Summary Of Anti-Muslim Stereotypes

In an article entitled “Ahmed Mohammad, handcuffed for making clock, Is Suing,” Daniel Victor investigates how muslim people are often discriminated and called bombers and terrorists. First, Victor discusses the facts of the case and how Ahmed was arrested. The reading also describes the fact that people often think that the words muslim and terrorist coincide, a form of discrimination. In addition, Victor tells us that Ahmed’s school suspended him, and he was getting countless death threats. Moreover, Victor states that the Mohammad family is suing Ahmed’s high school for falsely getting him arrested. Finally, Victor concludes that Ahmed along with his family moved to Qatar to turn over a new leaf and start a new life free of hatred and discrimination.

Today’s western media point of interest on debating the global issues that lead the world believing that Arab men or as they are referred to nowadays as “terrorists” are the reasons behind all the global conflicts. Moreover, after 9/11 these stereotypes became popular and it was not the only cause that Arabs men had a reflected stereotypical image, in fact Arab men were treated badly even before that incident. Recently, many worldwide attacks like the one in Paris lead the world to have an extremely bad image towards Arab men, making them look like they started the whole fact of bombing lots of countries around the world, this image affects many views and creating conflicts towards Arab men when interfering with each other. The real transmitters behind the corrupt image are the bias western media which only reveal negative views towards Arab men.

“All Muslims are now suspects” expressed Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman of the Council of American-Islamic Relations. After 9/11 ethnic profiling was directed heavily toward people of Muslim or Arabic descent. Discrimination toward Muslims occurs in many settings and is often degrading and evil. The irrational fear and public mindset swing around the country was a huge consequence of 9/11. Politics, communities, and culture has shifted to where citizens do a double take on those who are Muslims because of the flashback they get when they remember where they were on 9/11. For some, just the sight of a Muslim in our country sends a shockwave though their mind. On September 11, 2001, the United States froze in fear as terrorist attacks

Concerning the issue of prejudice against Arab Americans, few researches have been done. It is surprising seeing as little attention has been paid to this ethno-religious group whose population rate has tremendously increased after 9/11. However, one study by Park, Felix, and Lee (2007) do give us an idea of how prejudice is expressed, implicitly or explicitly, against Muslim people. In their study, they found that discrimination against Arab Muslims is never shown in an explicit way but rather in a subtle way. They used an Implicit Association

Macionis defines ethnocentrism as “The practice of judging another culture by the standards of one’s own culture”. An example of this is the way some Americans criticize traditional Middle Eastern veils as being oppressive to the women who wear them. In American culture, clothing is valued as a way to express yourself and wearing revealing clothing is generally accepted as a way to show off sex appeal. When Americans see a woman walking down the street wearing a burka, hijab, or niqab they might assume that it is because they are being oppressed or are ashamed of their body. In actuality, many women choose to wear a veil as a way to demonstrate modesty, a trait highly valued in Middle Eastern culture. This misunderstanding demonstrates how people with an ethnocentric outlook judge the cultures of others by what is considered normal in their own culture.

Culture permeates every part of life. As Americans, maybe this is harder to see. Yet, everything from the way we talk to what we choose to wear is the result of culture. This makes it vital to understand that many things have a cultural significance. Abu-Lughod expresses her dismay over the “obsession with the plight of Muslim women” being focused on the burqa (209). Many people have adopted the burqa as the symbol of the oppression of Muslim women. Yet, the burqa is simply a form of covering originally specific to the Pashtun people. Each form of covering is part of the Islamic religion. Each holds significance for the community that wears it. The purpose of women wearing a veil of any kind is to “assure their protection in the public sphere from the harassment of

American Muslims are having their civil rights violated more and more and are constantly being discriminated against. Haddad says that “Post 9/11 American Muslims were linked to enemy others and were expected to prove their loyalty to the nation-state in ways other Americans were not expected to do. The trope of Muslims as enemies within lingers.” The national media still portrays American Muslims as enemies to the United States. These unquestioned beliefs about Muslims leads to Islamophobia and Said says “To most Americans, Islam is nothing but trouble. The use of the label Islam, to either explain or indiscriminately condemn Islam, becomes a form of attack.” Said goes on to say that “Islam is used to define a small portion of extremism instead of the billion Muslims

These are some examples where some leaders have made discriminatory statements against Muslims and it doesn’t aim at Muslims only of certain region but, it points to Muslims all over the world. Leaders are chosen by the people to represent the people, but not to create hatred and fear amongst the people for political or any other reasons. Such statements made by great leaders have a great impact on the beliefs of people, as we believe in our leaders and therefore even theirs words are taken into consideration sometimes without a rational thinking. This doesn’t affect just the mindset of people but it terribly shapes the attitudes, behaviours, philosophy and even their idea of a religion. This affects the lives of Muslims all over the world; they are not just labelled as terrorist but even treated as one. Innocent Muslims are viewed with suspicion because of misinformation and prevalent stereotyping.

The United States has a long withstanding legacy of the racialization of ethnic communities as part of the non-white “Other”. As seen through the downward mobility of Arab, Muslim, and Middle-Eastern Americans- who had originally been granted access to the privileges of whiteness- after being identified collectively as a threat to the expansion and success of the US empire, Arab, Muslim, and Middle-Eastern Americans began to be racialized as part of the non-white “Other” even before 9/11. Media representations of Arab, Muslim, and Middle Eastern communities outside the borders of the United States served to construct the “terrorist” identity, which resulted in the collective racialization of Arab, Muslim, and Middle Easterners as terrorists. Through the conflation of the racialization of the Arab, Muslim, and Middle-Eastern identity with the notions of terrorism and risk, the aftermath of 9/11 led to an emergence of racially motivated government policies and practices, such as anti-immigration measures and FBI raids on Muslim community centers, as well as an increase in the level of hate-based crimes against Muslim, Arab, and Middle Eastern Americans that contributed to an internalized sense of fear and insecurity for these individuals in American society. Furthermore, this sense of internal internment within the Muslim, Arab, and Middle Eastern community, coupled with the reality of discrimination and federal exclusion, demonstrates how the racialization of Arab and

In today's society, those incidents have become normalized behavior towards many Arab Americans. People with Arabic sounding names often report experiencing some job discrimination and many anti-Arab comments (Cainkar, 2006). Additionally, some who look "Arab or Middle Eastern” have been physically attacked (Cainkar, 2006). In a report by Jadallah and El-Khoury, they noted most of their correspondents complained of racial profiling by the federal government and demonization in the media (Jadallah, 2010). Many of these prejudicial and racial actions appeared after the September 11th attacks and had become internalized in how American society views Arab Americans and

As Americans go through a post-traumatic process after the September tragedies, most people are trying to analyze the entire situation to find out who is wrong and who is right. While media, politicians, and military leaders endlessly speak about the Taliban, Bin-Laden, Arabs, and Islam, we are making our conclusions based on what we hear. What an average American might assume by watching television and reading newspapers is that Islamic fundamentalism is some kind of mental illness and every Arabic-looking man is a threat to society. Unintentionally, we are about to make the same mistake by discriminating against people as we did with the Germans during World War II

Stereotypes is a fixed, over generalized belief about a particular group or class of people (Cardwell, 1966). Stereotypes are used to making interactions with new people easier. However, it also means people forget differences of individuals and assumes based on generalization. Stereotypes eventually leads to social categorization which creates prejudice towards groups. Racial stereotypes such as described in “Look, Mohammed the Terrorist is Coming!” by Nadine Naber, they describe the stereotypical “Mohammed”, an Arab or Middle Eastern Muslim man with a beard and brown or dark complexion that usually fits the profile of a terrorist. It’s not only Muslims who becomes victims of this stereotype, majority of Middle Easterners, including Christians, Muslims, and even atheists, and majority South Asians, including Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs.

The mass media selectively promotes racial profiling. The assumptions driving terrorism profiling are not any different than “street-level” profiling—in that, a particular crime (in this case, terrorism) is most expected to be committed by members of a particular religious, ethnic, or racial group and that the members of that group (in this case, Muslims) are, in general, likely to be implicated in that manner of criminal activity…These assumptions are highly defective. The assumption that terrorist acts are inevitably perpetrated by Arabs or that the architect, of a terrorist act, is likely to be Islamic is a faulty assumption. While all the men, believed to have been, involved in the September 11th hijackings were of Arabic nationality, Richard Reid, who on December 22, 2001, attempted to ignite a volatile device on a trans-Atlantic flight, was a British citizen of Jamaican ancestry. This furthermore coincides with my line of reasoning that extremists exist throughout all cultures. In fact, prior to September 11th the deadliest act of terrorism on United States soil was initiated by [Oklahoma City bomber] Timothy McVeigh. Even non-Arabs like John Walker Lindh, a Californian, can be linked to the Taliban, al-Qaeda and

The world is filled with different races, cultures, religions and beliefs; everyone has a different opinion and perspectives on life. Unfortunately not everyone respects other peoples personal opinions, this had led to discrimination, stereotyping, hatred and even war. After many incidents that affected the world; Arabs started being discriminated by many people. People were stereotyping the Arabs and they had the wrong image about them.

When Islam was first born, it represented a challenge for the Christian Europe at that time and people found it difficult to accept values and norms as well as traditions that were different than their own, although, the presence of different ways of thought and intellectual challenge gave opportunity for trade and knowledge in important fields such as medicine. But, the idea of Islam remained problematic and somehow it was associated with historical stereotypes that narrow-minded Europeans had because of the few Muslims who identified themselves during certain attacks. These stereotypes or long-living traditions if one can say tarnished the image of fifteen million European citizens who were habitants and lawful citizens of different European