9/11 Media Analysis

September 11, 2001 (herein referred to as 9/11) was a day in American history, which will be remembered as the most horrific attack on American soil. This attack, carried out by nineteen Islamic extremists, was associated with al-Qaeda, and involved the hijacking of four airplanes. Two of those airplanes were hijacked and flown directly into the World Trade Center in New York City, New York. The third plane’s target was the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and the fourth plane was brought down in Pennsylvania where it is believed the passengers aboard fought the hijackers. This horrific day in history cost over 3,000 people their lives, and was labeled the worst attack on American soil since the attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II.

September 11, 2001 is a date in history that changed the lives of people from all over the world and especially the lives of Americans. On this day nineteen militant men associated with al-Qaeda, an Islamic extremist group, hijacked four airplanes and carried out multiple suicide attacks on different locations in the United States. Two of the planes directly struck the World Trade Center located in New York City, one of the other two planes hit the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and the final plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania before it could reach its final destination. On this day, more than 3,000 people were killed including over 400 first responding police officers and firefighters. In recent years as people look back on that day it is remembered as a time when the country was joined together by grief and showed an overwhelming amount of comfort and support to the victims and their families; it was also a time of extreme national pride. People also remember that following the attacks the economy suffered tremendously, in addition, air traffic which makes up a portion of the economy was greatly disrupted, both of which created uncertainty about the security of the financial markets critical to the success of the United States. What most people do not remember is the immediate backlash and hostility the Muslim and Arab communities received following the attacks by both civilians and the media. This is a topic that has been largely ignored by the public and media’s

On September 9, 2015, America looked back in time to September 9, 2001. 9-11 was the day that changed America forever. Two high jacked commercial airplanes crashed into the Twin TOWERS OF THE World Trade Center in New York City. Over 3,000 people were killed with many others injured and hundreds of first responders killed. Another airplane crashed into the Pentagon while in Pennsylvania a fourth airplane was brought down by brave passengers that refused to let the hijackers slam into Washington, D.C. The citizens of the United States were scared, confused, and angry all at the same time. This was the first attack by foreigners on American soil but not the first time that Americans were afraid of events that started in Europe and Eastern Europe but was brought to America, The American citizens did not take kindly to “foreigners” tell us what to do or how to live. They certainly did not want to change the American way of life.

Immediately affter 9/11, Muslim Americans were victims to more frequent hate crimes and bias incidents. According to the FBI (2002), hate crimes against Muslims rose 1,600 percent between the years of 2000 and 2001; going from 12 hate incidents in 2000 to 93 in 2001. A study conducted immediately after 9/11 showed that 40 percent of Americans felt that the attacks represented the “true teachings of Islam” and that between 2002 and 2003 the number of Americans that thought Islam promotes violence against non-Muslims rose by 14 percent (Panagopoulos, 2006). When Muslims themselves were surveyed, their feelings mirrored the findings in post 9/11 studies: 91 percent of Muslims surveyed believed that discrimination against Muslims in the United

September 11, 2001 live on in America’s history because of the depth of the tragedy and many victims. Nineteen militant individuals associated with the radical extremist group of Al-Qaeda, radicals of the Islamic faith, hijacked four American airlines. Two planes separately entered the buildings of the Twin Towers located in New York City; the third plane collided into the Pentagon located outside of Washington, D.C: while the fourth landed in an open field in Pennsylvania. In total over 3,000 innocent Americans became victims of the radicals, slaying over 400 civil servant workers (CNN, 2013). September 11, 2001, (9-11) is the landmark that sparked radical terrorism, hate crimes for followers of the Muslin faith and how the media views terrorism.

America’s viewpoint on the Muslim group of people was significantly prejudiced by post 9/11. The entire Muslim community was vision negatively as of the events that was taken by Al Qaeda an international terrorist group formed by Osama Bin Laden. Soon, subsequent to the bombing of the twin towers, primary awareness of Muslims habitually originated from labels relating to the Middle East as a whole. According to “Affective Politics after 9/11” Todd Hall proposed that 9/11 was a sensitively prominent event that created an emotional shock wave. He believed the original place of influence were the countless effective reaction of people in the United States who has watched the series of terrorist attacks unfold and causes Americans to view Muslims

The abrupt public focus on Muslims has changed the significance of being a Muslim American for many people. There were some who wanted to hide their Muslim identity or distance themselves as a result of all the negative attention they were receiving. Muslim Americans were affected by a societal backlash in 9/11, mainly by the war on terror. The suspicion of Muslim terrorist intensified after 9/11 that shifted racial identity amongst citizens, rather than it being a person who follows the religion (religious category) it became a racial identity. However, on the other hand in her research, Ewing has found that, "In some cases, the backlash has also led to an affirmation or strengthening of Muslim identification” (p. 19). Not all post 9/11 community attitudes toward Muslims are negative, in some cases as such it strengthen one’s identity. The importance is how these experiences feed into the process of how one felt before and after the tragic event and how the way Muslim communities and identities have

On the morning of the 11th of September shock waves through every TV screen were deeply embedded in American households which translated into anger and vengeance. It changed our foreign policies, landed us into wars that have created enormous turmoil and instability in the Middle Eastern region. Coming back home, a lot has changed since the horrendous day may that be Defense budgets, the way we travel, the price we pay for travel and the rise in Islamophobia. Many Muslims have been victims of Islamophobic comments and actions carried out by misguided and fearful nationalists, I personally believe many of these issues could be avoided if we weren’t so politically correct and didn’t fear interfaith dialogue. But the fear of being labeled racist and the pressure of being politically correct has led America into the hands of a volatile leadership who’s rhetoric revolved around fear, emotion and blame gaming.

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.”

This article will talk about how the entertainment business was before the event better known as “9/11” and how it changed after it. It lists the four main issues that has changed the movies throughout the years: “the representation of the apocalypse; the role of human agency as savior; the role of religion; and socio-political commentary” (Wallis and Aston 54-55). “Doing so will enable analysis of how cinema transcode the socio-political climate post-9/11 into cinematic narratives of environmental disaster, pandemic super-viruses and monster attacks. The article will conclude by suggesting that cinematic representations of the apocalypse have been much more pessimistic post-9/11, demonstrating that Hollywood sci-fi can facilitate wider socio-political

How the has media poisoned peoples’ brains to think like this. Media has created this mental construct, in which all Muslims are the “bad guys”. Media plays a big role in a lot of different situations. Media mostly portrays African American as “thugs, and drug dealers”, media portrays Latinos as all being “illegal”. Media plays an essential role in the development of the young children, who’s brains are still developing. It really affects their world view.

Baker et al. (2013) discourse analysis shows that the largest amount of articles in the corpus concerning Muslims occurred a year after the London bombings. They argue that 'home- grown' events was of great importance to the British media, maybe even more than 9/11. This theory is contested by Zelizer and Allan (2002) who point out that the Guardian had its highest amount of sales the day after 9/11. This suggests that 9/11 may have had a bigger impact on British Muslims than 'homegrown terrorism'. However, weakness here is that this is just the data from one newspaper, it is not representative of them as a whole. Mythen et al. (2009) found that since the 7/7 bombings, the practices of Muslims has become the subject of speculation from security experts, policy makers, and media professionals. This constant speculation could leave Muslims feeling targeted by society for the actions of few. Hussain and Bagguley (2012) semi- structured interviews showed that some of the non-Muslims he interviewed identified Mosques as 'sites for terrorist organisations'. This suggests that Muslims are under suspicion in the UK. Selection bias was a potential concern because they only chose people from one city. Even though this will save on costs for the interviewer, the results are far less

Historians, specifically American historians of the 21st century have demonstrated an interest in the Middle East in Islam, due to Americans frequent contact with the Middle East in the early 1960s. Islam and the Middle East have played a remarkable role in Americans discussion and reaction to the events that took place on September 11th, 2001. During this time Americans were beginning to regard the Middle East, Muslims, and Islam as one entity. Americans and the world regarded the Middle East as Islam and Islam as the Middle East. Thus, this correlation between the two made Muslims say Muslim Americans and Muslims in America as less western and more of another, but they were also seen as untrustworthy individuals. Additionally, prior to the September 11th, attacks and an after effect of September 11, was that Muslim men were violent and Muslim women as oppressed individuals. Thus, the perception of Islamophobia and the threat it brings to western society has impacted the discussion of Islamophobia in America.

Islamophobia increases as the media portrays Muslims as terrorists.* Most, if not all, media platforms are controlled by economic and political elites. In other words, the elites have the power to label individuals and groups as “enemies of society” and decide what general people have to see.* The idea of

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).