Movie Analysis : Zero Dark Thirty By Kathryn Bigelow

Arabs, Arab Americans, and Muslims are often stereotyped in movies as sheiks, barbarians, or terrorist. As many Muslim Americans are visibly culturally distinct, it would be of value to explore whether attitudes of non-Muslims toward Muslim Americans resemble attitudes expressed by European non-Muslims toward members of these minority groups.

Americans strongly affirm the principles of religious freedom, religious tolerance, and separation of church and state. Nearly 9-in-10 (88 percent) Americans agree that America was founded on the idea of religious freedom for everyone, including religious groups that are unpopular. Ninety-five percent of Americans agree that all religious books should be treated with respect even if we don’t share the religious beliefs of those who use them. Nearly two-thirds (66 percent) of Americans agree that we must maintain a strict separation of church and state. Americans’ views of Muslims and Islam are mixed, however. As with other previously marginalized religious groups in U.S. history, Americans are grappling with the questions Islam poses to

In addition, the post 9/11 stigma has disturbed the American-Muslim mentally. In a brief report conducted by an American Psychologist,"Post 9/11: The Impact of Stigma for Muslim Americans," Saera Khan examines the communities experience. Khan conducted 12 studies on different populations and collected the data through her personal contacts outside the mosques, community centers and organizations. The survey involved 11 questions regarding how Americans view Muslims and Arabs. The data was collected between 2003 and 2006 after the two years of 9/11 incident. At that time there was a high wave of hatred towards Muslims in the American society. The type of questions which were asked were about how people were looking them after 9/11? Many of

Muslim Americans are people whose religious belief is Islam, but they were born in America. Before September 11, 2001, Muslim Americans were rarely a discussion or a problem. However after September 11, 2001, Muslim Americans were the main topic. Even though Islam is a religious belief, people are fearful of anything associated with it. Some people discriminate against people who resemble those who are practice the religion. Even though it is not relevant to race, the difference between racism; and religious discrimination is often unclear to people. People believe that terrorists are Muslim activists, but that’s wrong because not all terrorists are Muslims.

The study researched how 47 non-Muslim Americans considered and responded to a specific act of injustice against Muslim Americans. The larger goal of the study was to see if Muslim Americans are included or excluded from other American’s moral and judicial values during a “context of national conflict” (Borshuk & Coryn, 590). The study undertook this research because of the then recent 9/11 attacks and because of President Bush’s declaration of a “job well done”. The research was done at a time when it was difficult for non-Muslim Americans to separate how they viewed their fellow Muslim Americans from the Muslims and Arabs they were fighting abroad. The study was conducted by having participants read a prompt about a conflict incident involving Muslim Americans and then answering open-ended questions, this method was used because the researchers wanted to understand the reasoning associated with

9/11 is known as one of the most tragic events in the history of the United States. Since World War II, America had proven its superiority and had become a progressive and powerful country. The occurrence of a terrorism group entering the country, breeching security and killing several thousands of Americans took a toll on almost everyone. Not only was the safety of the public questioned, the nation’s security legitimacy was as well. Since 9/11, many debates on American policy have been sparked. However, not only has this event had an impact on policy in America, it has had a severe impact on the public’s perception of Muslim American’s. It has been fourteen years since the attack in 2001 and Muslim Americans are still facing a terrible bias and being treated with disrespect. The American society has perceived Muslims into a single group that associates them all with terrorism (Bayraktaroglu). This is stereotype leads to a negative public perception.

Ever since the infamous day of September 11th Americans have been constantly stereotyping Muslims. Due to the fact that the attacks caused on the Twin Towers were caused by a group of Muslim extremists, it is now a popular stereotype that all Muslims must be extremists. Even Patel, who worked on making peaceful connections between religions, was categorized as a Muslim terrorist or an extremist on a series of Anti-Muslim blogs. I believe that most people aren’t well informed when it comes to Muslims and those who practice Islam and have just learned to associate those terms with terrible things. Most people portray Islam as an angry and violent religion while in reality it is quite the opposite. Many would be surprised to see the amount of similarities between the Qu’ ran and the Bible. Followers of Islam and Muslims are for the most part a peaceful group of

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.

In Western civilization there has been a mass misunderstanding of the entire religion of Islam, mostly due to the generalization of radical Islam. In the past 20 years of American history we have experienced terrorism on a large-scale due to Islamic extremist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. These events and groups have allowed Americans to experience extreme Islamophobia, thus stereotyping all Muslim-Americans into one big category of ‘terrorist’. This was evident in the film Divided We Fall, where even Indians who were Sikhs were discriminated against based on their appearance and wardrobe. Post 9/11 many Sikhs were victims of hate crimes due to the

In the movie Zero Dark Thirty, there is a meal scene with Ammar, Daniel, and Maya. Ammar is a prisoner who has information about terrorist activity. Daniel is an enhanced interrogated, and Maya is a CIA employee. Before the meal scene, Daniel had tortured Ammar extensively, even keeping him awake for over ninety hours, but he still failed to get Ammar to give up any information. Just before this meal scene, there was an attack in London, which was the attack that Daniel was pressing Ammar about.

Ever since September 11, 2001 Americans along with the majority of the world’s population have been skeptical of Muslims. It’s a sad reality but it’s hard for people to think of a Muslim without linking them directly to terrorism. But these assumptions aren’t totally out of the blue—the Muslim’s religion, Islam, teaches a low tolerance for other religions and the Islamic government has no separation of church and state, so it’s only normal to assume that their government shall have a low tolerance as well—some however, immediately translate this into terrorism. Through the Islamic government and religion, relations with foreign countries, and separation amongst themselves it can be concluded that Islamic Fundamentalism is clearly a threat

A current cultural conflict taking place in America today is religious. Many Americans discriminate against the Islamic faith and there have been countless acts of mistreatment of Muslims in the work place, at school, in public, and in the media. Negative feelings and acts toward Muslims have become so prevalent that in 1991 the Runnymede Trust Report coined a term for it. The report defined the “unfounded hostility toward Muslims, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims” as “Islamophobia” (Defining “Islamophobia”). There has always been some religious cultural conflict with Muslims in the United States, but since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, conflict has escalated significantly.

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.

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).

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).