The Origin Of Ignorance And Discontent

Once, Adolf Hitler said, “It’s not the truth that matters, but victory.” Obviously, this quote shows that Hitler’s mindset was directed towards winning, and not his moral values. He made false accusations about the innocent Jews, killing over six-million of them. These false accusations were simple, repeated, and, eventually, people believed it. The rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party affected how people viewed the Jews at the time. To begin, events in Adolf Hitler’s life lead to his viewpoints and affiliations. Secondly, the creation of the Nazi Party was critical to the formation of Germany’s point of view. Lastly, Jewish people had been used as scapegoats for the loss of World War I and Germany’s economic crisis.

Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Muslims everywhere began to be wrongfully persecuted and attacked. They have also since been denied equality in the workplace as “Americans with Muslim names have a harder time finding a job” and “American Muslims have experienced increased job discrimination since 2001” (Epstein 53). Without the ability to find a job, not only are Muslims effected in their daily lives, they are also unable to find a source of income, hindering them from supporting their families. Muslim religion can also cause further disturbances because there are several “law-abiding Muslims who are unfairly targeted and punished simply because they are Muslim” (qtd. in Epstein 52). This exemplifies the idea

Hitler believed that the German people were part of an 'Aryan race,' a superior group that should be kept pure to fulfill their mission of ruling the world. He felt that the Jewish people were 'sub-human,' when in actuality they were virtually the same as his 'Aryan race.' Not only did Hitler have a personal hatred toward the Jewish people, but he also blamed them for 'stabbing Germany in the back' after Germany's defeat in World War I. Hitler used them as scapegoats because they were a minority and were easy to put the blame on. 'Historians agree that the Holocaust resulted from a confluence of various factors in a complex historical situation. That anti-Semitism festered throughout the centuries in European culture is centrally important; the Jews were (and are) a minority civilization in a majority environment. In periods of crisis, instead of searching for the solution of

Anti-semitism was one of the factors that lead to the horrific genocide, yet this genocide began with the spread of words and ideas from “Hitler’s” point of view. He started the spread of hate. On November 9, 1938, the Nazis destroyed synagogues and the shop windows of Jewish-owned stores throughout Germany and Austria. Kristallnacht or “The Night of Broken Glass” was a time of horror. Germans (Nazis) invaded Jewish communities and destroyed everything Jewish. The Nazis wanted to strike fear into the Jewish people, so they destroyed

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.

Horror struck on January 30, 1933, when Germany assigned Adolf Hitler as their chancellor. Once Hitler had finally reached power he set out to complete one goal, create a Greater Germany free from the Jews (“The reasons for the Holocaust,” 2009). This tragedy is known today as, “The Holocaust,” that explains the terrors of our histories past. The face of the Holocaust, master of death, and leader of Germany; Adolf Hitler the most deceitful, powerful, well spoken, and intelligent person that acted as the key to this mass murder. According to a research study at the University of South Florida, nearly eleven million people were targeted and killed. This disaster is a genocide that was meant to ethnically cleanse Germany of the Jews. Although Jewish people were the main target they were not the only ones targeted; gypsies, African Americans, homosexuals, socialists, political enemies, communists, and the mentally disabled were killed (Simpson, 2012, p. 113). The word to describe this hatred for Jewish people is known as antisemitism. It was brought about when German philosophers denounced that “Jewish spirit is alien to Germandom” (“Antisemitism”) which states that a Jew is non-German. Many people notice the horrible things the Germans did, but most don’t truly understand why the Holocaust occurred. To truly understand the Holocaust, you must first know the Nazis motivations. Their motivations fell into two categories including cultural explanations that focused on ideology and

At the end of WWI in 1918, Germany’s economy was in ruins. There were very few jobs, and bitterness began to take over the country. According to the text, “Hitler, a rising politician, offered Germany a scapegoat: Jewish people. Hitler said that Jewish people were to blame for Germany’s problems. He believed that Jews did not deserve to live.” (7) This was the birth of Antisemitism--prejudice against Jewish people. Europe’s Jewish people have always been persecuted due to their “different customs and beliefs that many viewed with suspicion.”(7) Hitler simply reignited the flames, and a violent hatred was born.

In the book Ordinary Men, Christopher Browning tackles the question of why German citizens engaged in nefarious behavior that led to the deaths of millions of Jewish and other minorities throughout Europe. The question of what drove Germans to commit acts of genocide has been investigated by numerous historians, but unfortunately, no overarching answer for the crimes has yet been decided upon. However, certain theories are more popular than others. Daniel Goldhagen in his book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, has expounded that the nature of the German culture before the Second World War was deeply embedded in anti-Semitic fervor, which in turn, acted as the catalyst for the events that would unfold into the Holocaust. It is at this

German anti-Semitism played the main role in Holocaust and extermination of Jewish population in Europe during World War 2. There are different views on this subject among historians. Some support the fact that German society was anti-Semitic and ordinary

The freedom fighter Nelson Mandela once said, “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” After the memorable attacks in New York, London, and Madrid, the West became a unwelcoming and hostile place for Muslims, and the world started to be known as the “Islamic World” and “The West”. The Islamic world as in the picture is a place where men oppress women, a place vicious to technological advancements and a place where Muslim children are raised with the thought that the west is an unfavorable place for them. The “West” however

Antisemitism was the beginning and the cause of the Holocaust. The term antisemitism was actually created by a German Journalist by the name of Wilhelm Marr, created to give a name for the hatred for Jews (Ezard). Antisemitism fueled the Holocaust, the German hatred for the Jews was there even before Hitler as described by historian Robert Gellately: “What the Nazis actually did was to unshackle and thereby activate Germans’ pre-existing, pent-up antisemitism” (qtd in Ezard). One of the major decisions Hitler made inspiring this hatred was the creation of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, these laws made Jew a completely different race, and created Aryan into a superior race (Ezard). These laws made it official that the Jews were a lesser “race,” giving another excuse for the people to wreak hatred upon them. If the Germans had tried to stop the Hitler and the Nazis the Holocaust couldn’t have happened (Mckay). If even half the Germans had resisted the damage would have been much less drastic.

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.”

Many religious conflicts are built from bigotry; however, only few will forever have an imprint on the world’s history. While some may leave a smear on the world’s past, some – like the homicide of Semitic people – may leave a scar. The Holocaust, closely tied to World War II, was a devastating and systematic persecution of millions of Jews by the Nazi regime and allies. Hitler, an anti-Semitic leader of the Nazis, believed that the Jewish race made the Aryan race impure. The Nazis did all in their power to annihilate the followers of Judaism, while the Jews attempted to rebel, rioted against the government, and united as one. Furthermore, the genocide had many social science factors that caused the opposition between the Jews and Nazis.

Ever since the start of September 11, 2001, Muslims around the world and in the United States have been targeted, taken to war, murdered,

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).