Researching on Islam and Muslims-related issues in the media have been a never-ending debate and always have been updated time by time. It catches the attention of academics, scholars, preachers, researchers to discuss on the alternative platform in reducing or somewhat controlling what the media should report about particularly on Islam and Muslims issues. The aim of this study is to examine the reportings related to Islam and Muslims issues of the Western newspapers. Interviews were conducted among eight Malaysian media practitioners to identify how they translate the meaning of work as a journalist in Islamic context, and also to find out their best practices in producing a balanced and fair news reporting. The interviews were later transcribed verbatimly, analyzed and deliberated their experiences towards this issue. Results show that they believe as Muslim journalists, they should be true, trusted and not bias in reporting news. Further, they also find out that having good references from experts and doing some research before reporting on any issues are very important especially in reporting news globally. Thus for them, the adaptation of good journalistic practices represent a positive image of Islam and Muslims in order to continue creating a surrounding of Islam and Muslims at present and in the future.

The symbiotic relationship between Islam and media is inevitable. The frequent of media coverage about Islam has been researched by many especially since the remarkable incident of September 11 in 2001. From that moment, Islam has been viewed and labelled as negative by the Western media specifically to the Muslims living in America and those in the Middle East countries. This phenomenon has been contagious to the Muslims in Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia as these two countries are believed to have a connection with recent terrorist groups such as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Therefore, this study was conducted to see the frequent coverage specifically on terrorism issues as reported by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and to explore the news themes that emerged in the news reporting. To realize this study, the researchers applied both quantitative and qualitative analysis to analyse the online news articles found in WSJ from year 2012 until 2013. The qualitative software was used in this study namely QSR Nvivo 11 to help and assist the researchers to store, manage and codify the news and also the quantitative software which is SPSS to calculate the frequencies of the reporting. The findings revealed that WSJ reported news related to terrorism in Malaysia and Indonesia frequently but it seems that Indonesia received higher percentage compared to Malaysia. In terms of news themes, the results found four major themes that are very much related to terrorism issues such as terrorist attacks, suspected as terrorist and robbery from both issues happened in Malaysia and Indonesia.

The present research develops and validates a new scale that measures Internet information credibility from Islamic perspective. The content domain for this measure was developed based on interviews with Islamic scholars, and previous literature on credibility, and empirically tested using a large samples of 1180 Internet users qualified in Islamic studies. Eight dimensions extracted from 85 developed items using exploratory factor analyses and namely: visual appeal, source-writer relationships, authentic source, writer’s moral, web reputation, writer’s integrity, writer’s identity, and writer’s reliance. The measurement model of multidimensional scale was validated using Structural Equation Modeling on AMOS Version 18. Thus, the re-specified model produced the Internet’s Islamic Information Credibility Scale with not only the content validity, but also displays the construct reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity.

Perdebatan dan perbincangan mengenai kandungan media sosial seperti Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp dan sebagainya dalam pengaruhnya menyebarkan kandungan seperti berita, foto dan video yang berkait dengan ekstrem dan keganasan seakan berleluasa. Kepantasan media sosial sebagai platform digital bertindak untuk menyebarluaskan kandungan berkaitan isu keganasan dari dalam dan luar negara perlu dipastikan kesahihannya. Hal ini kerana kandungan di media sosial berupaya untuk membentuk pengaruh, fikiran, dakyah dan ideologi yang tidak benar kepada pengguna terutama dalam kalangan remaja. Oleh itu, kajian ini akan membincangkan secara umum berdasarkan literatur yang lepas untuk melihat sejauh mana perbincangan mengenai isu keganasan di dalam media sosial ini telah didebatkan. Ini kerana, isu penyebaran kandungan berkaitan terrorisme di alam maya ternyata memberi impak ke atas pemikiran dan tindakan untuk meningkatkan kes-kes berkaitan keganasan sama ada secara fizikal ataupun serangan ideologi pemikiran. Selain itu, kajian ini juga telah menemubual enam pakar bidang untuk mendapatkan pengalaman dan pengetahuan mereka mengenai isu penggunaan media sosial sebagai platform penyebaran ideologi terrorisme. Selain itu, penyelidik juga cuba mendapatkan beberapa saranan dan cadangan untuk membendung isu ini terutama dalam kalangan pelajar IPT. Berdasarkan hasil kajian ini, cabaran untuk menangani isu ini sepatutnya dipikul oleh semua pihak yang berkepentingan sama ada dari pihak kerajaan dan pentadbiran, pihak berkuasa, pembuat dasar dan polisi, pihak media dan juga pengguna media sosial itu sendiri. Kesedaran, pendidikan dan pemulihan tentang isu keganasan ini perlu dipergiatkan yang mana akhirnya akan membantu untuk mencapai keamanan, keadilan dan memperkukuhkan institusi yang berkesan, bertanggungjawab dan inklusif di semua peringkat.

Scholars, academicians, authorities, politicians and others have done many researches on terrorism issues and Islam from different perspectives at local and international level. This article would like to present terrorism issues that have been reported by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and The Telegraph (TT) pertaining to the coverage of Islam and stories on Muslims in Southeast Asian Muslim countries primarily in Malaysia and Indonesia from 2012 until 2014. It specifically explores on the frequency of reporting on terrorism issues between the two newspapers. The analysis of this study is based on a content analysis approach. The data were collected based on the preliminary study, which analyzed 445 news paragraphs by using QSR NVivo8. However, only 290 news paragraphs were fit to be analyzed based on the objectives of this study. The findings suggested that 178 news paragraphs from WSJ and 112 news paragraphs from TT reported news on Islam and Muslims under the theme of terrorism. The results displayed that Malaysia received high reporting from The Telegraph newspaper specifically on the issue of terrorism in three consecutive years (2012 to 2014). In contrary, Indonesia received high coverage on terrorism issues from The Wall Street Journal and received very minimal coverage from The Telegraph from 2012 to 2014.