Brandon Krampert
\nIn Motion Staff Writer<\/p>\n
This year marked the thirteenth year since the September 11 attacks in 2001. What comes to mind tends to be conspiracy theories or the continued mourning of loss. Around the dinner table, in cafes, at workplaces and study halls are people discussing where that event has taken the United States in terms of changes in U.S. government policy and attitudes towards each other.<\/p>\n
It has undoubtedly led to the war on terror, an unprecedented war without borders, it seems, where U.S. citizens more often than not associate terrorism with Muslim and Arab people. Equally as important is how Arabs and Muslims have been treated and portrayed in cities across the U.S.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s historically reminiscent and has often been contrasted to the treatment of Japanese-Americans after the Pearl Harbor attack during World War II.<\/p>\n
Since September 11, right-wing think tanks, which conflate Islam with terrorism have increasingly had more access to the news media such as the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. It ends up further shaping the public mind and creating negative stereotypes that are perniciously deceptive.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s very misleading when from 5 to 13 percent of Muslims around the world actually saw Al Qaeda in a favorable light before and after September 11 according to polls conducted in 2010 and 2013 by the Pew Research Center.<\/p>\n
According to statistics by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, violence and harassment against Muslim and Arab Americans, or people perceived to be Muslim such as Hindus and Sikhs, have also escalated since 2001 in the U.S., from public humiliation to violence to even murder.<\/p>\n
Last year, the Associated Press released a series of investigative stories that revealed in the wake of September 11, there was a unit within the New York Police Department, that had actively engaged in using informants to monitor sermons in mosques with no evidence of illegal activity, investigated numbers of mosques and Muslim student groups, as well as surveilled entire neighborhoods based on their ethnic demographics, with the aid of the Central Intelligence Agency. Equating Muslims with groups such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban is just like equating Christians with the Westboro Baptist Church or extremists that bomb abortion clinics.<\/p>\n
No matter if an individual or an institution becomes complicit and perpetrates these sorts of grotesque perspectives and behaviors, they must be challenged at every turn unless one wants to live in a place with a twisted logic; a logic without end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brandon Krampert In Motion Staff Writer This year marked the thirteenth year since the September 11 attacks in 2001. What comes to mind tends to be conspiracy theories or the continued mourning of loss. Around the dinner table, in cafes, at workplaces and study halls are people discussing where that Continue reading Islamphobia prevalent in post 9\/11 mindset<\/span>