The Impact of Stigma for Muslim Americans Post 9/11

After a horrible terroristic attack that shocked the whole world on September 11th in the center of New York City, Muslims in the Western world have been constantly fighting against prejudice. After September 11, media interest in Islam increased, where Islam was usually portrayed in a negative way. Before 9/11, many Muslims lived the normal, everyday life. However, the attack has changed lives of many people that belonged to the Muslim community, where they were the victims of guilt. Unfortunately, many Americans were introduced to Islam, after the 9/11 attack, thus even till today, Islam is associated with terrorism. For the past ten years, Muslims felt excluded from the American society by being rifled, attacked, discriminated, checked

Media has this bad image of Islam and how crazy they are. Especially in America , after 9/11. Media is meant to only focus on the negative stuff rather than the positive. The media never shows the actual true meaning of their religion. Most of the stuff on media of Islam are bad actions that few people have chosen to make. In America, a lot of people judge Islam without trying to understand the differences between the extremists to the good Islam people. They jump to conclusion without trying to learn and understand the truth about Islam religion. Media only shows the bad outcomes and do not share that Islam also has good people like every other religion. Not all Islam people are terrorist such as not all black people are criminals. There is

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.

Following the terror attacks in The Unites States in 2001, there has been an increase in Islamophobia in the Western World. Following 9/11, respondents indicate that levels of implicit or indirect discrimination in The United States rose by 82,6% and experiences of over discrimination by 76,3% (http://jiv.sagepub.com/content/21/3/317.short). A combination of how Arabs and Muslims are portrayed in the media, with the increase of organized terrorist groups and refugees since the Arabic Spring, makes this a big political challenge today. This bibliography is written to get an overview of why Islamophobia has increased and the challenges that comes with the rise of Islamophobia.

September 11th holds many hard and upset feelings around the world today. The harsh actions of Muslim extremists unfortunately completely changed the way Muslims are treated, especially in the United States. These events, exacerbated islamophobia. Unfortunately, “the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, connect Muslims and Islam to terrorism within the geographical borders of the United States.” (Byng) Although it has been over a decade since the attack, many still feel racist and discriminatory attitudes towards Muslims. Muslims are the targeted minority in the United States, “the 9/11 terrorist attacks shifted the social and political context for Muslims in the United States. Terrorism within the geographical borders of the United States carried out by Muslims places an identity at the center of national and global politics.” (Byng) The blame of the horrible terrorist attacks, rather than be placed on terrorists or religious extremist, has been placed on Islam in America. After September 11th, hate crimes towards Muslims skyrocketed, “the most dramatic change noted by the report was a more than 1,600 percent increase in reported hate crimes against Muslims -- a jump from 28 hate incidents in 2000 to 481 last year.”

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

There are a lot of grounds to the assumption that Islam has this attitude since Islamic fundamentalist leaders, such as Sayyid Qutb (1988) have written that their attacks have been prompted by Western interference and that Islam must separate itself totally from the West. They see themselves distinct in so many ways including in religion, blood structure, culture, history, and philosophy and think it crucial that their nation must not get sullied by Western influence.

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.

Islamic and Western differ drastically between their principle ideologies. In Islamic thought, Muslims blindly follow and passively follow the Quran and Allah. Many Muslims believe that Allah controls every part of their lives, so it is their job to obey and submit to his ruling to insure a better

As a result of Islamophobia; there were a lot of reports of assaults, attacks on mosques and other hate crimes against Muslims last years, . Muslims have been shot and killed, execution-style, in their living room, and outside of their mosques. They have

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.

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

In the United States, one of the fundamental rights is the freedom to practice any religion of choice. Islam has been presented to the United States and the world as a peaceful and accepting religion that is based on the teachings of the Quran. According to Robert Spencer in his book Islam Unveiled, “Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world today. Islam now counts among its adherents one out of every five people on earth.” (Spencer 36). However, on September 11, 2001 as the World Trade Center buildings exploded into flames, America and the rest of the world’s view of Islam and Muslim people was forever changed. Islam is a religion which harbors within its membership, a sector that either supports or engages in the practices of violent, terroristic acts of “lesser jihad” (warfare). These acts of violence are not just perpetrated against the United States, but also the world all in the name of Allah (Arabic for God).

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).

When reading headlines of newspapers or talking to someone who is less than an expert on the subject, there seems to be a general disillusion that Islam is so systematically different than every other religion in the world that it is also entirely incompatible with the social structure that we in the West know and thrive in. This is not the case, as there is no explicit doctrine of Islam that states that modern Western ideologies when it comes to