The representation of Islam in the media has been widely discussed by media scholars. In the Malaysian context, Islam is frequently associated with conflicts resulting from political issues or actions taken by religious authorities against any organisation or individual that sparks public debate. The government is also alleged to use Islam as a hegemonic tool to continue dominating the mindset of the lower class by using religion as a political weapon to gain power and maintain the status quo. Newspapers especially those owned by the government have certain ideologies to convey to the general public in order to maintain a specific existing social order. This causes the controversial issues pertaining to Islam to be frequently discussed in the news media in tandem with the vested interest of those owning the newspapers. However, the discourse on issues involving Islam has become more daring after the emergence of digital news portals that enable hegemonic counterarguments to be discussed widely among members in the mentioned medium. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore how Islam and Muslims are represented in online newspapers in Malaysia. Two samples from English-language online newspapers, namely The Star Online and Malaysiakini, were selected. By using quantitative and qualitative content analysis, the findings of this study show that Islam, Islamic political parties, and some Muslims in Malaysia have been represented as extremists and backwards by online newspapers.

Al-Jazeera has given its estimated 35 to 45 million viewers within the Muslim world, daily news feed that stands up to its network slogan "The Opinion and the Other Opinion". The network has been the important source and for the first time, represents not only the voice of Arab region, but also the voice of Islamic world into the international news agenda. Therefore, it is vital to understand the discourse presented in the news to understand its meaning and direction. This study analyzes the news clips of Al-Jazeera English coverage of the war in Gaza which started on December 27, 2008 and ended on January 21, 2009. Analysis of the clips has been done using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which assumes language and social process are deeply implicated with one another Findings identified (5) distinctive discourses from the selected news clips. Among themes are "Israels are attacking Palestinian, not only Hamas", and "The Zionists keeps lying"; which interlinked as it highlighted a continuous suppression towards Palestinian by Israeli. For Al-Jazeera, this can be regarded as counter discourse to the western media reporting on the conflict.