Public Perception
In the eyes of a large percentage of Americans today, Muslims are seen to be a part of a violent-prone religion that is diametrically opposed to the US. Images of Al Qaeda, the Muja Hadine, ISIS, etc. all spark up controversy in the eyes of Americans that all Muslims are terrorists or that they are somehow affiliated with these terrorist networks. For example in Texas a few weeks ago two men on students visas from India were gunned down by a white man who approached them with a shotgun and repeatedly told them to go back to their country and that they were terrorists before he gunned down the two students and another man who tried to intervene. This horrific situation shines light on a much larger picture, that is, how white, Christian, male extremists in America are being perceived much differently than Muslims in America who carry out similar terrorist acts in the eyes of the American public. To the American public, almost all acts of terrorism that are carried out by white Christian males are seen as murder, whereas all killings carried out by Muslims are almost always seen as an act terrorism. This is how Muslim born terrorism is viewed in the eyes of the American public even though of the 180,000 or so murders committed since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, only 1% of those were in fact carried out by Muslims. This statistic begs the question as to why of almost all the mass shootings that were carried out by non-Muslim, but instead white Christian males are not labeled as acts of terror, but almost all murders by members of the Islamic faith are seen as acts of terrorism.
One of the key reasons why the majority of the American public sees terrorism as being an act that is solely carried out by Muslims is the way that news outlets are portraying Muslim born terrorism. Journalist F.A. Noor argued that, “ Muslim identity add the concerns of Muslims are increasingly being defined in terms of an oppositional dialectic that pits Islam and Muslims against the rest of the world, as Islamaphobia has become the mainstream media discourse where images of Muslims as murderous fanatics abound in movies, video games, and other computer games” (Espiritu). This portrayal of the Islamic faith and Muslims at large by the media has left a permanent staple into the fabric of how the American public views Muslims.
One of the key reasons why the majority of the American public sees terrorism as being an act that is solely carried out by Muslims is the way that news outlets are portraying Muslim born terrorism. Journalist F.A. Noor argued that, “ Muslim identity add the concerns of Muslims are increasingly being defined in terms of an oppositional dialectic that pits Islam and Muslims against the rest of the world, as Islamaphobia has become the mainstream media discourse where images of Muslims as murderous fanatics abound in movies, video games, and other computer games” (Espiritu). This portrayal of the Islamic faith and Muslims at large by the media has left a permanent staple into the fabric of how the American public views Muslims.
Discussion Questions
- During President Obama’s last few years of office, violence against Muslims and attacks and vandalisation of mosques nearly tripled from 2014 to 2015, are past trends of violence against Muslims just merely continuing to extrapolate into the present, or are the recent cases of Muslim targeting purely Trump-related?
- What role does the media play in intolerance based off of how they portray certain religions?
- What differentiates Muslim born terrorism from American/Christian born terrorism in the eyes of the American public? and why?
Citations
Professor Juan Cole. “Non-Muslims Carried Out More than 90% of All Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Soil”. Washington Blog. (2013).
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/muslims-only-carried-out-2-5-percent-of-terrorist-attacks-on-u-s-soil-between-1970-and-2012.html
Dr. Belinda F. Espiritu. “Islamophobia and the ‘Negative Media Portrayal of Muslims”. Global Reasearch. (2016).
http://www.globalresearch.ca/islamophobia-and-the-negative-media-portrayal-of-muslims/5440451
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/muslims-only-carried-out-2-5-percent-of-terrorist-attacks-on-u-s-soil-between-1970-and-2012.html
Dr. Belinda F. Espiritu. “Islamophobia and the ‘Negative Media Portrayal of Muslims”. Global Reasearch. (2016).
http://www.globalresearch.ca/islamophobia-and-the-negative-media-portrayal-of-muslims/5440451