islamophobia.

Posted by Awa Diakite in English 1 · Giknis · D Band on Friday, February 23, 2018 at 9:44 pm

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Photo: http://www.missionislam.com/discover/basic.htm

Growing up as a Muslim, I get to experience the bias towards my people and our religion first hand. One time, I was at the Mosque (a place where Muslims go to worship god) and I was located in the women’s area while my brother, cousin, and dad were in the men’s area. After everyone in the Mosque prayed, we were all about to go home when a non Muslim man came into the building screaming at all of us telling us that we are brainwashed terrorists. He said that he doesn’t blame us for being that way, he blamed god. Now I’m not sure if he was an atheist or just believed that Muslims worshipped a different god from everyone else, but what he said made me realize how people actually viewed me based off of the piece of cloth I wear on my head. My parents spent their parenthood making sure my siblings and I were proud of who were and to always believe deeply in our religion no matter what society had to say about it. I chose to write about this topic specifically because I need to know more about islamophobia. I need to know what made people hate me and fear me because of my religion. I know my religion, I know that it’s based on peace, mercy, and humbleness. The media and society want to believe that Muslims are such bad people destined on earth to destroy everyone’s lives. My question is, why?

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This picture represents society blaming the Muslim girl.

photo: https://missmuslim.nyc/islamophobia-not-medical-condition/

Another photo representing the little Muslim girl as the “blame”

photo: http://eltecolote.org/content/en/features/surviving-the-new-terrorism-islamophobia/

One of the main reasons why islamophobia is on the rise is because of Donald Trump. Aside from calling for a ban on Muslims entering the the United States, Trump has said that “Islam hates us,” and accused American Muslims of protecting terrorists. Trump is president, and a lot of citizens actually listen to and take in his arrogant remarks, reporters find that hate crimes towards Muslims increase as Trump shades them publicly and feeds false information into the brains of his supporters. In America alone, 48% of incidents are Muslim bias incidents, the highest percentage out of any other type of incident. From July 1 to September 30 of 2017, The Council on American-Islamic Relations received 753 reports of potential anti-Muslim bias incidents. The top five trigger factors of a Muslim is their ethnicity/national origin, headscarf/hijab, if they are perceived as a Muslim, place of worship, and other Muslim activity such as praying. In return for simply being a Muslim, we receive abuse such as hate crimes, harassment, employment issues, CBP harassment at airports, and sometimes FBI harassment. All we do is worship god and have different beliefs than other religions. By different beliefs, I don’t mean how islamophobic people see us or how Trump sees us, I mean that we believe in our prophets and the words of Allah.

Society wants to believe so hard that Muslims are the blame for every terrorist act. People are individual, they do what they want and it just has to reflect on their people and what they stand for. One dark toned person could rob a store and all black people are cheap and dangerous thugs who god forbid cross paths with an old lady, they might mug her. One lightly toned person could shoot a bunch of innocents and every white person is a sensitive school shooter who god forbid ever gets upset with anyone, they might kill them. One person with a headscarf or kufi could bomb a building and all Muslims are terrorists who god forbid ever cross paths with non Muslims, they might kill their entire family. Biases are everywhere, but it is an individual’s job to believe what they want, but it’s my job to portray the image of my people, the real image.

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The statue of liberty is holding this Muslim girl showing her that she is welcomed and is not how society portrays her.

photo:

http://affinitymagazine.us/2017/03/04/my-experience-with-islamophobia-as-an-american-muslim/

Check out the link to my annotated bibliography..

Comments (2)

Randy Le

You are very brave to show part of your life that might hurt you the most. I want to commend you on that first and foremost.

As for your solutions, a good way to show the REAL image of yourself and how a muslim is not what the media portrays it to be, you could give and insider or documentary of how life as a muslim REALLY is. (just like Vincent said)

Vincent Cammisa

One idea i have for your agent of change is you can make a short documentary of what it is to live as a muslim to show that you guys are normal but are sturdy in your faith but that doesn't make terrorists, The easiest and fastest would be to vlog for one day on like a saturday or sunday or maybe the day you go to the mosque ittll be done in one day and maybe you'll be done a that but the writing was very powerful.