Islamophobia After 9/11

   The time period during 9/11 was hard and mentally difficult for all of us. Whether you were an American citizen or not, it still took a mental tole on us. Whilst we were trying to be optimistic and try to overcome the outcome of this tragic incident, Muslim Americans were affected by this incident the most, negatively of course. After the incident, Muslim Americans were subjected to prejudice and hate crimes for something they didn’t cause. As time goes, after the 9/11 incident, Muslim hate has increased more than ever with more anti-Muslim activists.

Source 1

“Arabs and Muslims in the media after 9/11: Representational Strategies for a “Postrace” Era” is a journal article written by Evelyn Alsultany that gives us a short overview of what happened after the incident of 9/11 and how it had affected Muslim Americans. First starts by stating what our president’s response to the hate crimes directed towards Arabs and Muslim Americans. The president being George W. Bush who stated “the enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends: it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them” Alsultany, Evelyn. “Arabs and Muslims in the Media after 9/11: Representational Strategies for a ‘Postrace’ Era.” American Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 1. Even though the president personally states that Arabs and Muslim Americans aren’t the enemies that we should be fighting there are still TV commercia’s and articles that are used to condemn and make people view Muslims as the enemy. 

  The author of this article is Evelyn Alsultany. She is known for her “commitment to bringing Arab and Muslim Americans into the broader conversation about racial politics un the US” Evelyn Alsultany is a leading expert on the history of representations of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. She is known for being the author of “Arabs and Muslims in the media: Race and Representation after 9/11” which was in the New York University Press. She was also known for being the co-editor of the two volumes “Arab and Arab American Feminisms” and “Between the Middle East and the Americans” which both won honorable mention in the Arab American National Museum’s book award.

This article was posted on the American Quarterly, which was created in order to help people have, more knowledge about American culture and the history of citizens. The Johns Hopkins University press would be one-way people would study about America and have a better understanding of it. The Audience of the American Quarterly would be either students or people who are trying to learn more about America. This relates to the topic of Islamophobia after 9/11 by opening people’s eyes to the concern of Muslim American hate crimes and maybe to help stop it. The audience of this article would also be people that are attempting to help stop Islamophobia or people who would want to read about it. 

  The purpose of this article is to in a sense open people’s eye to what had happened after 9/11 as the topic of islamophobia is not a subject often discussed or talked about. It is also mostly to show the media was portraying Muslim and Arabs after the incident. We see that in “Yet a6 the same time that sympathetic portrayals of Arab and Muslim Americans proliferated on US commercial television in the weeks, months, and years after 9/11” also continues by stating that even when these TV commercials and ads were presented there were still Many “hate crimes, workplace discrimination, bias incidents, and airline discrimination targeting Arab and Muslim Americans.” 

   The genre of this article would be more informative. It was written to show people that even with the efforts of stopping Muslim hate crimes they still managed to continue. That even if the president himself made a speech about not hating Arabs or Muslims, the hate will continue. The author is very against the idea of hate crimes against Muslims and uses their knowledge in order to help end it, if by showing people how bad it had affected the Muslim America community during the years after the 9/11 incident.

  The author uses logos in order to deliver the message of how severe the hate crimes and islamophobia had been after 9/11. The author starts by stating “According to the FBI, hate crimes against    Arabs and Muslims multiplied by 1,600 percent from 2000 to 2001” This line shows the drastic change from before the incident to after it, with the amount of hate crimes increasing. The author also talks about cases of violence even murder caused by these hate crimes and airlines denying a passenger service for looking Muslim or Arab.

Source 2

   The newspaper article written “20 years after 9/11, Islamophobia continues to haunt Muslims’ by Kiara Alfonseca, starts by giving us a short summery of what happened on 9/11 and the terrorist group that had caused it. She then goes on to tell us about the effects the incident had on Muslim Americans, being “Mosques were burned or destroyed, and death threats and harassment followed many Muslims in the weeks following the attacks”. She then goes on to tell us about how the incident and the prejudice towards Muslim Americans played a big role in politics. Non supporters of Barack Obama have taken advantage of the Presidents heritage to use against him, claiming that he was Muslim, and of course at that time many republicans and democrats weren’t fans of Muslim Americans. 

       This newspaper article would be considered trustworthy and not bias because it is from a trusted news website being ABC News. Of course, a very famous news source wouldn’t be bias with about 22% of Americans thinking it’s a trustworthy source and about 36% of the American population think its exceptionally accurate. The audience of this articles would be people that normally watch news por read newspapers as it is a Newspaper article. Other audience might be students that are doing a research project and wanting to find a trustworthy source of information.

The genre of this article would be a newspaper article. The people expected to be interested in reading this would be people who mostly want to catch up on the latest news and what to know what is happening with the topic of islamophobia during the time. The tone of the author is quite neutral being that they are mostly stating facts and interviewing many people. If we were to talk about the people being interviewed, we would say that their tone would be offense, trying to defend Islam and Muslim Americans. During the 2016 election there was a rapid increase in Islamophobia even after the hate crimes being a bit less since the 2001 incidents. The article states that “According to the FBI, there were 481 incidents in 2001, followed by a significant decline in incidents the nest year—155” Then goes one to show the surge in hate crimes by stating “In 2015, there were 257 hate crimes against Muslims and 307 in 2016. The number of incidents has declined since then through 2019, the latest year for which data is available.”. The change in the amount of hate crimes every few years show how much the politics affects the public eye and how it affects the increase and decrease in the Islamophobia.

The stance of this newspaper article is just as the stance from the magazine article in which they both want to open the public eye to the topic of Islamophobia. They both have the same views over the topic and how it had affected Muslim Americans after the incident of 9/11. They both contain date from the FBI that shows the increase and decrease of Muslim hate. Another piece of statistics/logos this article has is “The Pew Research Center reported that roughly 75% of Muslim American adults said there is a lot of discrimination against Muslims in the U.S.” which is a very big percentage being almost ¾ of the population of Muslim Americans. 

Source 3

   The web source titled “Islamophobia After 9/11: How a fearmongering fringe movement exploited the terror attacks to gain political power” by Booth Gunter and Caleb Kieffer starts by telling us about how the Islamophobic ideas and ideals have come back to torture many Muslim Americans after the 20^th anniversary of 9/11. The authors continue to tell us about how the withdrawal of the American troops from Afghanistan had rekindled the deep hatred many Americans have for Muslims and Islam in general. The article goes on to tell us about the organizations led by many anti-Muslim leaders.

   Like the article before this article also relates the concern of Islamophobia to the topic of politics and how most of the leaders that created movements against Muslims who later ‘infiltrated’ the government under the rule of Trump which was period with the surge of Muslim hate. The logos presented in this article is when the authors stated “A 2013 report from the Center for American Progress identified $42.6 million donated to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009. And a 2019 report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations found $125 million funneled to Islamophobic groups through foundations and donor-advised funds between 2014 and 2016.” This shows how much money was donated for groups that condone Muslim hate, and that would want to rid of Muslim Americans.

   The genre of this article is a web source in which it states much information about anti Muslim groups and their leaders. What you would expect from a web source is for it to be read or used by students that have research or an academic interest towards this subject. The tone of the authors is neutral as well, just there to present information and not to defend or seem offended by any of the information. Their purpose is to show people how much Islamophobia is something any people seem to have and how the hate towards Muslims can cause many people to go to very high measures in order to make Muslim Americans miserable.

The authors use words the president said to show that not only American citizens have a certain hatred towards Muslims, but even the President himself. The authors quote “During his campaign, Trump had used data from a shoddy, online survey commissioned by Gaffney’s CSP to justify his call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Trump claimed that Muslims had a “great hatred” of America and that “our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.”” The president uses a series of pathos in order to trick citizens into thinking that Muslims are the enemy, and that America can’t continue to take these ‘horrendous attacks’ from Muslims, of course after that presenting Muslim ban from America.

Source 4 

   “Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11” by Lori Peek is a scholarly source in which summarizes Peeks research and experiments in order to calculate the amount of Muslim hate crime present in America post 9/11. Peek conducted a social experiment with about 140 Muslim Americans, both men and women, in order to collect their stories and understand them. Peek states that most of the Muslim hate categorizes into several hate crimes like “harassment, threats, physical violence, and job, educational and housing discrimination.” Peek first starts her research in New York then moves on to Colorado, in which most of the people she had interviewed stated that they were harassed subtly and non-subtly by the public. Mostly Muslims that portray themselves as Muslims by their attire or in women’s case hijabs.

 The genre of this article is that it is a scholarly source. This article was given as a review to an experiment done to know more about the topic of islamophobia and it also gives the audience a student based summary or input of the research Peek had conducted. It’s thought to be credible because this is a researcher that studies the subject of Islamophobia after the incident of 9/11. The tone of the writer is also quite neutral mostly summarizing and explaining the research conducted by Peek and the results accumulated from this research. The logos used in this article would be the research conducted by peek and the results given from it. 

There is really no stance in this article, it doesn’t really give a sort of hidden advice of what is happening is wrong. It’s just mostly about a social experiment conducted to see how bad the Muslim community had it after 9/11. It just states facts that show that Muslim Americans were prejudiced and were victims of hate crime. Its purpose like stated by the writer is to “Bear witness to Muslim American suffering caused by post 9/11 backlash”. Using the evidence of the Muslim hate crimes proves that many Muslim Americans didn’t have it easy during that time.

The texts relation to each other

    Each article was a different source, from web source, newspaper article, magazine article, to a scholarly article. Each article also has its own audience whether the audience are people trying to learn about the subject or want to research it. The tone of the articles is similar in the way that most of them have a neutral tone, mostly there to inform people about the subject. Each article contained information that had to relate to the subject of islamophobia and how Muslim Americans were attacked by hate crime from many citizens, and that’s what they have in common. They all have the same stance; they stand against islamophobia and state the cons and the horrible affects it had on Muslim Americans.

Work cited 

• Sheikh, Christine Soriea. Sociology of Religion, vol. 72, no. 4, Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 487–88, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41428346.
• Alfonseca, Kiara. “20 Years after 9/11, Islamophobia Continues to Haunt Muslims.” ABC News, 11 Sept. 2021, abcnews.go.com/US/20-years-911-islamophobia-continues-haunt-muslims/story?id=79732049.

• Alsultany, Evelyn. “Arabs and Muslims in the Media after 9/11: Representational Strategies for a ‘Postrace’ Era.” American Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 1, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, pp. 161–69, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41809552.

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• “Islamophobia After 9/11: How a Fearmongering Fringe Movement.” Southern Poverty Law Center, 17 Sept. 2021, www.splcenter.org/news/2021/09/17/islamophobia-after-911-how-fearmongering-fringe-movement-exploited-terror-attacks-gain.