Public Perception Of Muslim Americans

In the airports, Muslim people became “the usual suspects”, were thoroughly searched and often interrogated. In her article, O’Connor claims that the lives of American Muslims changed forever, and the statement is hard to disagree with (“How 9/11 Changed These Muslim Americans’ Lives Forever.”) Those who had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks, their children and grandchildren were sentenced to face racism, hate and violence.

In the lecture “What It’s like to Be Muslim in America” by Dalia Mogahed, Dalia emphasizes how “Muslims are like canaries in the coal mine, we might be the first to feel it, but the toxic air of fear is harming us all” (Mogahed). This xenophobic behavior is what strives citizens to fear one another and find an excuse to polarize a certain ethnicity for their alleged affiliations with terrorist groups. This overwhelming fear causes the initial hatred towards some people but it ultimately ricochets onto the rest of society. Next, the abundant amount of fear proves to be detrimental to society due to the fact that it provokes disastrous behavior between citizens. According to Dalia, “ISIS has as much to do with Islam as the Ku Klux Klan has to

Post 9/11 negative stereotypes and attitudes toward Muslims intensified in many Western societies. “The FBI recorded a sixteen-fold increase in hate crimes (e.g., acts of arson, aggravated assault, property crimes) against Muslim Americans from 2001 to 2002” (Rodriguez Mosquera & Khan & Selya, 2013). All of this goes to show that Non-Muslim Americans were taking out their emotions on innocent Muslims. Not only was all this going on, but the U.S. Congress’ response to the attacks was the USA Patriot Act. The USA Patriot Act gave, “the government investigative powers to fight against terrorism and subsequently targeted those in the Arab, Muslim, and South Asian communities with not just prejudices against these communities, but blatant racism toward innocent people, just because they appear to look like they “identify” with those who have made terrorist threats” (Akiyama, 2008). The discrimination post 9/11 was awful. The hijab which was seen as a prideful garment for Muslims became a target for discrimination. In the article, “9/11 Ten Years Later: Muslim Women, Organizations Work to Fight Discrimination, Patel talks about a woman, Wasan Mohamad. Mohamad talks about how she and her friends/family were discriminated against ten years after 9/11. Her daughter in class got told that her people were responsible for 9/11. Her friend changed his name from

Historically, the United States of America has a long history of shaping its ideology from a series of significant events that hold unspeakable brutality. This leads Americans to draw conclusions, which often leads to denouncing a particular body of people. For example, the enslavement of African Americans, the decimation of Native Americans, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Currently, while enduring several years in the U.S., Muslim Americans face similar difficulties as a human being would. However, these hardships differ because they include U.S. discrimination triggered by 9/11, current terrorist events, and negative reinforcement from the media and the general public. Muslim Americans experience the harmful effects of terrorism because acts of terrorism influence the way the U.S. views and thinks about Muslims.

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.

“Since 9/11, Muslims in America are living in fear” (“In a virtual internment camp: Muslim Americans since 9/11”). When our World Trade Center came crashing down, American had one more enemy, Muslims. 9/11 was a tragic act of terrorism and those victims will not be forgotten, but because of the Muslims that did this terrible act most Muslims in America were grouped into one category, evil.

America’s viewpoint on the Muslim group of people was significantly prejudiced by post 9/11. The entire Muslim community was vision negatively as of the events that was taken by Al Qaeda an international terrorist group formed by Osama Bin Laden. Soon, subsequent to the bombing of the twin towers, primary awareness of Muslims habitually originated from labels relating to the Middle East as a whole. According to “Affective Politics after 9/11” Todd Hall proposed that 9/11 was a sensitively prominent event that created an emotional shock wave. He believed the original place of influence were the countless effective reaction of people in the United States who has watched the series of terrorist attacks unfold and causes Americans to view 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

The paper notes that in the pre-9/11 America, American Muslims enjoyed the same rights that other Americans did, engaging themselves in such activities as institution-building, public work, and integration. The process of integration, however, was severely disrupted by 9/11 because many Americans unfortunately began to hold all Muslims accountable for the terrorist attack, distrusting them, discriminating against them, and subjecting them to various forms of hatred. The media played a crucial role in this endeavor, as commentators began to draw a link between Islam and extremist political beliefs.

The abrupt public focus on Muslims has changed the significance of being a Muslim American for many people. There were some who wanted to hide their Muslim identity or distance themselves as a result of all the negative attention they were receiving. Muslim Americans were affected by a societal backlash in 9/11, mainly by the war on terror. The suspicion of Muslim terrorist intensified after 9/11 that shifted racial identity amongst citizens, rather than it being a person who follows the religion (religious category) it became a racial identity. However, on the other hand in her research, Ewing has found that, "In some cases, the backlash has also led to an affirmation or strengthening of Muslim identification” (p. 19). Not all post 9/11 community attitudes toward Muslims are negative, in some cases as such it strengthen one’s identity. The importance is how these experiences feed into the process of how one felt before and after the tragic event and how the way Muslim communities and identities have

On September 11, 2001 over seventeen years ago United States went through something no country should go through. This worldwide known event would determine our diversity in today’s society, discrimination, racism, and stereotypes against the Muslim culture. Also, it would determine how we change over time and how we would look at Muslims. President George W Bush gave a speech “Islam is Peace” to change perspective on Muslims, President Bush attempted to change the perspective that many Americans had against Muslim people from negative to positive. Terrorist attacked our country, crashed four planes, and targeted to kill thousands of people, with innocent people on board.

The September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States generated fears across the Earth not previously seen in history. The terrorist group responsible, known as Al-Qaida, ushered high levels of panic, causing millions of people who witnessed the attack or read about it to develop widespread fears of Muslims. The dislike or prejudice against Islam or Muslims has become known as Islamophobia, generating hate crimes and discrimination against Muslim people. Recent researchers have highlighted the effects that 9/11 have on Middle-Eastern people, primarily Muslims. Researchers have studied the increase in discrimination on Muslim people post 9/11. Researchers have also studied how 9/11 impacted the public’s view on immigration. Furthermore, studies

America has a long history of excluding people from society based on race, gender, class, and religion. There is a growing trend of the social exclusion of people based on phenotype, dress, and religious preference. Many Muslims in the United States are denied cultural citizenship. Today, citizenship can not be denied from a person based on these apearence. Since 9/11, the status of Muslims both within the USA and globally has garnered significant attention from scholars, researchers, politicians, and the media. The Pew Research Center pubished several reports on Muslims, from public opinion polls capturing Muslim worldviews and their attitudes toward America and Islamic extremism to the impact Islam has had on the religious and political landscape

September 11, 2001 is the most significant event of our generation. On this day two planes struck the North and South World Trade Center towers in New York City. One plane struck the Pentagon and another crashed in Pennsylvania on its way to The White House. After the attacks, which took the lives of 2,830 people, the American population was distraught. Instantly a sense of nationalism, in specific ethnic nationalism, was increased. The percentage of Muslim population in America is only 1.71% and Muslims are physically distinct from the average American, so much of this nationalism was directed against this small percentage (Ogan 2013). The attackers on September 11 all shared the Muslim ethnicity, consequently the American government, media,