It’s hard to overstate the role the image – and content more generally – has played in the genocide on Gaza. Both in how much it has been culturally impactful, and consequently and adversely how much it has exposed a sinister complicity and inertia in global politics.
There are undoubtedly questions that have been raised by the role content plays in disaster zones. Gaza exemplifies this, particularly due to the unrelenting and sadistic nature of the onslaught by Israel, and therefore the sheer scale and nature of image and video footage that is emerging from the deadliest conflict of this century. None of us imagined we would play witness to such merciless violence in our lifetime, and therefore the ethical and cultural considerations, concerning the proliferation of such horrific content takes a backseat to the actual act of genocide at hand.
The normative role of the image in conflict and disaster zones is mired in its own controversies. The Pulitzer prize is littered with traumatic images that have come to define key points in global, political and military history. Strange, almost self-indulgent, fable-like titles such as “The Terror of War”, from 1972 Hiroshima and “The Vulture and the Little Girl” from the 90s famine in South Sudan, as well as Fikret Alić’s emaciated image, in a concentration camp in Omarska during the Bosnian genocide were catalysts for relative change and collective action during the time of their publication. The existence of the Pulitzer and its role in rewarding passive audience is itself questionable, as is the very act of finding celebration in these moments which are so embroiled in human suffering and misery. The historical role of photojournalism has arguably been self-congratulatory and verging on perverse. They are a testament to the role of the image, and spectacle, and how much it defines popular sentiment and feeling. For this reason, and more, cultural commentators point to how 9/11 was such a defining moment for its victory on the level of the image and spectacle itself – how its symbolism alone was its success. Particularly given how it was situated in the ideological battle framed between Islam and the west. In a world reduced to surfaces, the image is imbued with more cultural significance than it should.
Indeed, the visual depiction of the Muslim in Western art and culture has its own historical quirks. Dictated by the fetishism of orientalism, artistic representations of Muslim men, women and Islamic culture have themselves been a reflection of western intrigue and confoundment of the other. And while technology and cultural narratives have themselves sophisticated, the underlying anthropological sentiment has crystalised in much of the photography and imagery that has come to define how Muslims are presented to visual audiences in Western art. We see this in contemporary art form, which use the tired trope of objectification as a tool to de-objectify in art and photography concerning Muslim women. This obsession bleeds into internet culture, and the hackneyed trend of ‘then’ and ‘now’-ing Muslim countries using images of women from pre-Islamic iterations of modern day Muslim states. Used as a tool by far right commentators, it has become a visual shorthand for the supposedly regressive nature of Islam, and has the kind of immediate impact that delights politically immature thinkers who conflate modernity with western ideals.
The idea of Muslim as less-than in visual narratives has meant a double standard in visual reporting of human catastrophe. While many western media outlets consciously chose to refrain from broadcasting video and imagery of Ukrainian refugees in a commendable attempt to maintain their dignity, this has never been the case for Muslims, for whom the camera lens perceives from a clinical distance and a detached sentiment. The threshold for Muslim suffering is much higher due to ongoing dehumanisation which will always frame Muslim pain as something to survey and behold. What exemplifies this, is the callous and morally bankrupt cartoon which satirises the starvation of Gazans in a French leftist newspaper. A newspaper that would object to Muslims on the basis of a perceived ethical inferiority unironically exposes its own moral vacuum.
This unfortunate visual standard which normalises Muslim suffering has been adopted by Muslim communities themselves -as is evident in the visual narrative constructed by Muslim aid agencies in fundraising campaigns, and which trickles down to the everyday Muslim who unquestioningly shares images of Muslims in disaster zones, and in other vulnerable positions such as receiving food parcels and other necessities denied to them through circumstance. This trend is in direct contradiction to religious edicts which clearly state charity is an act of mercy and compassion from God for the donor, more so than the recipient. The hierarchy is inverted in Muslim theology, and having the opportunity to distribute our wealth to those momentarily in less fortunate circumstances is considered a blessing for those in the position to do so. Yet we are so used to our own suffering being turned into a kind of performance in the act of charity and the story of saviour-hood, we have willingly perpetuated a galling optical code. Perhaps this explains the inaction from Muslim governments themselves – we have become desensitised to Muslim suffering on an intracommunity level too.
If the retaining of humanity for those racialised as white is to censor images of suffering and displacement, then what does it mean that we must share the most unspeakable images of Gazans to prove their own humanity? Why do we applaud journalists for their inaction in spectating on disaster, yet ignore the bravery of the citizen journalism unfolding in Gaza today, against the most horrific conditions. What does that mean about the standards of humanity we set for Muslims, where we place agency, and how much we value Muslim blood?
The fact remains we are trained, on an instinctual, visual level, to normalise Muslim death and suffering as an inevitable part of our backdrop. And that Muslim acts of bravery are secondary to western spectatorship and inaction. What underpins the disjointed truth that we must show dismemberment, death, destruction and abject destitution at such proximity in an apparently futile attempt to provoke action? By sharing earth-shattering footage of rigor mortised children’s bodies, in fearful embrace, being buried out of the rubble – a testament to the sheer horror of being buried alive – what are we implicitly condoning? And is it the fact that the accumulation of several hundreds of heightened images of Muslim death, pain and torture might at some point be enough for global pity and action? That the death and torture of Muslims is both common place and expected? How many more images, such as those of lifeless and emaciated children, before the world decides we have atoned for our apparent collective sin of October 7th, before we are finally cleansed of the demon that is projected onto our being. How many Muslim lives, and what scale of suffering, is sufficient for the visual appetite in this perverse theatre of war?
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