Alsulatny's Book Report

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

Historically, the United States of America has a long history of shaping its ideology from a series of significant events that hold unspeakable brutality. This leads Americans to draw conclusions, which often leads to denouncing a particular body of people. For example, the enslavement of African Americans, the decimation of Native Americans, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Currently, while enduring several years in the U.S., Muslim Americans face similar difficulties as a human being would. However, these hardships differ because they include U.S. discrimination triggered by 9/11, current terrorist events, and negative reinforcement from the media and the general public. Muslim Americans experience the harmful effects of terrorism because acts of terrorism influence the way the U.S. views and thinks about Muslims.

One of the most widely discussed issues in the U.S. Muslim community is the negative image of Islam in the American media, an issue that was cause for concern even before 9/11. While appeals to the media for accuracy and fairness continue, newspaper headlines regularly print the words “Islam” and “Muslim” next to words like “fanatic,” “fundamentalist,” “militant,” “terrorist” and “violence.” Uses of the term “jihad” in television programs

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, media approaches have altered. On Television shows and movies, in newspapers and on the radio, there has been an increase in hate crimes targeting Arabs and Muslims. Most coverage today follows a script that represents Arabs and Muslims only in the context of terrorism. Evelyn Alsultany wrote a book called Arabs and Muslims in the Media in 2012. The stories explained the new standards in racial and cultural representations after 9/11.

since September 11th? How have they stayed the same? Because of the media’s portrayal of Arabs as “evil” and “a threat”, most Americans perceived them as such. The Muslim and Middle Eastern community did not have such attention before the incident. Most Americans had already seen Middle Easterners has a strange and dubious group for the customs and common, religious practices; but it only got worse following the attack. Since 9/11, people began to perpetuate the stereotype that “all Middle Easterners/Muslim Americans were terrorists” as well as “all Middle Easterners are Muslim” and the people were consistently scrutinized. These harmful assumptions has instilled a sense of apprehension in the Muslim community due to their fear of being publicly discriminated. In contrast, the attack was not widely approved by Middle Easterners and Muslim community; the community responded by saying that it had been orchestrated by extremists whose action did not represent the entirety of their

The terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 was a tragic event for all Americans, including Arab Americans. Due to the fact that the nineteen terrorist who hijacked the four planes were Middle Eastern Muslims, Arab Muslim Americans were suddenly viewed with suspicion and became the victims of discrimination and hate crimes. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were a dual tragedy for Muslim Arab Americans. Arab Americans died in the attack, were part of rescue efforts, and worked bravely at Ground Zero among other Americans. Sadly, they got very little recognition, very little time to mourn because they quickly became the target of hate crimes and discrimination. Despite, being part of the American culture for generations, after the 9/11 attack Muslims

The aftermath of the September 11 attacks created a dichotomy between the American people and people of Arabic heritage, specifically the Muslims and those who “appear Arab”. How do the aftermaths of these tragedy portray and place a great emphasis on a divide between the “us” and the “them”? My paper will examine the aftermath of the tragics events that occurred in the September 11 Attacks, through the works of scholars and authors to investigate the portrayal and emphasis on the “us” and “them” divide that sprouted from the catastrophe. Douglas Kellner, a theorist in the field of critical media culture, explains that the way the media portrays victims of tragedies is them as weak and the culprits as violent, citing how the media portrayed the Americans as “vulnerable and open” and the terrorists as “violent and capable of causing great harm” (Kellner, 2004).

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

The most common popular opinion of Muslim Americans is formed through an uneducated understanding of Muslim life and their culture. Muslim Americans actually become a common discussion point among Americans post 9/11 due to misinformation about the events that occurred. Muslim Americans are often stereotyped with terms such as, terrorist, violent, restrictive, and more. Not only are Muslim Americans’ stereotyped often, but their citizenship is often questioned and their life style still remains a mystery to many Americans. Many Americans wonder what Muslim Americans’ place in society is, where their allegiance lies, and how exactly they are supporting America.

Within days of the attacks every news channel was showing pictures of the hijackers. From these pictures Americans turned their fear and hatred on to anyone who looked like the attackers. During the process of adjusting to the aftermath of September 11, Muslim Americans faced an upsurge in negative stereotypes expressed by the larger society (American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, 2003; Cassel, 2006) and Muslim immigrants, more than any other Immigrant group, were met with negative attitudes (Council of American Islamic Relations, 2003; Saroglou & Galand, 2004). But there is still discrimination present throughout the U.S , we all see it on the news or in person at school. There language is different so people discriminate against them. It does not matter if you are actually Arab or if you just look Arab or had a foreign name that sounded Arab they would look at you bad. This was a problem at airports, jobs, and schools because people were suspicious. Life was hard for Arab-Americans because people could not trust them. Many Arab- Americans and those who looked like Arabs were directly and adversely

Viewing Arabs and Muslims as evil and threatening people began long before the terrorist attacks on September 11 (Akram, pg 61.) It can be traced back to myths created by film and media. Individuals of Middle Eastern descent were often the villains in older American films and have been consistently misrepresented for many years. There have also been multiple government laws and policies dating back to the 1970s that have “steadily targeted Arab and Muslim non-citizens for selective interrogation, detention, harassment, presumption of terrorist involvement, and removal from this country” (Akram, 61).

to 100 Years of Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim stereotyping by Mazin B. Qumsiyeh “Arabs in TV and movies are portrayed as either bombers, belly dancers, or billionaires in reference to Arab men being portrayed as terrorist or as wealthy oilmen and Arab women being portrayed as sex objects...these stereotypes don 't only cause psychological harm (culture, insult) but also helps feed into actions that are physically harmful by dehumanizing a group first before attacking it.”

Syed Soharwardy asserts that “Media always tried to portray Islam as a religion of terror and all the Muslims as terrorists. The way the talk-show programs and news are produced and presented, it seems that the media has already decided the guilty verdict, regardless what would be the outcome of an investigation” (Soharwardy). So too do members of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee recognize the media’s predisposition toward bias, as is pointed out in this statement, found on their website: “Key industries of American mass culture, Holllywood and television, for decades have been bastions of anti-Arab stereotyping, and have consistently resisted positive or realistic representations of Arabs and Arab Americans. (Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee).”

"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

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).