Last week, the Australian government said it will spend 64m Australian dollars on measures to counter violent extremism and radicalisation as the Islamic State (IS) continues to recruit foreign fighters to its ranks in Iraq and Syria. Prime minister Abbott said:

This [Islamic State] is a movement - as we’ve seen on our TV screens and front pages of our newspapers - of utter ferocity, medieval barbarism allied to modern technology - that’s how serious and dangerous this movement is.

Yet, this tabloid hyping of the threat of IS and the lure it has to young Muslims in western nations actually maximises the transgressive appeal of the militants.

The disproportionate attention given to “radicalism” on TV screens and front pages of newspapers feeds into ongoing misrepresentations of Muslims living in western nations. Although the government has assured us the latest measure does “not intend to demonise Muslim Australians”, there is no denying “radicalisation” is treated in the public debate as though it were exclusively bound up with the menace of Islamism. It’s a dangerous game fuelled by the media. The Islamic State plays on this very knowledge as part of its campaign of fear. They have been able to take advantage of the west’s fear of home-grown radicalism and demonisation of Muslims in the media to stoke opposition. It also misses one of the most crucial points about IS: the foundation of its power comes from politics, not religion.

The IS is currently provoking the United States; they want a full-scale invasion as this is how recruitment works best. It is no accident that a spokesperson with a British accent was chosen in the recent execution of journalist James Foley. In the past, IS have developed strategies for creating chaos, exploiting discontent and recruiting from the military defeats in Iraq and opportunities that have arisen out the Syrian civil war. They are claiming their own Sunni order, an Islamic order harking back to the Caliphate days. Although drawing from genuine sectarian grievances with Shia, this is about modern political power and disputes. And unlike other groups listed as terrorist organisations by the government, they want to promote their violence and bloodshed using the news and social media.

The IS has established a sophisticated publicity arm that taps into popular culture. They post on Twitter (the account is currently suspended). They post pictures of fighters with kittens. They upload videos of their actions on YouTube. They invite journalists to follow them through their blood rampages as shown in the six part video series done by VICE. These are savvy, global broadcasts intended to draw a reaction from a global audience. These are messages calculated to give young radicalised Muslims a sense of power and draw from their sense of injustice.

“The best defence against radicalisation is through well-informed and well-equipped families, communities and institutions,” said the prime minister. As a government willing to invest in a $60m package, part of “well informed” is getting rid of the persisting rhetoric in the media and showing the wide majority of Muslims do not support the actions of groups such as Hamas, IS or the Taliban.

Limiting radicalism to a debate around Islamic faith represents this as a fear that somehow excludes Muslims, as though the fear of religious extremism were only a western preoccupation. The majority of Muslims want to live their lives in peace. But their views are not represented in the media – except in minority publications – and when they are offered a platform to speak it is only in the context of debates on radicalism.

In Australia, 2% of the nation identifies as Muslim. Of this, Abbott said, only 60 Australians are fighting in Iraq and Syria with groups like IS, while another hundred are providing support from Australia. Curtin University fellow Anne Aly told The Age there were misconceptions about people who follow Islam and only, “0.01% were “extremists” who took their belief of the religion to a radical scale”. Across 11 Muslim countries surveyed by the Pew Research Center, a median of 67% Muslims say they share the same concerns about Islamic extremism. Clear majorities of Muslims oppose violence in the name of Islam.

Back in 2010, baroness Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, explained that post-2003, young UK Muslims saw the UK’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as a direct attack on being Islamic and ‘radicalising’ increased. “‘Radicalisation’ is a coherent response by (mostly) young Muslim men to the perception that western governments are at war with Islamic countries.”

In the same year, the Australian department on immigration commissioned wide research to understand the concerns and needs of Muslim Australians. Based on in-depth interviews with 72 family members, it found people traced a change in the media’s depiction of Muslims from the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington. ‘’They felt community attitudes had hardened towards them since then directly because of the media,’’ said the co-author of the study.

If we are concerned about preventing home grown radicalism, we should stop creating such a climate of hysteria and drop the divisive, reductionist rhetoric. We need to engage in a more complex public discourse in the media. This requires engaging with the Australian Muslim community – not just the people who put their hands up as leaders, but a range of voices from within the community. It means representing the diversity of experiences and viewpoints - across gender, age, ethnicity and sect - that make up the Muslim communities.