Using Concordances Of The Word Muslim

In its Golden Age, Islam’s influence reached all the way to Spain, Anatolia, West Africa, and India, among other regions. While these regions were all, in a way, united under a common religion, each of them both altered and were altered by Islam in their own unique ways. Although there were similarities that existed with the spread of Islam to each of those places, many more differences prevailed. Differences and similarities existed in the forms of the role of migration, role of trade, role of cultural exchange, methods of conversion to Islam, and the unique cultural developments in each region.

For this paper, I have chosen to interview an acquaintance of mine who is a devote Muslim and follower of Islam. For the sake of this assignment I will be referring to him under the pseudonym of Jack. I spoke with Jack about some wide-ranging topics discussing things such as, media, bias, stereotypes, and really in general what being a follower of Islam is like in this divided country right now. In our country, today it’s pretty apparent there is a type of fear of Muslims, so much so that 7 heavy populated Muslim countries are not permitted from entering the United States of America. I never had conversations as personal as this with Jack and I feel as if I gained a lot of insight into the types of things minorities, and especially Muslims

When discussing 9/11, the author writes about Post-9/11 America seemed determined: “Never Again.” Despite important differences, genocide and terrorism share one important feature, which is that both parget civilian populations. This led the author to ask, “To what extend is the mind-set of the perpetrators revealed by the way they frame their victims culturally (Mamdani, 11)?” The debate on this question turns around the relationship between cultural and political identity and in the context of 9/11, between religious fundamentalism and political terrorism. The ideas the author raised in the Good Muslim, Bad Muslim section, stuck out to me the most. Mamdani explained that President Bush moved to distinguish between “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims.” From the “bad Muslims” point of view, they were obviously responsible for terrorism and at the same time, Bush seemed to assure Americans that “good Muslims” were anxious to clear their names and consciences of this horrible crime and would undoubtable support “us” in a war against “them.” This doesn’t hide the central message of the discourse that unless proved to be “good,” every Muslim was presumed to be “bad.” All Muslims were now obligated to prove their credentials by joining in a war against “bad Muslims (Mamdani, 15).” This part of the reading really got me thinking about

Islam, a religion of people submitting to one God, seeking peace and a way of life without sin, is always misunderstood throughout the world. What some consider act of bigotry, others believe it to be the lack of education and wrong portrayal of events in media; however, one cannot not justify the so little knowledge that America and Americans have about Islam and Muslims. Historically there are have been myths, many attacks on Islam and much confusion between Islam as a religion and Middle Easter culture that is always associated with it. This paper is meant to dispel, or rather educate about the big issues that plague people’s minds with false ideas and this will only be touching the surface.

This is a 39% increase in the Australian Muslim growth rate since 2001, alarmingly, surpassing Australia’s current total population projections, however, although Islam is the fastest growing religion internationally, it is not domestically and Muslims are still an under represented minority in Australia. The above mentioned figures are an example as to how statistics can be manipulated into the wrong context to fit a media publications own construction of Muslim discourse. The contemporary (post 2000) links between Muslims and terrorism made by the media were the unprecedented widespread attacks in the United States that occurred on 11 September 2001. These events set the scene for the Australian medias role in implicitly and explicitly identifying Muslims as the other, equating Muslims [and Islam] with the threat of terrorism (Anne Ally,2007). An example of the equating of Islam with terrorism is Sharia Law. The media often associates this holy law of Islam documenting the expectations of Allah, and the positive principles followed by billions of Muslims of different backgrounds and cultures globally through scenes of brutality and oppression of the people in the conflicted middle eastern region linking it to the corrupted Jihadist fighters

blight on society rather than a useful addition. Abdul presents controversial ideas and themes such as the discrimination that Muslims face in everyday life, the ‘expectation’ all Muslims are extremist, and that they are seen by some as ‘less than

Another way conflict has made the ethnic visibility of muslims portrayed through media is the Jiljab controversy of 2002 (Tarlo 2010). In September of 2002, a 13 year old girl of Bengali origin and her brothers, threatened the head principal of an London high school, for not allowing their sister to wear the hijab, because they said the Shalwar kamiz was not legitimate enough for their sister to express her religious beliefs. This matter was taken to court in 2004 where the brothers and their sister pleaded their case and walked out winners (Tarlo 2010). This controversy attracted major media attention and was featured in newspapers and television documents around the world (Tarlo 2010). This could be seen to exemplify the visibility of muslims in a way that portrays them to be people who ‘actively, publicly and consciously advocate their religious identity’ to the world (Schmidt 2011) showing that due to the conflict that had risen between a girl, her brothers and the school principal the medias effect portrayed this conflict to the whole world, representing muslims in a light that portrayed them as uncompromising and unreasonable, demanding people, which were at odds with ‘western liberal values’ (Tarlo 2010)

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

The Orlando nightclub shooting in June 2016, showed different news media sources with similar representation of the shooter, Omar Mateen. In the content analysis, it highlighted that within Australian print media, most articles used the terms terrorist and radicalised to describe Omar. It also found that the media was more likely to use the term Muslim interchangeably with terrorist or Islamic extremist. The findings of this content analysis further emphasized that the term terrorist was used to encourage the audience to perceive Omar as an outsider. Moreover, by using the term Muslim interchangeably with Islamic terrorist, the media associated the two as being the same. To understand how

One can scarcely turn on the television, or the radio, or open up a web browser without the mention of Islamic terrorism or unrest around the world. Though the United States and the rest of the world may not be engaged in a protracted religious war, for radical Muslim fundamentalist they are. Bernard Lewis brings to light possible reasons for the issues facing the world dealing with Islamic terrorism. The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror explains these issues in historical context as well as how some of the actions professed in the name of Islam and claim to

To even begin to delve into our topic, we must first define the following terms: Arab, Muslim and Middle East. Millions of the people that fall into these categories live in the United States, yet we hardly take the time to learn to differentiate between them thanks to the negative connotations that are associated with each of these terms (Chin, 2009).

A current cultural conflict taking place in America today is religious. Many Americans discriminate against the Islamic faith and there have been countless acts of mistreatment of Muslims in the work place, at school, in public, and in the media. Negative feelings and acts toward Muslims have become so prevalent that in 1991 the Runnymede Trust Report coined a term for it. The report defined the “unfounded hostility toward Muslims, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims” as “Islamophobia” (Defining “Islamophobia”). There has always been some religious cultural conflict with Muslims in the United States, but since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, conflict has escalated significantly.

The objective of this work is to examine Islam, a highly controversial sensitive issue in today's world and specifically to examine the misconceptions, beliefs, and values of those of the Islamic faith. Most people think that the majority of Muslims live in the Middle East, while in reality there are more people of the Islamic faith living in Indonesia. Islam, just as Judaism and Christianity, is practiced in various cultures, serves to shape, and is shaped by those cultures. This study examines the perceptions of those of the three faiths in various countries and how they view one another and seek to answer how a level of threat is felt by those belonging to these three religious groups in various countries. Countries examined in this study include those of the United States, Great Britain, India, Pakistan, and the Middle East. The depth of understanding or the teachings of Islam among the various religious groups in these various countries will also be examined in terms of how these understandings impact the ways that Muslims and non-Muslims interact and communicate with one another.

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).

This survey reveals that the problem with the Islam faith is not racial: The Muslim people are welcomed, the Islam faith is not. The violence that has been perpetrated against America, whether executed or planned, has brought to fruition religious persecution not seen since the persecution of the Jews in W.W.II. This “trust no Arab” attitude has brought shame to the Constitutional intentions of freedom of religion intended by our forefathers, and has set religious tolerance back 200 years. Looking at media representation of Muslim Americans prior to 9-11, it shows religious diversity in America, depicting Muslim America as just another religious community seeking to advance and protect their interests, not unlike other Americans. After 9-11 the media portrayed representations of threat and fear, creating boundaries between Muslims and other Americans. Such depiction transforms the identity of Muslims and American religious pluralism (Byng, M. pg. 3).