Final Essay

When I first came to High School I was a normal freshman –a modest newcomer trying to navigate the hallways attracting as little attention as possible while still maintaining some semblance of a social life. Of course I knew people, but I relied on my friends to introduce me to others so I could ‘broaden my horizons.’ Now, just like any friend one might have, my friends knew all the unnecessary details about me – how I cried during UP, how I have every episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians DVR’d … and how I’m a Muslim. So naturally when my friends would introduce me to people they would say, “Hey, this is my friend Harris, he’s pretty chill” – and I never understood why, but almost all of my friends would interject the simple fact that “oh yeah – he’s Muslim.” Now to my surprise, the majority of people would playfully respond with “Oh, you’re a terrorist? Don’t blow me up,” and I would awkwardly play it off with a – “Good one.” Now I’m not one to get offended easily, in fact it’s seldom a comment or insult that offends me – rather ignorance, ignorance towards one’s cultural values, one’s struggles, and one’s beliefs. So one day after school I began to think about the causes of this Islamophobia and racial insensitivity – through stereotypes, hate speech, and the media; Its impact on society and the effect it has on people’s behavior, and finally some common sense solutions: things we all can do to combat this ignorance and alleviate the negative effects of this societal illness.
In targeting the source of Islamophobia and racial insensitivity we can pinpoint it to one source – the media, in the form of stereotypes, hate speech, and over encompassing ignorance.   Now we all know what stereotypes are and who society has applied them to – we know that African American’s are predominant athletes, Asians are awful drivers, and of course – how Muslims are terrorists; but where does this racial insensitivity truly come from? Psychology Today views these stereotypes as normal for human beings as the tendency to classify our experience into categories is a fundamental and universal aspect of human cognition. We create concepts in order to make sense of the endless complexity we encounter in our environment. This is a necessary part of human thought, allowing us to process information efficiently and quickly. In social categorization, we place people into categories. People also reflexively distinguish members of in-groups (groups of which the subject is a member) from members of out-groups. Furthermore, people tend to evaluate out-groups more negatively than in-groups. In this way, social categories easily lend themselves to stereotypes in general and to negative stereotypes in particular. Moreover, Chief Psychologist Gale Richardson asserts that the core of all racial insensitivity spawns from the media as society has a natural tendency to generalize any crime committed by a particular race to all crimes being committed by that particular race. On October 3rd 2011 CNN affirmed Mr. Richardson’s premise in saying that the media almost universally portrays Islam as an extremist religion that condones violence, for any reason. This type of view is the worst fear of the average, non-violent Muslim, as the actions done by a small minority are affecting the Islamic community as a whole. Such negative stereotypes evolve into hate speech as the media verbalizes this ignorance into attacks against specific races in order to influence society as a whole. A William Lind essay was headlined, "Why Islam is a Threat to America and the West," and called it a fifth column and religion of war. Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham) told NBC Nightly News that "Islam is a very evil and wicked religion." And in February 2002, Pat Robertson said Muslims "want to coexist until they can control, dominate and then, if need be, destroy. (You) can't say that Muslim religion is a religion of peace. It's not." Here in lies the basis of such cultural insensitivity and consequentially the basis of such profound Islamophobia as well as the truth that, the more we are racially insensitive, the more it becomes okay to be racially insensitive.
So how has this ignorance impacted our society and what are the effects of Islamophobia? In the case of 9/11 – 19 of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims took down the World Trade Center and attacked the pentagon, and despite the actions of one group of radicalist Muslims in no way representing Islam as a whole, the entire Islamic community, including myself, has felt its brutal fist. Five years the September 11th attacks, ABC News found that 48 percent of Americans believed that Islam encourages violence and a poll conducted by the Boston Globe found that over 60 perfect of Americans believed that Arabs and Arab-Americans should undergo special, more intensive security checks before boarding airplanes.  Even Today, the pattern of skepticism continues as a Washington Post poll released in September 2011 suggested that half of Americans harbor negative views of Islam, the highest number recorded since the al-Qaeda attacks in 2001 – such Islamophobia is especially hurtful to the dozens of innocent Muslim families who were victimized both directly – from the terrorist attacks killing their family members, and indirectly – from the blame they received over the attacks simple for being Muslim, despite being personally victimized by them. As Ayesha Siddiqi, human rights activist and chairwoman of APPNA SAYA put it, “All major religions in the world do not permit violence of any type, for any reason, and Islam is no exception.” Even with all the verbal abuse that has been taken against Islam and the mental effects it has taken upon society, here is not where the depth of the issue lies, but rather the “snowball effect” it creates – how insult muttered through ignorance can lead to action taken through ignorance. Although I was only in Kindergarten when the 9/11 attacks occurred I have felt its fury every 11th of September - as I look on the news and see a 60 year old man being beaten and stabbed to death simply because of his religion, or I notice people muttering hateful insults as they see a woman with a hijab come onto an airplane, or when I came home one day to “GO HOME TERRORISTS!!!” spray-painted onto my garage. Despite this physical nature of the argument, what’s more concerning is the fact that this racial insensitivity has found its way into the main stream. In 2002, the board game Ghettopoly was released, promising “playas” the amusement of “buying stolen properties, pimpin’ hoes, building crack houses and projects, paying protection fees, and getting car jacked” Just after 3 weeks of its release it gained a net worth of over 30 million and over 400 million copies sold worldwide.
So how do we solve this problem, how can we combat this ignorance and mitigate the profoundly negative effects racial prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance has on our society? Jihad. Not by the sword however, but by the mind. An Arabic term meaning ‘struggle’ and one surrounded by misconceptions through today’s media, Jihad is an Islamic principal taken to abolish any internal struggle. In the case of racial intolerance we must all establish a Jihad through spoken word and written speech to spread racial tolerance and end ignorance on such issues. My fellow peers, Terrorists attacked America to exacerbate racial intolerance within the United States and by expanding such animosity we are letting these terrorists win. It is up to us to take up an essential ‘Jihad’ within ourselves to end the insensitivity for all races, cultures and religions. By making these issues clear through speech and writing and educating the public about the realities and outcomes of such racial intolerance, we can establish that such cultural insensitivity is not okay in any respect. Sir Francis Bacon once said, “The human understanding, once it’s adopted a belief, draws on all else to support it.”  If every one of us takes action towards abolishing such intolerance and making this issue recognized, the human understanding of all others will have no choice but to support it. The American Institute of Psychology affirms this in saying that ending racism is as easy as being exposed to people who go against racism. Friends I challenge you to take action to stop this racial insensitivity so that the next time we see an Indian man owning a gas station we can see it for what it is – a man owning a business in America. And the next time an Asian gets a higher test score than you, its not because of their race – it’s because you’re a idiot! And the next time we see a Muslim boarding an airplane, we can see it truly is – A man using public transportation to get home on time. I’ll leave you with the words of one of the most influential speaker to ever walk this earth and a man who always knows exactly what to say– Drake. Who once emulated the true nature of racial tolerance in  saying “ I look at an ant and l see myself:  endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit. " We must all emulate this strength and pass it onto others in order to abolish racism once and for all. Such is the steps in my own Jihad - to abolish racial ignorance and intolerance in the minds of my fellow people.