Islam is the second most popular religion in the world, made up of 1.6 billion Muslims, representing approximately 23% of the earth’s population. With these statistics, there should be a clear understanding of the Muslim faith. However, despite its huge following around the world and the growing Muslim communities, Islam is foreign to most North Americans who are familiar with Christianity or Judaism. Islam and Muslims have become an area of major concern to the people and media, especially after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States. There are many misunderstandings about religions in general, but Islam especially. Many believe that the western world is advanced, enlightened and liberated, while Islam is primitive, ignorant and oppressed. Some misconceptions about Islam are due to the wrong beliefs and actions of Muslims, and others are due to a …show more content…
Many have the idea that women in Islam are disrespected, mistreated, or oppressed. Most are not aware that Muslins worship the same God as Jews and Christians do. It is also a stereotype that all Muslims are terrorists or promote violence. Most misconceptions of Islam are due to the lack of knowledge and misleading media reports; a problem that leads to prejudice and increasing fears. When a person thinks of Muslim woman they may picture a woman who is devalued and underappreciated. People often blame the Islamic religion for the injustices towards women, when in all actually they are imposed by the politics and society of Islamic nations. Muslim women’s dress, role in the household and in society are common misconceptions of the Western world. The Western society’s stereotypical view of Muslim women is misplaced. People picture a woman covered head to toe in
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Show MoreFatemeh Fakhraie’s essay “Scarfing it Down,” explains how Muslim women suffer because of what they wear. Fakhraie blogs about Muslim women in her website she explains; “Seeing ourselves portrayed in the media in ways that are one-dimensional and misleading." Several people judge Muslim's by their appearance because they assume they're a bad person. The author of this essay wants the reader to know that Muslim women wearing a hijab are not a threat to the world.
Islam is a monotheistic religion, centered around the teachings of the Qu’ran and serving Allah (meaning God in Arabic). However, this Abrahamic religion has been harshly discriminated against in the United States for years. Most prominently throughout the last twelve years, post September 11th, 2001. Unfortunately, issues such as socialization through the media, power distribution, religious ignorance, stereotyping and visible differences have contributed to the ill attitudes towards Muslims. This paper will examine how Americans have been socialized in islamophobia within the United States.
There is little need to reiterate the long history of U.S. governments going wherever they have wanted and doing whatever they have wanted. The question is how Muslims navigate through the political and economic architectures that ensue. Certainly, Islam has long valued extending itself throughout the world. Travel is primarily a modality for accumulating knowledge, acting on the desire to know, and then, only secondarily, is that knowledge used as a means of imbricating the "presentation" of Islam within heterogeneous settings. The historical challenge for Islamic missions, armies, scholars, traders, and sojourners was how to maintain the coherence of the faith in foreign spaces simultaneously considered within and outside of the Islamic world.
...areas of emphasis. In contrast, Leila Ahmed analyzes representations and mores of Muslim women in different social and religious contexts in order to draw conclusions about their effect on women’s--and men’s in relation to women’s--status, in earlier periods of Islam, as well as the further-reaching implications they have had for modern Muslim societies.
The United States of America: once a small colony, now one of the world’s most powerful nations; a nation that has been fraught with wars, protests and continuous conflicts between religion and state. This essay will investigate the relationship between the religion and state, discuss the states declaration’s about this relationship and the practice of these declarations. Americans, after the September 11 attacks, have marginalised the Muslim community, which is largely due to their Christian origins and misinterpretations of Islam.
Many people have been led to the fact that Islam is violent, but all these people do not know the truth, they hear it by the famous people and believe it. The famous people have led other people to believe that all Muslims are risky to be near. I believe that because of these Muslim terrorists, media thinks that all Muslims or believers of Islam are disgraceful, which leads to everyone believing the media.
In the essay, the writer acknowledges the misunderstandings that come from media images by explaining the contrasts between these images and the teachings of the faith to support her claim that fear is the reason for this misconception. The conception that many people have of Muslims is that they are terrorists, anti-Semites, and fanatics. This conception exsists because television news and newspapers support that stereotype. The broadcast of such stereotypes encourages fear and accusations of the Islamic relegion's teachings. The writer explains that Islam teaches peace, tolerance, and equality. She further states that Muslims shown in the media have violated these teachings ...
Islam is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion alongside Judaism and Christianity. It is currently the second largest religion in the world today. Its beliefs come from the Qur'an which literally means "the recitation" which is believed to be a literal transcription of the word of God. Its main prophet is named Muhammad who began Islam by speaking with the angel Gabriel in a cave during his meditation and then acting as an instrument of God to help write the Qur’an. Muhammad then spread Islam to the scattered tribes of Arabia by becoming the leader of Yathrib and using his wonderful leadership abilities to then grow his influence over virtually all of Arabia. Muhammad is known by Muslims to be the seal of the profits because no profits after Muhammad should be considered legitimate. Muhammad also left behind the Hadith or “tradition” which is a collection of writings compiled of reports of Muhammad’s actions as leader of Yathrib. These reports are used as a more specific code of ethics in day to day life and from these reports the 5 Pillars of Islam are derived (Smith 160). Although Islam shares many similarities to Judaism and Christianity it is often viewed in the US with hate derived from preconceived notions following the attack on September 11th 2001. This paper seeks to provide an overview of Islam’s history as well as its two major sects and 5 main pillars to remove preconceived notions and provide a glance into the minds of the Islamic people.
Post- 9/11 Media Portrayal of Islam and the Middle East and its negative consequences on Muslims in the Western World
The turbulent world we live in today has countless imperfections. John Esposito, a professor in Georgetown University, states both alternative and intriguing ideas on the future of Islam and its upcoming era of reformation. The main issue is the extremists and fanatics who use Islam in order to justify their terrorist actions. Furthermore the Western media has stained the religion of Islam to the point where Muslim-West foreign relations have declined since the 1970’s. As stated by Esposito within his book, “The Future of Islam”, Islam had become the center stage of media networks and many news agencies; one witnessed “an explosion of interest in and coverage of Islam.” Islam has since then become a sensationalized topic and also has become the headlines of the 21st century’s history. Esposito further states how this misconception of Islam is a controversial and important role in today’s politics. Today’s Muslim population of over 1.5 billion people plays an integral role in today’s global history and Western society. Esposito’s main objective of this book is to explain “how we got to where we are and what we need to understand and do to create… ‘a new way forward’.” Esposito also explains throughout his book how Islam has been both a “source not only of compassion, morality, and virtue but also of terror, injustice, and oppression.” His ideas can be thought of as both promising and controversial to say the least.
On September 11, 2001, since the terrorist attacks, many American Muslims have been stereotyped negatively in the United States. Salma, a Muslim woman, says that the way Muslims have been recognized in the media has played a big role in the antagonisms directed to her. “I don’t know how many time I heard my classmates accuse me of being al-Qaeda or a terrorist” (Mayton 2013). Salma, along with other Muslims, even after a decade, are still struggling with trying to find their “American” and “Islamic” identities, while facing verbal attacks for their ethnicity. Too often, the general Muslin population gets lumped in with the immoral acts of a few because of the lack of knowledge about their culture.
In today’s world people judge others just by looking at them and making decisions based on their appearances and actions. Misconceptions are caused by making assumptions firsthand, receiving incorrect information from a source or seeing a few members from a specific group commit an action which is attributed to the whole group. Most of the assumptions made are almost incorrect because the people who judge do not follow through to see what the truth is regarding their observation. Misunderstandings are caused by how the spectator interprets the expression of the group causing confusion. These misunderstandings often times go viral and are sometimes even carried on from one generation to another. Several religious groups are often perceived in a different light than their true identity. American Muslims, followers of Islam, are one of the major groups who are victims to this mass misconception.
Today, we in the Western world see Muslim Women and think they’re oppressed, hurt and under male rule due to the forced dress codes in some countries. But before we make assumptions on a group of people, in any one place we should do our research, look back, see why, when and where this all started and why it’s still happening today. We need to see if this is really hurting them, or if it’s just their way of life, there’s a fairly prominent cartoon that shows a Western perspective on Muslim life versus a Muslim perspective on Western women’s life. In the Cartoon the Western Woman is thinking to herself “Everything covered but her eyes, what a cruel male-dominated culture!” which shows how most of the Western World thinks of Muslim women, oppressed by their male counterparts. But at the same time the Muslim Woman is thinking to herself “Nothing covered but her eyes, what a cruel male-dominated culture!” which shows the topic through a different lens, it can be said that they prefer to wear it because they feel more respected wearing it and feel as equals, but we must stop just looking at the surface and judging another group, we need to dig into the information and figure out why before we deem another culture “male-dominated.”
A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing is defined as a stereotype (“Stereotype” Oxford). Islam is one out of a plethora of religions that has negative stereotypes surrounding its beliefs and customs. Islam is the religion of Muslims: a monotheistic faith regarded as revealed through Muhammad as the Prophet of Allah (“Islam”). As of 2010 there are 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. Out of that 1.6 billion, 3.3 million Muslims live in America (“Myths and Facts”). Despite the large amount of followers many still have negative views towards Muslims and Islam in general. Issues and stereotypes really came to light after 9/11. September 11th, 2001; 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist
Islam in America has historically been misunderstood, and this is due to the misconception of culture and religion as well as lack of education and incorrect portrayal in the media, which gives a skewed idea of Islam. Especially in the United States, Islam has been seen as the “terrorist religion” or a religion for the extremists and a religion in which freedom is not an option. Among the countless misconceptions, the basis of stereotypes by Americans is due to the mix up between religion and culture. Furthermore, the media only fuels fire to these misunderstandings and lack of factual information about Islam causing Americans to lash out on American Muslims without reason.