Stereotypes Towards the Muslim Community

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What does one think of when one says the word ‘Islam’? Is it the Quran? Or is it Allah? Is it the word ‘jihad’? Or is it simply 9/11? How much influence do images have on people today? Do they shape how we think or how we perceive “our world?” Is everybody’s vision of the world the same? Does religion define our world? Or do images define our religion? To what extent have we allowed ourselves to submit to blatant imagery? The terrorist attack in America on 11 September 2001 has been widely interpreted as an event so traumatic that it shatters the symbolic resources of the individual and escapes the normal processes of meaning-making and cognition. The dissemination of images from the area around ground zero immediately after 9/11 have been carefully controlled, and these restrictions shape a new and urgent context for the sustained discussion of words and images, of reading and viewing the world from a confined perspective. Art Spiegelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers is a comic that uses images to describe, distinguish and define what happened during the 9/11 attacks, it simultaneously highlights America’s hunger for revenge on Islam and the drastic effect is had on changing the face of Islam. Islam has been characterized by the media as a religion of violence. Images of Islam have been translated through several means such as media and cartoons causing several conflicts and controversies all over the world. One terrorist attack and an over exaggerated media characterization changed the face of Islam today causing it to be victim to stereotypes and generalizations. For centuries, religion has depended upon images to spread the message of religion. The iconic image of Jesus, or the prefixed image of a Muslim, all religions com... ... middle of paper ... ...sonal nightmare from which we've yet to awaken in order to realize the real destruction the 9/11 bombings left us with. It left us with a fragmented, ignorant human race that nine years after the incident progressed in technology, politics, news, military but failed to progress in terms of repairing racial divides, and moving past stereotypes 9/11 gave birth to. We failed to redraw the divides between state and religion and blatantly stuck to images and conventions in order to live an ignorant, pleasant life. It is like Spiegelman describes it“we're scared shitless, we couldn’t take that. I'm not only a cartoonist--I'm a physical coward.” Works Cited • www.thenation.com/article/only-pictures • "The Time 100: Art Spiegelman: The Cartoon Genius," by Marjane Satrapi, Time, April 18, 2005 • Spiegelman, Art. In the Shadow of No Towers. Self Published, 2002-2004.

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