Stereotypes And Muslims In America

Introduction

The conflict between the white ruling class and minorities such as blacks is an ongoing issue in America. As a minority group, Muslims in America are experiencing similar issues as Blacks. Muslim Americans experience stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination which causes a big hatred towards Muslims. Islam religion and Muslims are misrepresented by politicians, by media and by other forms of press publication. Such stereotypes create hardship for Muslims. Muslims are labelled as terrorists and people see them as a threat to society leading to discrimination, fear, and even violence. This can generate great stress for families, religious leaders and even children.

My research provides opportunity to learn how Muslims are feeling

"Interviews with 3627 Muslim Americans in 2001 and 2004 by the Georgetown University Muslim American Public Square (MAPS) project and 1050 Muslim Americans in 2007 by the Pew Research Center show that Muslim Americans are diverse, well integrated, and largely mainstream in their attitudes, values, and behaviors." (Muslims in America, 4) According to Jen’nan Ghazal, in her “Muslims in America” article Muslims presence in America causes fear and concerns for Americans. Most people believe that Islam encourages violence. Negativity towards Muslims is caused by the lack of knowledge about the Islam religion and people do not know enough about the Islam religion and believe just what they hear from the media about Muslims as problematic. When investigating the experience of being Muslim in America Ghazal states “In 2001, the US department of justice recorded a 1600 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes from the prior year” (Ghazal 40), reflecting the impact of rising hatred towards

Any identity can be used to create a social inequality and in this case the religious minority identity is being used to create injustice. Terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, reformed the religious minority identity of Muslim Americans which caused social inequality. After the terrorist attack on September 11 being a Muslim American is associated with the terrorism and created systematic inequality. Clearly the 9/11 attacks caused Muslims to be labeled negatively, but how it exactly happened is the important question here. Byng states that “a source of data for an empirical analysis of external identity construction is the media” (662). The media is a big disadvantage to give meaning to minority