The various and multifaceted wars in the Middle East have brought about weird complications in the already challenging multifarious international relations and interactions. The media coverage of terroristic threats in the Middle East and the European countries as well as United States has often targeted ...
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The various and multifaceted wars in the Middle East have brought about weird complications in the already challenging multifarious international relations and interactions. The media coverage of terroristic threats in the Middle East and the European countries as well as United States has often targeted Muslim identity. The present study is aimed at analyzing Barack Obama's speech at Baltimore Islamic center which was meant to transform such constructed worldviews about the Muslims by making an attempt to redefine the Muslim identity according to special key identity-bearing terms such as peace and Americanism. Using van Leeuwen's (2007) framework, this study attempts to discuss identity construction as a further analytical lens to van Leeuwen's approach. According to Foucault's (2009) notion of biopower and Greenblatt's (1980) idea of improvisation, it was concluded that Obama struggles to redefine Muslim identity in order to gain control of the society and manage the social subjects in a politically preferred way.