Behind the backlash: Muslims American after 9/11 is the work of professor Lori Peeks, She writes about the Muslim faced discrimination and hostility after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. She states that everyone is aware of the changing social status and racism after 9/11. She tells that associating Muslims with the 9/11 terrorist are the main cause of bringing prejudice and violence in America. The Muslims are considered as the scapegoat of 9/11 are being harassed and discriminate that west give the blame and focused their anger toward the Muslim minorities.
Peek shows through their writing the racism, oppression and violence against Muslims. She gave their perception within writing that how Muslims is identified and treated by Americans differed from before and after 9/11 attack.A research conducted by Muhammad Abdul Wahid a student of ca Foscari University of Italy on Islamophobia: The Formation of Image in the three novels The Reluctant Fundamentalists by Mohsen Hamid, The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi, and Submission by Michel Houellebecq, where he states that how the racial attitude of peoples change after the geopolitical circumstances, that give rise to hatred and otherness which enclose in different religious terms. This attitude gives rise to both politico–religious form of racism commonly known as Islamophobia (Wahid, 2016) This study analyze the various incidence such as Rushdie Affairs, 9/11 attack, and various political issues which has affected the life of Muslim minorities in various western countries. The three novels represent the fear, prejudice, and stereotypes against Muslims and reflected the Muslim character that victimized by the racial discrimination in British, American, and French society. The study analyzes how Muslim fundamentalisms evolved out of racism.Another research conducted by Shannon Leigh Higgins on Influence of Media: How post 9/11 novels reactive to news coverage of Muslims in Amy Walden’s novel The Submission and 8Mohsen Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalists and Greg Hrbek’s novel Not on Fire but burning, where he stated about the role of media to present Muslims by stereotypical portray, associating Muslim with terrorist and influencing people to become more hateful and polarized toward Muslims. The study also analyzes the Muslims characters in various western countries and their professional carriers effected by the attitude of the western who showed resistant after the Muslims blamed for the various incidence such as 9/11 attack and 8/11 incidence of bombing the golden bridge.
(Higgins, 2016) The racial attitude of the western is directly related to media’s treatment of Muslims and their representation by the western journalists. The way Mo was represented as a villain in the novel The Submission and how the Muslims were criticized by media, just like in Reluctant Fundamentalists Changez dreams of Underwood Samson destroyed with the destruction of twin tower, In the novel Not On Fire but burning the attitude of the character Dorian toward Muslims shows that how the western dislike Muslims after they were traumatized. All these symbolize the way the media make the public doubtful toward Muslims by believing on media and use that opinion of media to justify their racism.The student of Muss Alpararsian University Kader Mutlu conducted research about racism in Othello that the unavoidable and devastating effect of racism change lives of Othello and Desdemona. It is observed that the prejudice of racism can restrain love and how it makes the people bad (Mutlu, 2013). It means racism play a great role to change and affects the life of peoples. Philomena Essed writes about racism in her article Everyday Racism in Encyclopidia.
com that everyday racism is a process of day to day violation of ethnic minorities through violate their civil rights, dignity and humanity either bigger or smaller type. The everyday racism is not about racists but about the practices which show the reflection of racism in a society, meaning that racism is a common societal behavior. The racial inequality expressed through the color blind racism, which is a term that is to account for racists system without legally sanctioned supremacy ideology. The everyday practices in an institution in which the dominant members automatically favor members of their own group not because of that want their own, but because they feel their culture is more superior the others and that they are more humans. The feel of supremacy of the white peoples, they may themselves become the agent of racism. (Essed, 2018) Thus we concluded from this article that racism is the everyday humiliation, disrespect, rejection, blocked opportunities, hostilities symbolically and the strict law applied only on the minorities group. This treatment of the white peoples and the belief that European derived culture or superior to other cultures gave rise to racism.
These types of everyday practices damage the peace and harmony of a society. 9 An article published in Encyclopedia Britannica by Audrey Smedley about racism that racialism is another term used for racism. Racism is any action, practices that show racial worldview. He summarizes the historical overview of racism especially in United State of America. The biggest originator of racism is the Nazism, fascism in Germany after world wars. After apartheid system and the discrimination of different minorities in America was the outrageous racism.
Those who practiced racism always appointed low-status jobs to the minorities and that are dominant groups of a society have completely power on politics economics and high jobs. The minorities experience physical violence; verbally abuse, disrespect and insult all have a great effect on self-esteem and social relations. He concluded that racism is the result of the physical difference between the peoples. Racism cannot be eradicate by law but beliefs about human differences can and do change as do all cultural elements. We can conclude that racism is practiced through times by certain dominant groups in order to maintain their power over political and economics of the world. (smedley, 2002).Jocelyne Cesari is an Associate at Harvard’s center for Middle Eastern Studies and the center for European Studies wrote a book on Muslims in the West after 9/11: Religion, Politics and Law in which she says that Muslims of United States and Europe become a great concern for the political system of the world after the attack 0f 9/11 as well as the bombing of 2004 and 2005 in Madrid and London. The western links the terrorism and Islam and raised question regarding Western Muslims, radical Islam and terrorism.
The opinion regarding these questions of the counter-terrorist is not enough to change the perspectives of the Westerns about Muslims. More ever, this book explores the situation of the Muslims in the status of liberalism in the foreign policies. It also explores the change in the concept of multiculturalism, secularism and immigrations policies which gave rise to international context the ‘war on terror’. ( cesaria, 2010). The purpose of this book is to explore the wrong concept about the Muslims and to eradicate those concepts from Western because the Muslims minorities faces a lot of difficulties due to the change in the policies concern minorities and the restricted rules for the minorities. The work of counter-terrorist is not enough to eradicate the perception of Westerns but other strategies should be adopted.
Sezay Youssein wrote in his articles post 9/11 workplace discrimination that after four years the Muslims, Arab-American as well as South Asian employees continues to report the work place discrimination. The employs at different places were harassed like in the New York Plaza Hotel and Fairmont Hotel management’s lawsuits were called “stupid Muslims” and even went as far to have things like workers having “Taliban” written on their key holders by upper management. This article also analyzed Changez which was also approached by one worker and even called him “Fucking Arab” and the workers in these hotels were called “terrorist” and “Osama Bin Laden”.(Youssein, 2013). The Muslims are being harassed by American in every place and were tortured by the Americans.
This is simply called Islamophobia, Americans are just afraid of Muslims not only due to 9/11 but also due to other incidence like in 7/7 Britain attack and others many incidence and the European thoughts that Muslims were responsible for all this. Moreover, Al-qaeda that were considered as Muslims.
