Growing Islamophobia in the United States

By Falak Naqvi

'Phobia' is an exaggerated and illogical fear of a particular situation or object. Accordingly, ‘Islam-o-phobia’ can be defined as unexplained fear, hatred and hostility towards Islam and the members of Muslim community as a whole. The concept is not new and such hostility towards Muslims based on negative stereotyping has been prevalent since the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. But a few recent acts of such hostility have called the sanity and modernity of Americans into question.

According to FBI reports, anti-Muslim hate crimes are five times more common today than before 9/11. It would be interesting to recount a few recent incidents. In Texas last month, a 14-year-old boy named Ahmed took a handmade clock to school to show it to his teacher and was in turn arrested because his teacher thought it was a bomb. In another incident, a Muslim woman was denied being given an unopened can of coke on a fight from Chicago to Washington because the attendant thought she would use it as a weapon. Such incidents often make me doubt the sanity of us humans in these modern times.

Yes, I agree there are radical groups within the Muslim community. But there are similar radical groups within the Christian or Jewish or for that matter every religious or ethnic community. Such radical individuals just use religion as a cover to shroud their acts. Their main agenda is mainly political. Stereotyping all Muslims based on the acts of a few people and spreading hostility and hatred against them is in no way warranted. However, a hope for a better America still exists. When a group of armed protestors organized anti-Muslim rallies across the country in October this year, they ended up inspiring acts of love and service when various interfaith networks in neighborhoods across US showed solidarity and support towards their Muslim friends.

#islam #islamophobia #muslim #stereotype