unabated. The aim of this thesis is to explore media representations of Howard Government discourse about Muslims in Australia from 2001 to 2007.The research examined three prominent and highly popularised cases relating to Islam and Muslims, namely comments made in 2006 by the ex-Grand Mufti of Australian Muslims, Sheik Hilali; the arrest and detention in 2007 of Doctor Mohamed Haneef; and the discourse surrounding the traditional female Muslim garment known as the hijab.This thesis examines the language used by the government and by News Limited print media when referring to Muslims and Islam from 2001 to 2007, to ascertain whether there was a marked increase in the use of terms that could be classified as being negative or perpetuating stereotypes. I used a combined qualitative/quantitative methodology to examine both the collated newspaper articles and political documents.