Anti-Muslim Stereotypes

Following the terror attacks in The Unites States in 2001, there has been an increase in Islamophobia in the Western World. Following 9/11, respondents indicate that levels of implicit or indirect discrimination in The United States rose by 82,6% and experiences of over discrimination by 76,3% (http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/21/3/317.short). A combination of how Arabs and Muslims are portrayed in the media, with the increase of organized terrorist groups and refugees since the Arabic Spring, makes this a big political challenge today. This bibliography is written to get an overview of why Islamophobia has increased and the challenges that comes with the rise of Islamophobia.

The article “Attitudes Toward Muslim Women in the West” is about an interview with Lila Abu-Lughod by the Asian Society is explaining how people treat Muslim women and how it affects them. One example of this is how things changed after 9/11. Abu-Lughod says “Many of us have noticed that suddenly, after 9/11 and the American response of war in Afghanistan, the hunger for information about Muslim women seems insatiable. My own experience of this was the form of an avalanche of invitations to appear on news programs and at universities and colleges.” Once there were terrorist attacks by Muslim men, anyone who was Muslim became a threat to society in people’s minds. Even though this happened over 17 years ago, when people walking along the street see a woman wearing a hijab (a traditional Muslim headdress) or a man who looks Middle Eastern they stare or walk faster, even pull their kids away and tell them not to look. What is that kid going to think, do they understand and think that this person looks different so that means they should treat them differently? When you think about it, racism is passed down through generations, even if you do not realize it, kids are being taught to be

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

Since September 11, 2001 the Muslim religion has been assaulted verbally and physically. People of the religion had to fear from physical threats, their religious gathering places vandalized, and hate speech is readily heard. 16 years later, this behavior is still in existence but has gone further by demonizing their beliefs through the media. Hate groups such as ISIS and the Taliban support the demonize being made and causing the non-extremist to feel the wrath of intolerance. Social intolerance of this religion has caused conflict for women wearing Hijab. They are being subject to having to remove such item to participate in events of daily

In the recent years there has been an increase in the number of terrorist attacks and groups such as 9-11, Paris, and Isis . As these attacks get more and more frequent and so does the amount of media that covers them. When the media reports about these events they can spread untrue, misleading or misunderstood information. This kind of spread can get cause stereotypes among the American people.

Evelyn Alsultany takes a different approach to the oppression of Muslim women that the U.S. portrayed in the media to fuel the War on Terror and analyses that the U.S. portrayed Islam as backwards and an uncivilized culture. Alsultany analyzes published stories and news shows on CNN, NBC, CBS, and Fox after the 9/11 attacks and concludes that these news stations used women’s oppression and linked it with terrorist attacks because they conveyed that Muslim men hated the West’s cultural ideals of women being free and wanted to impose Islam on the West. The media portrays women’s veiled oppression, female genital mutilation, honour killings, and women being beaten as they did not dress properly as the nature of Islam’s backwardness and

Immigrants from Islam practicing countries are extremely unfairly stereotyped as terrorists, this stereotype is even more severe if they are a practicing Muslim. This stereotype stems from radical Islam groups such as Al Qaeda and Isis performing extreme acts of violence in the name of their religion. A religion that preaches peace and acceptance. There is an emphasis on the word radical in this context, as these groups are formed by extremely radical "followers" of Islam. Often times non-radical practicing Muslims will refrain from wearing their hijab's or other religious attire in fear that they will be terrorized for their practice. The acts of terrorizing Muslim immigrants has become common practice in the last two decades, following events

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.”

Although women can appear to be unlikely suspects in terrorist attacks, women are increasingly participating with terrorist organizations that promote hate, violence, and destruction. In the last 10 years alone, there have been several women associated with terrorist groups, such as ISIS, trying to ensure the groups’ mission statement is carried through. Women are not only leaving their home and their country, but they are also giving up their freedoms to join terrorist organizations. This paper will focus on various ways women become involved in terrorist groups and their role within the groups. The treatment of women within the group will examined as well as their reasons for staying within a group that belittles the female race. Furthermore,

Within the twenty-first century, terrorism has sparked a global hysteria. In recent years the group ISIS or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria seems to be the cover of every newspaper and TV broadcasts headlines and breaking news. Since June of 2014 the group has inspired at least 90 different terrorists attacks in 21 countries around the world, killing around 1,400 people and critically injuring 2,000 others (ISIS attacks). This trend has pushed men and women from western cultures to research stereotypes many Westerners hold against Middle Easterners. Some examples of these stereotypes include: “All Middle Easterners are Muslim.” “All Muslims are terrorists.” “Islam is a violent religion.” “Muslims are all foreigners who can not adapt to Western culture.” (Typical Misperceptions and Stereotypes) This type of thinking is not only corrupt, but also damaging to those who are being stereotyped. Terrorism is a bigger threat to our society today than it ever has been before; however, the hysteria and fear pointed at certain ethnicities and religious

She states “common sorts of representation of Islam recently given in news media illustrate that the assumption that Muslims are, may be, or are like terrorists has remained ever present in well-known mainstream representations of this group since 9/11” (7). The media is intentionally illustrating negative messages about Muslims. They are holding a religion accountable for the actions of a few who identify within the religion. In addition, a polling revealed that a vast majority of Americans cite their major source of information about Islam and Muslims as television (Jackson). It is through this type of media that the majority of individuals learn about Muslims and start to perceive Islam and Muslims in a negative light or promote Islamophobia. The best way to understand the media portrayal of ethnic minorities is the importance of identifying the relationship between media and the real-world events (Jackson). Most people believe what the media illustrates because they don’t notice what is actually going on in the real world. These people rely on a news reporter every night to tell them what happened throughout their day. Jackson states, “the most common graphic representation of Islam or of Muslims since 9/11 has been of a man identified as a terrorist, bin Laden” (13). This false representation is the root of Islamophobia.

This week I focused on finding articles about how the media affected Muslims refugees and why European are afraid of Muslims. I took a class about the European Union in Norway, and because European Union biggest fear is refugees and immigrants. EU citizens are afraid of the Islamic law because they don’t anything about it. Most people use the media as a resource because they don’t have time to study and look around. From me, living in the US for about 5 years and so many people were asking me about the Islamic law and how we do it. So many people were afraid of asking me at first, but my friends and me were cool about it and we showed them that we are cool with questions. For me I don’t main asking and receiving questions because it will break the ice, and we need to break the ice to live peacefully together. Writing this paper because I want to inform people about our fears. As Muslim, the media made our lives so hard abroad. We have to explain ourselves after every attack. Meanwhile other attacks have been committed by others from a different religion, but no one making it big a deal.

As a result of the attacks during September 11, 2001, that media began to highlight misconceptions about Muslims and terrorism, giving rise to Anti-Muslim and Anti-Islam sentiments, or Islamophobia. In “Global Terror and the Rise of Xenophobia/Islamophobia,” Muhammad Saffer Awan (2010) revealed that many reporters, writers, and educators have used the events of 9/11 as an excuse to intensify the hostility towards Muslims and reconstruct the concept of Islam as a backward religion. He gives the example of a short story, “The Last Days of Muhammed Atta” by Martin Armis, where Armis portrays misconceptions of the Quran, highlighting its followers as irrational and that Islam relies on terror to convert people. Additionally, the depiction of Islam through the media has also reconstructed the concept and terrorism, where many educators have failed to teach the socio-historical definition of terrorism, and either intentionally or unconsciously associates terrorism with Muslims or Arabs. Many researchers tend to focus on the media’s influence on the rise of Islamophobia, but tend to overlook schools and its education on this subject. The education of Islam and Islamophobia are also perpetrators of intensifying Islamophobia, mainly due to the lack of resources and understanding of Islam and Islamophobia, and the schools inability to create a supportive and safe environment for student targeted by Islamophobia.

Muslims being discriminated against their religion has begun to fester into an issue. Certain individuals’ attitudes towards Muslims are escalating from a personal problem to a major issue. Usually, if an act of terrorism occurs, the culprit is identified by only his name. However, that is, now, not the case; individuals begin pointing fingers towards Muslims before a culprit has even been identified. This is a problem; Muslims should not suffer the consequences of a certain individual’s actions. They should not be recognized from a religious standpoint at all. The problem, then, transforms into a major issue, when Muslims are treated unfairly and are victims of hate crimes. This gradual decline of decency and respect affects the community, which affects our generation, and myself.

The increase of islamophobia can cause social problems for students and a big factor that contributes to the spread of it is the mass media. Negative images of Islam are shown on the media almost everyday helping to create fear of Muslims. When students turn on the TV, they see images of horrific scenes of bombings and terrorist attacks. They hear arabic words over images like planes flying into the twin towers. Dedria Bryfonski, author of Islamophobia points out that “instead of isolating political, economic, and military reasons for actions, the mass media portrays all events involving Muslims as religiously motivated behavior”(26). They watch people like President Trump singling out muslims or immigrants and blaming not individuals for