Othering In Australia

blight on society rather than a useful addition. Abdul presents controversial ideas and themes such as the discrimination that Muslims face in everyday life, the ‘expectation’ all Muslims are extremist, and that they are seen by some as ‘less than

Negative portrayals of Muslims in the mainstream media have led to widespread islamophobia in society. The way the media have illustrated Islam and Muslims in the media has influenced citizens to be misinformed about the true nature of both Muslims and Islam. As a result of the negative representations of Muslims in the media, societies views of Muslims have been adversely rendered and caused an unnecessary fear of Muslims in society. Exacerbation of islamophobia in the media has also led to a number of hate crimes towards Muslims (McQueeney, 2014). Instead of focusing on real news, medias often narrate stories

Within a society that is places a great deal of importance on the pursuit for truth, there must be discourse on the controversial Maclean’s articles regarding the prominence of Islam in the West – rather than leaving it as a one-sided argument. It is very easy for those opposing Islam, or for argument sake, anything that contrasts the Western majority’s views or background, to disguise their hate speech under the guise of free speech, and one can see that is the case for Mark Steyn’s arguments. Not only is Mr. Steyn using selective quotations and certain ‘facts’ as a means of defending his position on the suggested Islamic takeover of the West, but he is also contributing to rhetoric that can be taken by readers that already have a biased and negative outlook on Islam as a vehicle to further their distaste in the religious practice. Painting a religion of over a billion followers with the same brush is not only extremely detrimental to society, but to only showcase Mark Steyn’s opinions as well as the many articles that posit an unfavourable view of Islam which were highlighted in Maclean’s is harmful for a society such as Canada and in no way contributes to achieving truth. In order to grow and develop as a democratic society, the values of the majority should not overpower those of the minority and the government should have intervened on the basis that the rhetoric could be interpreted in a manner that can lead to the hate of a group by those who already hold a negative

Finally, 9/11 developed a lot of discrimination towards Muslims. Selby expressed in her research that negative stereotyping of Muslims or “Islamophobia” in Canada from media arguably became increasingly after 9/11. Not just that, fourteen focus groups across the country revealed a sense of horror at the terrorist attacks as well as distress about unfair negative stereotyping of Muslims and difficulties in travel (Sebly, 2015). The research tells us how the media instructed Canadians to portray Muslims as terrorists and be cautious around them. As a matter of fact, Canadians started to hate Muslims and tried to eliminate them from places as much as possible. Accordingly, most of the women who wore ‘hijab’ got negative comments from public and

There is an ‘us and them’ mentality in terms of Australian relations with Muslims living in Australia. There seems to be several reasons for this. The Australian society doesn’t seem to cater nor care for the traditions and religion of Muslim people living in Australia, there is a high volume of discrimination and racism targeting Muslims. Western Sydney and Charles Sturt university recently conducting a survey regarding the issue of the marginalisation of Muslim

The media holds great power when it comes to influencing the attitudes of the nation as it is the primary source if information for many Australians. The many forms of media, such as radio, television, and newspapers can also represent Australian values and the state of our society at the present time.

September 11th holds many hard and upset feelings around the world today. The harsh actions of Muslim extremists unfortunately completely changed the way Muslims are treated, especially in the United States. These events, exacerbated islamophobia. Unfortunately, “the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, connect Muslims and Islam to terrorism within the geographical borders of the United States.” (Byng) Although it has been over a decade since the attack, many still feel racist and discriminatory attitudes towards Muslims. Muslims are the targeted minority in the United States, “the 9/11 terrorist attacks shifted the social and political context for Muslims in the United States. Terrorism within the geographical borders of the United States carried out by Muslims places an identity at the center of national and global politics.” (Byng) The blame of the horrible terrorist attacks, rather than be placed on terrorists or religious extremist, has been placed on Islam in America. After September 11th, hate crimes towards Muslims skyrocketed, “the most dramatic change noted by the report was a more than 1,600 percent increase in reported hate crimes against Muslims -- a jump from 28 hate incidents in 2000 to 481 last year.”

In Europe, Islamophobia emerged together with new anti-Semitism, where the targets are the new immigrants, Muslims, as well as Jews. The reason for that is in France and United Kingdom, Muslims and Jews for the past decade inhabit the poorest neighborhoods. Media, on the other hand, portrays this as an incapability of Muslim immigrants to integrate into European society and susceptibility to the imported Islamist ideologies (Silverstein, 367).

The Orlando nightclub shooting in June 2016, showed different news media sources with similar representation of the shooter, Omar Mateen. In the content analysis, it highlighted that within Australian print media, most articles used the terms terrorist and radicalised to describe Omar. It also found that the media was more likely to use the term Muslim interchangeably with terrorist or Islamic extremist. The findings of this content analysis further emphasized that the term terrorist was used to encourage the audience to perceive Omar as an outsider. Moreover, by using the term Muslim interchangeably with Islamic terrorist, the media associated the two as being the same. To understand how

A decade-long national study conducted by the University of Western Sydney found that nearly half of Australians describe themselves as having anti-Muslim attitudes (Veiszadeh 2015). Islamophobia and alike attitudes can have deeply hurtful effects and create considerable fear within religious communities. It also may serve to erect barriers between different religious communities in Australia.

Ever since September 11, 2001 Americans along with the majority of the world’s population have been skeptical of Muslims. It’s a sad reality but it’s hard for people to think of a Muslim without linking them directly to terrorism. But these assumptions aren’t totally out of the blue—the Muslim’s religion, Islam, teaches a low tolerance for other religions and the Islamic government has no separation of church and state, so it’s only normal to assume that their government shall have a low tolerance as well—some however, immediately translate this into terrorism. Through the Islamic government and religion, relations with foreign countries, and separation amongst themselves it can be concluded that Islamic Fundamentalism is clearly a threat

"The US media has been clubbing together terrorism and Islam, influencing the American public to think that all Arab Muslims are "crazy and violent terrorists"… The American media has been a primary agent responsible for creating racist stereotypes, images and

The connection between Islam and terrorism was not intensified until the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center that pushed the Islamic faith into the national and international spotlight (Smith, 2013). As Smith (2013) articulated, “Many Americans who had never given Islam a second thought before 9/11 now had to figure out how to make sense of these events and relate to the faith tradition that ostensibly inspired them” (p. 1). One way in which people made sense of these events was through the media channels that influenced their overall opinions by shaping a framework of censored ideas (Yusof, Hassan, Hassan & Osman, 2013). In a survey conducted by Pew Forum (2012), 32% of people reported that their opinions of Muslims were greatly influenced by the media’s portrayal of Islam that depicted violent pictorials and fundamentalist Muslims. Such constant negative depiction is likely to lead to the inevitable—prejudice and hate crime. For instance, in 2002 alone there were approximately 481 hate crimes that were carried out against Muslims (Smith, 2013). Ever since the 9/11 attacks Muslim people have been the target of “suspicion, harassment and discrimination” (Talal, n.d., p. 9).

This survey reveals that the problem with the Islam faith is not racial: The Muslim people are welcomed, the Islam faith is not. The violence that has been perpetrated against America, whether executed or planned, has brought to fruition religious persecution not seen since the persecution of the Jews in W.W.II. This “trust no Arab” attitude has brought shame to the Constitutional intentions of freedom of religion intended by our forefathers, and has set religious tolerance back 200 years. Looking at media representation of Muslim Americans prior to 9-11, it shows religious diversity in America, depicting Muslim America as just another religious community seeking to advance and protect their interests, not unlike other Americans. After 9-11 the media portrayed representations of threat and fear, creating boundaries between Muslims and other Americans. Such depiction transforms the identity of Muslims and American religious pluralism (Byng, M. pg. 3).

To further this argument, research conducted by Dr Kevin Dunn (Christopher & Deresky 2008) exemplified how ‘marginalised’ the minority of Australian Muslims and people of Middle Eastern origin are in the Australian society. Australians are thought to be of the opinion that people with these cultural and religious backgrounds are the least likely to be able to fit into the culture of Australians (Christopher & Deresky, 2008).