Fearing Refugees
Fear mongering, the action of deliberately arousing public fear or alarm about a particular issue.
Currently, Syria is in the middle of a civil war. Many innocent civilians are being bombed on and shot at by their own government. They are fleeing their homes in hopes of a safe future. But because of fearmongering, many of these people are turned away at the gates of countries that can support them and provide a safe future for their children.
The main fear the media has imposed is that terrorists will disguise themselves as refugees and go to western countries. This seems like a reasonable argument. Why endanger our own people by bringing over foreigners? However, Ben Emmerson, the Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, found “little
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By turning away middle eastern citizens of our country, when they are in need of us most, fuels the “extremist propaganda that portray the West as a violent and oppressive enemy of Muslims,” (Dearden) according to Lizzie Dearden of Independent news in the UK.
Zero Americans have been killed by Syrian refugees in a terrorist attack in the United States, (Friedman).
The fear of terrorism in the United States is so great that we have now started to fear Muslims in our own country. Due to a popular quote, “All Muslims are not terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims,” (Kilmeade) many people now believe that if a person of the Islamic faith commits a crime it is in the name of terrorism. However, if a Christian commits a crime no one assumes that he is committing an act in the name of the KKK.
This same idea has appeared in America before. In WWII, we feared our own Japanese citizens so much that we forced them into internment camps. As Americans, we can admit that what we did was wrong and irrational. So why can’t we say the same for our irrational fear of Muslims and our own Middle eastern citizens in the United
We walk around the United States terrified today of people of Middle Eastern descent because we’ve associated them and their religion with terrorism. We need to be reminded that a person’s race and religion does not make them a terrorist. Their actions make them a terrorist. A white, Catholic American could just as easily cause mass terror as anyone other person in this world, but we neglect to accept that fact because of the fear that has been instilled in us by groups like ISIS who have completely ruined an entire religion and race’s reputation.
A common misconception that people from the Middle East are Muslim. Which allows the notion that Islam is synonymous to terrorism. The President of the United States has capitalized on this notion and used it as a weapon of hate. It’s clear that the president has specifically targeted this marginalized group of people due to his woeful ignorance, because of Donald Trump’s election and him directing his attention towards one specific race has been perceived as him normalizing the discrimination towards this group of people. With that being said he has initiated a certain
Every day in my middle school eighth grade social-studies classroom, I often found myself asking the questions, “Why study history; shouldn’t we let go of the past; why is studying the past important?” Oddly enough, I found my answer to these very questions in a quotation in my social studies textbook. The quote profoundly stated, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” After reading the article, “Then Came War”, the story of unjust racial prejudice against Japanese-Americans in WWII, the answer to my question finally clicked. The story of Japanese Americans in WWII has brought forth many lessons, can be applicable to prejudicial events of our time, and has explanations and the impact of racial prejudice and stereotypes.
Past acts of terrorism done by foreigners have provoked fear throughout the American people. 9/11 is one example that brought upon a negative change. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks Americans were scared of foreigners, especially any person that was Islamic, coming into the country. The 9/11 attack caused Americans to associate any Islamic person with being a terrorist. This provoked a change in airport security. According to the article “To Combat ISIS, Welcome Syrians”, Anne Speckhard explains how the negative connotation with the Islamic religion has made it very hard for the innocent Syrians fleeing their country to seek asylum in the U.S. “We have failed to enact efficient practices and sufficient resources to allay our fears that within
It ties back to the research in that people are hypocrites who think it’s okay to attack Middle Easterners and then complain that they are the threat to others.The label is the misconception of who Middle Easterners are, the truth is: most Arabs are not terrorists, most Muslims are not Arab, and many of the early Arab immigrants adjusted well in America. The news on TV decides to create a different image of Middle Easterners, warning the public that they are a dangerous and can’t be trusted. The public then thinks it’s okay to harm them, with the excuse that they look similar to the people on the news, or just because of the intense hatred that they have against them. They have a fixed mindset that leads them to believe that Middle Easterners are what social media labels them to be. Vicious murders such as the one in Manhattan proved this hostility when a Middle Eastern taxi driver was stabbed in the face and throat because his passenger discovered he was a Muslim. America has made these attacks on Middle Easterners a common threat. The feud between whether or not this group of people should stay in America now becomes a more pressing issue than just hateful comments on the internet. If the news does not begin to inform the public on the true connections, if any, that Middle Easterners have to terrorist attacks then these immigrants will never feel safe in a country that wants them
A 2006 Today/Gallup poll found that 44% of Americans had the perception that all Muslims were too extreme in their religious beliefs and 22% of the respondents would not want a Muslim as a neighbor. Islamophobia in America skyrocketed as a result of the 9/11 attacks and changed the way that Muslim-Americans and other Americans were able to interact with one another. These statistics show that there was significant fear of Muslims in the years after 9/11. In the years following the attacks, the number of hate crimes against Muslims in America spiked and have not dropped to pre-attack levels since. As Graph 1 shows, in 2001, there were a reported 481 hate crimes and majority of these would have occurred in the months following September. Although
After the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks 83,000 immigrants registered with the U.S. Government from a required program that targeted specified countries. Of those 83,000, twenty-eight would go on to be charged with a crime (“Immigration Law and Terrorism”). Yet in America, immigrants, children of immigrants, and those of Islamic faith are targeted as a threat to the United States of America. In return, immigrants and those of Islamic have become the victims of profiling, hate crimes, and in some cases their constitutional rights have been violated because of actions based on fear of their place of origin and or their religion. The key to antiterrorism is not singling out Muslims and immigrants as a threat based solely on their beliefs
Since 9/11, Muslims and the people of Arab and South Asian descent became targets by the government practices that result in racial profiling. “In June 2002, the attorney general John Ashcroft made announced a “Special Registration” that was a must for all males from a list of Arab and Muslim countries report to the government to register and be fingerprinted. For instance, ever since they crash into the Twin Tower’s those people seem to be targets especially trying to get a job” (Graves, L. 2010, December 27). They also seem to be more of a target for questioning before they attempt to come back into the country. “The United States has been actively engaged in prosecuting the Global War on Terrorism since September 2001” Dobrot, L. (2007, November 1). “Through after 5 years of the national effort that has included the loss of over 3,000 service members in combat operations, a lot of people are questioning whether the U.S. strategy is working, and if the United States understand how to combat an enemy based on radical revolutionary religious ideology” (Dobrot, L. (2007, November
With the events of the Cold War already causing border complications, the events of 9/11 called for alarm and the increased presence of security personnel at borders. On September 11th, 2001, nineteen militants affiliated with the Islamic extremist group Al-Qaeda hijacked four planes and carried out terrorist attacks in the U.S. Two of the four planes flew into the World Trade Center (Schwartz 2010). The other, crashed into the Pentagon building and the last, into a field in Pennsylvania (Schwartz 2010). The religious affiliation of these terrorist cause widespread prejudice in the U.S towards individuals who were religiously or racially akin. According to Ashar (2002), months after the incident 1200 Arab and South Asian Muslim men were detained; while “the Department of Justice (DOJ) and cooperative local law enforcements agencies questioned 4793 young Arab and Muslim men residing in the United States”. This evidence proves my argument that there was an overall increase in the detention of Muslims lead by the DOJ on the basis of a widespread fear of terrorism during the time.
Society assumes that if you're dressed as a muslim or you look muslim or you're actually muslim you're a terrorist, which is just disgusting to know that your country is so racist and actually looks down upon a group of innocent people just because they look a certain way. Refugees just want to escape the darkness that is occurring in a place they call home. Their home is being ripped from their finger tips and we can't just stand by and not do anything. We need to give in our all for people who's lives are being taken from them right in front of us. We need to stop being scared if they might be terrorist because in reality anyone can be a terrorist, so don't risk their lives over an assumption. If you were in their shoes wouldn't you want the same
Because the Syrian civil war is one of the worst crisis’ in history with more than 22 thousand people killed and 11 million forced to flee.[i]
Muslim immigrants have arrived to the United States of America from every nuke and corner of the sphere. The population is diverse in their own ways but each one of them bears similar reasons: Some desire to escape an old way of life, others to find a new one. Some wanted to escape violence, others the fetters of penury, or simple lack of opportunity. They have arrived with fervent hope, and often nothing more. The initial response received by them was largely varied. These new Americans found a vast new land hungry for their labor. But some, unfamiliar with these newcomers’ customs and religions, treated the new Americans as outsiders and believed they could never be real Americans. And with the events like the Gulf War and the World Trade Center bombing outpoured anti-Islamic sentiments in the 1990s. These sentiments intensified with the heinous and abominable attacks of September 11th. Muslims were being labeled as “extremists”, “jihadists”, “fanatics”, “fundamentalists” etc. They were being feared, discriminated and even harassed.
I want to point out that I do recognize that ‘Muslim’ isn’t a race, it’s a religion, but it feels like after 9/11, being ‘Muslim’ has become racialized. This reminds me of the article The Social Construction of Race by Ian Lopez because it resembled how easily we can socially construct certain groups to have ‘natural’ differences from us, when it is all just social interaction and created by our society, such as the racialization of Muslims. I remember Christianity and Catholicism were always the norm. I never grew up learning about my culture in depth, unless we were learning about 9/11. I remember people’s faces physically changing when I said I was Muslim. People who are Christian or Catholic have the privilege of having a religious temple or building near them at all times, they have time off work for their holidays, we use their Calendar system, their religion is always represented in media, they don’t have to speak on behalf of the people of their religion when someone from their religion commits a crime (like a school shooting), and they can worship their religion freely without feeling fear. Seeing the way my religion was portrayed in the media and how my parents almost hid this from neighbors, made me realize that there must be something wrong with us and I still carry this fear of saying I’m
The Syrian Refugee Crisis is one of the worst humanitarian movement since WWII. Since 2011, over 11 million people have been forced to leave their homes due to the civil war that erupted over changes in the government (Fantz). As more refugees leave the country in search of safety, acceptance, and opportunity, pressure is put on the world powers to accept Syrian Refugees into their countries. Europe has received an onslaught of refugees, and now all eyes fall on America. Pressure is building on the U.S. to accept Syrian Refugees, however, with the rise of ISIS, many Americans have become more hesitant to let them in.
The European refugee crisis began in 2015, when a rising number of refugees and migrants made the journey to the European Union (EU) to seek asylum. Refugees are people who have been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. According to the data that was shown in Business Standard and also confirmed by BBC News, the top ten nations which account for 90% of the sea arrivals in 2015 were: Syria (49%), Afghanistan (21%), Iraq (8%), Eritrea (4%), Pakistan, Nigeria and Somalia (2 %), Sudan, Gambia and Mali (1%). Also the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees confirms that the top three nationalities of refugees are Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi. Of the refugees and migrants arriving in Europe by sea in 2015, 58% were men, 17% women and 25% children. (Wright, 2015). According to Eurostat, EU member states received over 1.2 million first time asylum applications in 2015, 4 countries (Germany, Hungary, Sweden, and Austria) received around two-thirds, while Latvia received a very small part of them.