There's Someone From Our Own Backyard

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

After 9-11, things deteriorated drastically for Middle Easterners. They were labeled as terrorists, their houses and their places of worship were burned down, they were physically abused when out in public, Some were scrutinized heavily when traveling, or not even allowed to travel at all, they were detained illegally, deported, and some even had secret trials, (Hassan S. 2002) These are citizens of the United States, protected under our Constitution.

America has been dealing with external attacks, but has ignored that hate crimes have been on the rise since 2014. America’s biggest threat is seen as ISIS, a terrorist group that has been attacking many countries around the world. Many Muslims have had to deal with the effects of uneducated people, as over

Nevertheless, we actually do not have contact with the Middle East people and we may even never talk with them. It is too subjective to judge that the country and the people are dangerous. All these kind of inherent perceptions and misunderstandings lead to the miscommunication nowadays.

However, it is not only Muslim terrorists who are trying to enter the United States, but refuges as well. Devastating events mainly happening in Muslim countries lead to direct arrival of Muslim ethnic communities in the United States. It is unjust to believe each and every human traveling from Islamic States are terrorists since each state is disproportionately dictated meaning some have less violence and civil rights than

During the years of post-9/11, Americans have started to become wary of non-Americans in their home land of the fear of another terrorist attacks. The 9/11 attacks have changed American views on the muslims and on the Middle East. It also had made security regulation more strict and discriminatory. Since post-9/11, Americans the wrong impression of the Middle East and have negative views of it and also have stereotype of it as well.

On September 11, 2001 America was in shock because of the events that occurred that morning to their beloved world trade center twin buildings. The deaths and injuries caused the people to automatically hate those that were responsible, Al Qaida members. This group is notorious for their dislike of American lifestyles. From then on Americans would go on to keep a close eye on these individuals and people that looked like them. That same year in the United States “58 percent favored Arabs to undergo more lengthy security measures. “From Samuel R. Gross, “Racial Profiling Under Attack”, (June 2002): 1413.

After the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2002, the government of America felt threatened. Society as a whole went straight to thinking that all Middle- Eastern people were terrorists and were going to plot more attacks. Many people who look of Middle- Eastern descent were beaten out of the anger from the attacks. It was common belief that people who are Middle-Eastern are terrorists.

Not only did 9/11 impact America physically, but it also took a huge toll psychologically. People responded to the terrorist attack with fear and started developing feelings of intolerance for immigrants, specifically immigrants who were or appeared to be from the Middle East. For example, people known as Sikhs, who followed Indian religion are targeted because they wear turbans, which are stereotypically associated with Muslims. Since the fatal attack, hate crimes associated with people of Islamic background have risen in the U.S. Mosques and temples of those who practice Islam as a religion have been targeted. Innocent people who are Arabs or are Muslim, now have to live with the unfair stereotype that says all Muslims/Arabs are terrorists.

A common misconception that people from the Middle East are Muslim. Which allows the notion that Islam is synonymous to terrorism. The President of the United States has capitalized on this notion and used it as a weapon of hate. It’s clear that the president has specifically targeted this marginalized group of people due to his woeful ignorance, because of Donald Trump’s election and him directing his attention towards one specific race has been perceived as him normalizing the discrimination towards this group of people. With that being said he has initiated a certain

Immigrants of Middle Eastern descent have been victims of hate crimes since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The graph above, depicts statistics show the major increase of attacks towards anti-Islamic hate crimes after that attack (name, year). In the next 12 years, data shows how they stayed consistent and have not varied to much. Something to note is that their was not any attack towards the United States that has been as spectacular at the one towards the twin towers in 2001. That being said that does not mean that other attacks and incidents that happened in the rest of the world did not make an impact in peoples’ views towards Middle Eastern people in general. For instance, the attacks in Paris in 2015 made people rethink the issue of

Millions of people globally supported the ‘war on terror’ at one time, largely because the discourse around it was successful in divisively framing the identities involved and attributing a ‘truthful’ nature to that framing. Governments, with the Bush administration seemingly as the lead, created ‘the other’ to be ‘the terrorist’, and those ‘terrorists’ were probably Muslim or Arab. The fear was then created by the comparison of this ‘other’ to the self; or ‘them vs. us’.

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

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.

Historians, specifically American historians of the 21st century have demonstrated an interest in the Middle East in Islam, due to Americans frequent contact with the Middle East in the early 1960s. Islam and the Middle East have played a remarkable role in Americans discussion and reaction to the events that took place on September 11th, 2001. During this time Americans were beginning to regard the Middle East, Muslims, and Islam as one entity. Americans and the world regarded the Middle East as Islam and Islam as the Middle East. Thus, this correlation between the two made Muslims say Muslim Americans and Muslims in America as less western and more of another, but they were also seen as untrustworthy individuals. Additionally, prior to the September 11th, attacks and an after effect of September 11, was that Muslim men were violent and Muslim women as oppressed individuals. Thus, the perception of Islamophobia and the threat it brings to western society has impacted the discussion of Islamophobia in America.