“Islam terrorist attack” is a headline that doesn’t surprise society, people are used to hearing and associating slam with terrorism, because of terror attacks like 9/11, the bomber attacks at Ariana Grande concert in the United Kingdom or the bomb attack of 2004 in Madrid.
The mass media helps to create and promote an international public opinion that connects Islam with terrorism but sometimes the information isn’t enough to make a rational opinion about Islamism and Arabs.
The reality is that we cannot talk about Arabs, Islamist and Muslims as the same, because they are not. Usually, and as a consequence of misinformation and social media, people tend to think that Arabs are all Islamic people who wear turbans and that are capable of committing criminal actions in order to defend their religion. This helped to create stereotypes and Islamophobia, that according to the anthropologist Angeles Ramirez is racism against Muslim people.
Before continuing, it is important to clarify some important concepts. First of all, Arabs are all the people that were born in any of the 22 Arab countries in the world; like Iraq, Egypt, Syria, etc., being Arab doesn’t involve religion or political ideology. Muslim refers to the person that practice the religion where there is only one God called Allah and that Muhammad is the messenger of God, Muslim people exist all over the world, and even in an Arab country like Lebanon, the percentage between Christians and Muslim is the same. Being Islamic makes reference to the person that believes that Islam (the religion) creates a political ideology and also promotes the adaptation of the political and economic life to the mandates of Koran and last but not least the definition of someone Jihadist, that Is the person who uses violence to impose the Islamic religion.
Usually the majority of the terrorist attacks are organized by jihadist, but news presented them with really big mistakes that make people believe and create and image of all the Arab people as “dangerous” person. This conception of Arab people nowadays is a stereotyped for the refugee for Arab tourist.
Islamophobia is growing so fast that the CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations”) make a project to combat it, and that according to their website their mission is “to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding” .Arabs nowadays faced difficulties by living in some non-Arabic countries, because of the stereotypes that people have about them. The islamophobia is growing and that makes the necessity for Arabs and Islamist to be constantly defending themselves and trying to make a change of thoughts about what it really means to be Arab and Islamist
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