The United States, Arab, Muslim, And Middle East

The role of the Middle East has been very crucial to the United States, especially after WWII. The U.S. had three strategic goals in the Middle East and consistently followed them throughout various events that unfolded in the region. First, with the emergence of the cold war between the Soviet Union and the U.S., policymakers began to recognize the importance of the Middle East as a strategic area in containing Soviet influence. This also coincides with the U.S. becoming increasingly wary of Arab nationalism and the threat it posed to U.S. influence. Secondly, the emergence of the new Israeli state in 1948 further deepened U.S. policy and involvement in the region while also creating friction between the U.S. and Arab states which were

Quickly, Americans employed “counterterrorism tactics to victimize scapegoats, that is, people not associated with political violence but nonetheless targeted merely because of their ethnicity and religion, namely Middle Easterners, Arabs, and Muslims” (4). I agree with Welch’s argument that Americans took their apprehension and displaced it as anger for anyone whose skin tone was similar to the terrorists of 9/11. Also, Welch noted that through the process of scapegoating, Americans were provided “emotional relief” because it acts as a “defense mechanism” (4) leaving them not as

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.

Racial profiling increased drastically for Arabs and Muslims following the attack on September 11, 2001. As a result of this tragedy, many began to associate Arabs and Muslims as evildoers. They were seen to as sinister individuals who hijacked airplanes with bombs attached to their body. However, Muslims and Arabs are not the only victims of racial profiling. Hispanics and African Americans have experienced this same treatment due to the color of their skin. This could result from the belief that whites are treated with respect, royalty, and luxury. Because of America’s history, and the decade of enslavement, African Americans are defined as “slaves and dirty animals” whereas Hispanics were stereotyped to have the career as housemaids and farmer workers with the nickname “wetbacks”. Such depictions of these individuals are still an issue in today’s society.

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 terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 was a tragic event for all Americans, including Arab Americans. Due to the fact that the nineteen terrorist who hijacked the four planes were Middle Eastern Muslims, Arab Muslim Americans were suddenly viewed with suspicion and became the victims of discrimination and hate crimes. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were a dual tragedy for Muslim Arab Americans. Arab Americans died in the attack, were part of rescue efforts, and worked bravely at Ground Zero among other Americans. Sadly, they got very little recognition, very little time to mourn because they quickly became the target of hate crimes and discrimination. Despite, being part of the American culture for generations, after the 9/11 attack Muslims

In today's society, those incidents have become normalized behavior towards many Arab Americans. People with Arabic sounding names often report experiencing some job discrimination and many anti-Arab comments (Cainkar, 2006). Additionally, some who look "Arab or Middle Eastern” have been physically attacked (Cainkar, 2006). In a report by Jadallah and El-Khoury, they noted most of their correspondents complained of racial profiling by the federal government and demonization in the media (Jadallah, 2010). Many of these prejudicial and racial actions appeared after the September 11th attacks and had become internalized in how American society views Arab Americans and

With the events of the Cold War already causing border complications, the events of 9/11 called for alarm and the increased presence of security personnel at borders. On September 11th, 2001, nineteen militants affiliated with the Islamic extremist group Al-Qaeda hijacked four planes and carried out terrorist attacks in the U.S. Two of the four planes flew into the World Trade Center (Schwartz 2010). The other, crashed into the Pentagon building and the last, into a field in Pennsylvania (Schwartz 2010). The religious affiliation of these terrorist cause widespread prejudice in the U.S towards individuals who were religiously or racially akin. According to Ashar (2002), months after the incident 1200 Arab and South Asian Muslim men were detained; while “the Department of Justice (DOJ) and cooperative local law enforcements agencies questioned 4793 young Arab and Muslim men residing in the United States”. This evidence proves my argument that there was an overall increase in the detention of Muslims lead by the DOJ on the basis of a widespread fear of terrorism during the time.

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

Racial profiling as method of counterterrorism is a major problem in the United States. Due to the damaging effects of 9/11 on the moral of the country and the present threats from ISIS, the Muslim-American society as a whole is being depicted in a way that classifies them as extremist terrorists. This fear of the Muslim society has become so dominant that the term “Islamophobia” has been adopted to communicate “fear, hatred and hostility towards Islam and Muslims.” As seen in a 2011 report on the West’s respect for Muslims, 52% percent of the American citizens who answered this poll voted that Western societies do not respect Muslim societies. (See figure 1.) The analysts of Gallup attribute this disrespect and fear of Muslim societies to differences in religion and political interests. (See figure 2.) America needs to reevaluate its counterterrorism strategy in order to account for and respect the human rights of its targets. If not, an entire society of people, Muslim-Americans, will be targeted as terrorists. The targeting of an entire group of people based on

When the movie “The Siege” starring Bruce Willis and Denzel Washington premiered in 1998, it was met with protest in Michigan. Nizam Arain, who belongs to the Muslim Community Association thought that Hollywood went too far with the Arab stereotype. He was quoted as saying: “To have the American public aware of the existence of Muslim terrorists is the job of the news media. But the purpose of the film is entertainment” (CNN 1998). After September 11, 2001, Arab-Americans were the targets of hate. “Mosques were firebombed, Arab-Americans were vocally abused and physically attacked, and at least six persons of Arab descent were murdered” (Lester 2002). This can be attributed to the false stereotype that the media created that all Arabs are terrorists, because that is what they are predominately portrayed as.

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.”

The mass media selectively promotes racial profiling. The assumptions driving terrorism profiling are not any different than “street-level” profiling—in that, a particular crime (in this case, terrorism) is most expected to be committed by members of a particular religious, ethnic, or racial group and that the members of that group (in this case, Muslims) are, in general, likely to be implicated in that manner of criminal activity…These assumptions are highly defective. The assumption that terrorist acts are inevitably perpetrated by Arabs or that the architect, of a terrorist act, is likely to be Islamic is a faulty assumption. While all the men, believed to have been, involved in the September 11th hijackings were of Arabic nationality, Richard Reid, who on December 22, 2001, attempted to ignite a volatile device on a trans-Atlantic flight, was a British citizen of Jamaican ancestry. This furthermore coincides with my line of reasoning that extremists exist throughout all cultures. In fact, prior to September 11th the deadliest act of terrorism on United States soil was initiated by [Oklahoma City bomber] Timothy McVeigh. Even non-Arabs like John Walker Lindh, a Californian, can be linked to the Taliban, al-Qaeda and

In many cases, a certain tragic event can sometimes lead to hate and discrimination towards specific ethnicities. One article states, “Another example of racial profiling is the targeting, ongoing since the September 11th attacks, of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians for detention on minor immigrant violations in the absence of any connection to the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.”(“Racial”). This information shows how when something tragic and horrific occurs because of a few naive people of a certain race many people tend to think of everyone of that particular race to be threats. It also shows that this problem just does not go away

One minor solution that anyone is able to accomplish is making people aware of what is going on in the world. We are constantly caught up in our own lives that we are rarely given the chance to observe what's going on in the world that we are living in. Spreading awareness and getting more people involved in organizations to help out others all over the world, especially in the Middle East that are constantly being attacked in their home towns. Not only will this be helping them, but it will also grow some kind of positive connection with them and hopefully they eventually not everyone will perceive the United States as an unpleasant or an unwelcoming nation. (“How the United States is perceived in the Arab and Muslim Worlds, 1.)