Islamophobia

I find it fascinating how many people associate the terms “Islam” and “Muslim” with terrorist. There is no doubt that there are Islamic Extremist sects such as al-Qaida that fund and orchestrate terrorist attacks, but why has the entire faith of Islam been branded? After the attacks of September 11th, 2001 President Bush made it clear that the men who committed the acts were perverting Islam and that neither Islam nor mainstream Muslims were responsible for the attacks. We are in a “War on Terror” not on Muslims so why do so many associate the two? There are radical fringe groups in every society such as White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis, both of whom frequently align themselves with Christianity to support their cause. Even the term terrorism conjures up almost exclusively images of Arabs in turbans screaming “Islamic Jihad” yet if we look at the Oklahoma City Bombing of 1995, the most recent major attack in the United States’ memory before September 11, we see that Timothy McVeigh was an Irish Catholic. So why then are Muslims the ubiquitous American image of terrorism? Is it simply an effect of media propaganda and fear of a largely unknown culture or is there more to it? When Professor Gary Scudder came to speak to us he said that Islam is a religious, social and political system. Could this somehow make Christian terrorists appear different than Muslim terrorists to Americans? Reel Bad Arabs suggested that maybe we have been brought up since childhood to believe Arabs to be violent and barbaric. Maybe it is not a big stretch for Americans to accept that all Muslims are Arabs and they must act the same way.



Recently we have been looking at the depiction of Muslims and Islam in the media and in film over the past decades as well as constitutional issues of freedom of speech. I think it is valuable to place the two side by side and ask where we should draw the line. To what extent (if at all) should Anti-Islamic or even Anti-religious media propaganda be regulated? American Fear is slowly subsiding now, almost eight years after September 11, yet many Americans still fear Islam and are largely ignorant to what it really is.



How then can we ensure that we preserve our civil liberties in the face of ignorance and fear? Should constitutional rights be flexible to ensure public safety or should safety be compromised to protect individual rights?