According to NBC News, following the September 11 attacks in 2001, there were four hundred eighty one reported anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States, totaling an average of 40 per month. The number of these attacks continues to rise today. Muslims seem to have targets on their backs. The arrow pointed at them is known as Islamophobia, the hatred and prejudice against the religion of Islam.
According to a poll conducted by Cornell University, 46 percent of Americans view Islam as violent. If I were to ask someone what they know about Islam, their answer would more than likely be related to terrorism. Due to the fact that most Americans share this negative perspective of the religion, there is not much being done by non-Muslims to combat Islamophobia. Muslims themselves, however, have taken matters into their own hands. CAIR, the Council on
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This department tracks sources and incidents of Islamophobia throughout the country, creates files on prominent Islamophobes, and creates factsheets to
Islamophobia, the term that was not very well-known before September 11, 2001, is now known to almost any individual of any age. After September 11th, islamophobia became a part of many Muslims’ daily lives (O’Connor “How 9/11 Changed These Muslim Americans’ Lives Forever.”) Not only did Muslims have trouble going through customs and security at the airports, but they also encountered islamophobia in their daily routine. Since September 11th, terrorist jokes became popular among many non-Muslim Americans who oftentimes did not understand the seriousness and the offensiveness of those jokes. Some found the “Muslim terrorist” stereotype to be somewhat justified and did not consider it to be as insulting as, for example, the representation of Black and Asian Americans in 1920s and 30s cartoons. However, the two are equally abusive and it is horrible to realize that in some ways, the American
According to the report of FBI(2000), the number of anti-islamic hate crime incidents prior the terrorist attacks were 28. In the immediate year after 9/11, 481 incidents were reported against the Muslims and Arabs(FBI 2002). The hate crime statistics of FBI conforms a staggering increase of 1617 percent in such a short period of time. The Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) reported that over 700 violent incidents were ruthlessly targeted against Arab Americans within the first 9 weeks after the 9/11(Ibish 2003). These incidents included physical violence, death threats, harassment, mockery ,hate mails and many others. Suddenly, an unknown society was brought into the negative spotlight due to the actions of a handful of people.
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
Although African Americans and women were being discriminated in the 19th century, in the 21st century, this type of attitude has now transitioned toward a specific religion. Islamophobia, also known as the fear of Islam, has become odiously popular after the despicable 9/11 attacks. Due to terrorists claiming they are of Islamic descent , society has
Since 9/11/2001 hate crimes related to Islam-phobia has risen to nearly 481 and since has stayed above 100 in subsequent years. In 2015, 2% of hate crimes are anti-Islamic. Many times people are attacked for wearing hijabs, and even non-Islamic, Arabic people that wear hijabs are attacked because of their "terrorist" appearance. This is a ludicrous thing, comparing a group of millions of faithful followers to 22 extremists. Now, every day, Islamic followers live in fear of being attacked for their beliefs; this fear escalates one day a year—9/11.
Second I will look at Ilir Disha, James C. Cavendish, and Ryan D. King paper “Historical Events and Spaces of Hate: Hate Crimes against Arabs and Muslims in Post-9/11 America” .This research investigates variation in hate crimes offending against Arabs and Muslims across U.S. counties in the months before and after September 11, 2001. They tried answering these four questions. First, what were the determinants of anti-Arab and Muslim hate crimes prior to 9/11? Second, in what social contexts were Arabs and Muslims at greatest risk of victimization? Third, to what extent did hate crimes against these groups increase after the terrorist attacks? And last, did the predictors of hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims change appreciably after 9/11?
Islam is a monotheistic religion, centered around the teachings of the Qu’ran and serving Allah (meaning God in Arabic). However, this Abrahamic religion has been harshly discriminated against in the United States for years. Most prominently throughout the last twelve years, post September 11th, 2001. Unfortunately, issues such as socialization through the media, power distribution, religious ignorance, stereotyping and visible differences have contributed to the ill attitudes towards Muslims. This paper will examine how Americans have been socialized in islamophobia within the United States.
Many Americans started fearing Muslims after the September 9th, 2001 incident. After that incident, Islam became the most hateful religion to many in the US. The hatred against Islam worsened when the 45th president Donald Trump was elected. People began doing hateful things towards Muslims because they knew there would not be any consequences to their actions. All of these factors have contributed to the fear many Muslims living in the United States feel. Being a Muslim American living in the US has become complicated. Safety has become a concern for many Islamic families living in the US. Islam is one of the most peaceful religions on earth. However, we cannot ignore that there are people who use religion to commit hateful crimes. It is
Christopher Mathias on the HuffPost said, “A prominent American Muslim civil liberties group says it recorded a nearly 600 percent rise in hate crimes targeting Muslims over the past three years an increase the organization attributes to a presidential election cycle rife with anti-Muslim animus. In a report released Tuesday called “The Empowerment of Hate,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations says it recorded over 2,200
Muslims faced tremendous amounts of prejudice after the September 11th attacks. The September 11th attacks were four coordinated attacks perpetrated by the terrorist group known as Al Qaeda. These attacks killed 2,996 people and injured more than 6,000 innocent people. These terrorist attacks also contributed to the fear that we now know as Islamophobia.
To begin, the topic I have chosen that drives my attention is the ongoing crisis of Islamophobia in America. Islamophobia basically the fear of Islam or Muslims (Whitman, 2015). Islamophobia has a considerable relationship to social inequality and this is because social inequality is prevalent in America. The roles of media have helped the ability social inequality rise to the roofs. Social inequality has shifted roots from African-American unjustness in the past to the concept of Islamophobia. For example, in the past African-American faced social inequality and lacked privilege. African- American did not have the same rights as other individuals in America (Raiklin,1990). For example, African-American had to drink from a different water fountain
Islam is the religion that is followed through Muslims about the teachings through Muhammad by the prophet Allah. Today Islam is considered as one of the most prominent religions followed throughout the world. Though Islam is thought of has one of the most popular religion across the world, many still lack the understanding of what Islam is. Following 9/11, the perception of Muslims changed thus proposing the idea of Islamophobia. Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary Islamophobia is the unfair prejudice or discrimination towards Muslims due to race, religion, or ethnic identity. The idea changed the way that all Muslims were perceived throughout America and the world. Muslims today face discrimination throughout the society. Following 9/11 the Muslim people are being treated unfairly because of their religion by the exclusion of the Muslim culture in American society, Muslims are being targeted and harmed in public, and Muslims are perceived as a terrorist or threat to national security.
Before the September 11, 2001, hatred towards Muslims in the United States started in 1923, when Muslims started migrating to the United States, an unlike increased presence. The hatred towards Muslims, also known as “Islam phobia”, was first featured in The Journal of Theological Studies. Many Muslims were targeted, the religion of Islam, Muslims, or any ethnic group perceived to be Muslim were characterized as having “bad faith and cruelty”, according to prejudice Americans.
In Oxford English Dictionary, Islamophobia is defined as “intense dislike or fear of Islam, especially as a political force, hostility or prejudice towards Muslims.” This term was first used in 20th century and had its’ own definition at 1970s. Particularly, after the 11 September events -which a radical Islamic group claimed its responsibility- in U.S.A. most of the non-Muslims in the world knew the Muslims with violence. The Berkeley Institute on Racism Studies says that Islam is often seen as a religion of violence which supports terrorism and has a violent political ideology. This perception of Islam is enlarging globally more and more because of some reasons such as terrorist attacks in non-Muslim countries, effect of media on the people, misunderstanding of Islam, and lack of the true representative
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).