Negative Stereotypes In The Media

Islam: suppressor of women, enemy of Western nations, and breeder of terrorists. The West has many stereotypes and misconceptions about Islam that are due to the media, prejudice, and ignorance. Islam is often seen as an "extremist" or "terrorist" religion. Often, the media's reports about Islam are incorrect due to ignorance or not wanting to acknowledge its true teachings. This is one of the reasons why Westerners are often wary of Muslims. In contrast to what the media portrays, Islam is a peaceful religion, which does not promote violence or terrorism.

Islam, a religion of people submitting to one God, seeking peace and a way of life without sin, is always misunderstood throughout the world. What some consider act of bigotry, others believe it to be the lack of education and wrong portrayal of events in media; however, one cannot not justify the so little knowledge that America and Americans have about Islam and Muslims. Historically there are have been myths, many attacks on Islam and much confusion between Islam as a religion and Middle Easter culture that is always associated with it. This paper is meant to dispel, or rather educate about the big issues that plague people’s minds with false ideas and this will only be touching the surface.

Over the past couple of decades the usage of offensive stereotypes have played a big role in popular films, TV shows, music videos, and comedy routines today. In fact one can only argue that these offensive stereotypes have increased considerably and will only continue to grow. There are many reasons as to why these stereotypes have only increased and have led to the creators of these films making millions and millions of dollars. The main reason behind this is making fun of race, color, poverty, and other cultures and using straightforward offensive words to do so is humorous to a large part of the US population. Although most of us would feel insulted if these

During the process of producing a television series, the demand for the producers to introduce their characters with only their highlighted traits make it impossible for viewers to gain a deep understanding of the community that the characters represent. One of the stereotypic traits that is usually seen on movies and television shows is societal difference that each race is placed into. Michael Omi in his article In Living Color: Race and American Culture stated that “in contemporary television and film, there is a tendency to present and equate racial minority groups and individuals with specific social problems” (546). There are many films and television shows found today that ground racial minorities into a specific social problems that are related to the color of their skin. It can be inferred from the current popular culture that this stereotype still persists.

After several incidents that happened around the world, peoples view on Arabs changed. The media played a big role in “the stereotyping of Arabs”. It is one of the main reasons for people to think the way they are about Arabs. Many

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim increasingly received much consideration when it reached the book shops—something that above all must be ascribed to its timely distribution amidst the Afghan and Iraqi wars, and to the way that it at the time represented a desolate option basic perusing of American foreign policy. In spite of the fact that it raises several intriguing perspectives, its expansive historical framework, to a great extent based on macro-political viewpoints, puts an uneven accentuation on the role of the West. This simplifies a more intricate reality and denies Muslims and non-Western actors of real agency. My dispute is that Mamdani ignores other parallel and alternative narrations of Islamophobia, and, also, that he neglects to consider

Since Islam is a religion that promotes peace and kindness, one could ask where the stereotype that all Muslims are terrorists originated. Following the tragedies of September 11, 2001, Arabs and Muslims have been presented as potential terrorists. This idea stemmed from the theory that, “media bias increases when a specific ethnic, religious, or racial group is seen as a threat to national security.” (Stiffler, 2013). Since the attacks on September 11, 2001 Muslims and Arabs have been “hyper-visible” in the media as potential terrorists. Due to the negative media attention and failure of most media platforms to

However, living in a democratic society there is freedom of choice, independence and social equality is a right and in the age of technological innovation. This is where we get hands on information on any particular subject matter we intend to choose through any form of media. However, what we do not know is how much of the knowledge we consume through mass media is accurately representation of the reality. Stereotypes work well in political campaigns where government takes certain steps as a propagandist to exhibit information to a group of targeted audience in order for them to have a certain view or opinions towards others, which is profitable in any manner for the government itself. However, governments take these steps for various reasons including creating opinions towards other governments, religious affiliated groups, other national citizens, etc and the only reason is for its profitable means whether it is for elections, power or control. For example, 9/11 attacks supports the fact that media demonstrates a

In today’s society, news and media have a great influence in how we see individuals and groups within the United States and even globally. One example is how many news outlets are portraying Muslims. They are often described as anti-gay, anti-female, anti-human rights, barbaric, uncivilized, etc. By describing the Muslim community in such harsh terms the media is allowing Muslims to become “Others” and monsters. While terrorism is a huge and scary issue facing this world, we can’t fully blame all Muslims for this. However, with the way the media is describing Muslim communities it can almost be easier to view them as monsters and the sole proprietors of terror. Another example may be the 2016 election. The candidacy of Donald Trump was met

Islam is portrayed and is commonly accepted as the most violent and largest direct threat to the West. This is a generalization made by most of the West, but it is not particularly the West or the Islamic people’s fault. There is constant turmoil in Islamic countries in the Middle East and these conflicts are what make the news in the West. The only representation in the media that the Islamic nation gets is that of war. Though most Islamic people are not violent, the select few that do participate in terrorist groups give the rest of the Islam nation a bad image.

The misconception of Islam occurs quite often, because many writings and media mislead and give a twisted picture of the Koran and Islam’s teachings. One of the main misconception of Islam is that all Muslims are terrorists; this happens mainly because of stereotyping and the image the media and political leaders give. For instance, Republican front runner Donald Trump has suggested, “Muslims should be singled out for surveillance, that mosques should be closed and even that American Muslims should be forced to register as part of a national database and carry special identification” (Awad). This sends out a

Poole found that Islam has always been presented as a threat to values held in society, and found it has always been demonised and distorted by the western media. Media representations of Muslims are predominantly negative (2000, p41).

Islam is one of the oldest religions in the world, and with that has one of the biggest populations of followers and worshipers. However, it is also a very misunderstood religion. Muslims are extremely religious people, and they strictly follow the Qur’an, however in the past there have been incidences, in which Arabs have done harm. These acts of few had a negative impact on the lives of many. After these events terroristic events took place, non-Muslims began to fear all Arabs and target them as terrorists because of the false belief that all Arabs are Muslim, and Islam is a warlike religion. Being afraid of the religion and its followers, Westerners became afraid of all Arabs and others from the Middle East, targeting and stereotyping them as terrorists because of how they look. Being afraid of these people and their religion, the Western countries termed all Middle Eastern countries and the religion of Islam as terroristic and violent, reasoning that Islam promotes violence and killing. Further, when events of women being burned with acid by men in some Middle Eastern countries for refusing marriage, wanting to get educated or not wearing a hijab properly, people of western countries began speculations that women are oppressed, mistreated, and forced to wear hijabs and burqas. The people who are not familiar with Islam, and do not know anything about the religion, knowing about these events, and being influenced by media, put the blame for these events on the religion,

Carl Ernst sheds light on a very key issue that Muslims have faced and still continue to face in stating, “It is safe to say that no religion has such a negative image in Western eyes as Islam” (Ernst, 11). The representations of Islam by Western societies have taught non-Muslims – even those outside of the West due to imperialism – what to think of Islam.

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).