Muslims victimized by stigmas

EDITOR's NOTE: This article originally published in The Advocate on Sept. 14, 2011. To view original post, visit AccentAdvocate.com.

Barbara Smith came to campus Monday with the 10th anniversary of the greatest terrorist attack on American soil still fresh in her mind.

She saw an Arab cab driver dropping someone off at the college and she thought, "Thank God we got through Sept. 11."

She took a moment as her eyes watered and her throat closed.

"It's hard stuff," she said.

Smith, a 59-year-old registered nurse, came to terms with her prejudices — and thoughts many Americans share since nearly 3,000 people died that Tuesday morning — regarding a connection between Islam and terrorism.

"It bothered me because I put the two together," she said. "I need to let go."

This was not Smith's first encounter with Muslim stereotypes and her preconceived notions of their religion. Smith spent three days in a hijab, traditional head coverings worn by Muslim women, after being asked to wear it at last semester's Club Rush.

"I decided to walk through my own prejudices," she said. "Obviously I didn't look Middle Eastern, but some white people are Muslim. All kinds of people are Muslim."

Islam is the second largest religion in the world with 1.3 million followers, most of whom live outside of the Arab world. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, 20 percent of the world's Muslim population is Arabic-speaking.

The three major religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, share central stories and stem from the teachings of the prophet Abraham.

"There is a close link between Judaism, Christianity and Islam," humanities and philosophy department Chairperson David "Dejarah" Houston said. "It's all the same thread."

Judaism was the first of the three monotheistic religions founded and is, in a sense, more traditional, Houston said. Christianity, the most populous religion in the world, followed and embraces the Old Testament. Islam, Houston said, embraced all of Judaism and Christianity when it was created.

"It all comes from the same place," he said. "Muhammad (Islam's central prophet) said Jesus (from the New Testament) is one of the prophets and Abraham (from the Old Testament) is one of the prophets."

Psychology major Ali Riz, an immigrant from the Fiji Islands, said in his home country, religion is a personal choice and disputes over it are rare.

"We don't have any race wars over there like they do here," the 31-year-old Muslim said. "It's pretty neighborly. I had Buddhist and Catholic baby sitters.

"As long as you believe in a higher power and be a good person," he said, "that's all that matters."

The use of imagery, scapegoats and fears of ideological differences, however, continue to perpetuate the stereotype of Muslims as terrorists.

Economics major Zadia Saunders, 20, called it religious profiling.

"If you see someone who looks like this, be scared, your life is in danger," she said cynically. "It's horrible."

Farooq Syed was born and raised in Concord. The 30-year-old speaks English elegantly, cuts his hair short and worked as a manager at AT&T before his new job at Fry's Electronics.

But his Pakistani name and thick black beard make him a target at airports.

"It really saddens me," the engineering major said, wearing a collared shirt, khakis and a black shoulder bag to carry his computer. "There is still a lot of intolerance in this country."

He said the lessons he learned growing up in the Bay Area taught him to accept all people and their beliefs, but in areas without diversity, like the Southeastern United States, intolerance is evident.

Syed also said a poll he saw showed Americans' views on Islam and violence vary according to age.

A Pew Research Center poll released in March said 58 percent of people ages 18-29 said Islam was not more likely than other religions to encourage violence. Contrarily, 46 percent of those polled who are 50 and older said it was more likely.

Politics also played a part in the poll. Sixty-six percent of those who identified as conservative Republicans responded affirmatively to the question and 61 percent of liberal Democrats disagreed.

Syed said corporate media reinforce stereotypes of Muslims to divert opposition to the white-collar criminals on Wall Street.

"The media does a really good job brainwashing its audience of who their enemies are and aren't," Syed said. "They're focused on people who look like me, like I'm more of a threat than the people responsible for the crisis in this country.

"The economic disaster we're going through has nothing to do with (Osama) bin Laden or al-Qaida," he said. "It's the Wall Street bankers. People need to wake up and realize that."

The war on terror, Syed said, is a new age Red Scare.

"It was communism 50 years ago. The new enemy is Islam," he said. "Whatever suits the military industrial complex is the convenient enemy."

The Sept. 11 attacks directly resulted in American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in the search and fight against bin Laden. It took 10 years to find the head of al-Qaida, but American special forces killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2.

In addition to the killing of bin Laden, Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein was found and killed as a result of the American invasion of the country and a search for weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.

These American military operations, which Syed called adventurism in the Middle East and Africa, only "add fuel to the fire."

"If you go around the world killing people, you make a lot of enemies and payback is a bitch," he said.

"Most Muslims around the world are victims of terrorism," he said. "To name the victim the culprit is a very big injustice."