In this week’s reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist written by Mohsin Hamid, follows the life of a young man named Changez who initially moved from Pakistan to America to follow the American dream. The story continues to unfold showing the experiences Changez had before the attack on 9/11. Living in New York at the time, the results of the tragic event caused a shift in the way individuals viewed and treated Changez. Not only has this caused a shift in societal perspective of muslims but it has also brought more political tension between America and South Asian Countries.
After the event of 9/11 the incidents in hate crimes specifically targeting muslims increased drastically. Statistics show that year alone had the highest rate of hate crimes towards muslims. People started to target Muslims in America, by attacking, mistreating and destroying their place of worship. This was partly due to the association of fear that muslims were connected to acts of terrorism which after all led to rise in islamophobia. The idea of portraying muslims as terrorists has only caused a further division because muslims felt as though they weren’t openly being welcomed in America anymore. This can be seen in a more recent politics where former President Donald Trump passed a law by banning travel for only muslim countries. This situation and Trump’s attempt to push for islamophobia narratives has only caused a way higher incidents rate in attacks towards muslim when compared to the year 2001. Such incidents has only caused the muslim community to not feel safe and live in fear of being attacked. In order to move away from this notion of fearing muslims in our society, individuals would need to educate themselves about the religion and its followers first hand.
References:
Alfonseca K. 2021 Sep 11 [accessed 2021 Nov 14]. https://abcnews.go.com/US/20-years-911-islamophobia-continues-haunt-muslims/story?id=79732049
Abdalla J. ‘Under the prism’: Muslim Americans reflect on life post-9/11. 2021 Sep 10 [accessed 2021 Nov 14]. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/9/under-the-prism-muslim-americans-reflect-on-life-post-9
Hamid, Mohsin. 2007. The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
Thank you for your blog. You just told more things happened after 9/11 and the details of them. And I’ve learned the reasons of why they are treated differently. The connection with recent politics also helped me to realize the huge impact for Muslims.
I really appreciated your post because you highlight the treatment towards Muslims following the attacks on 9/11. I hadn’t realized how many Muslims were affected, and the extent to which people harassed or “othered” them. I have always been aware of the stereotypes, and knew how many Americans felt towards Muslims shortly after the attacks, but I hadn’t fully understood how bad it was and still is.
Hello! I really enjoyed reading about the way the Pakistani community was treated after the 9/11 event. I feel very bad for this community because they are being blamed as a whole for events very few individuals conducted. I believe the treatment of Muslims in the United States needs to take a drastic change. I believe this community should be provided with more opportunities to prove the ideas of many to be wrong.
This is a very important post because it highlights the detrimental consequences of assuming that “single story” narrative that we learned about. It is fascinating and saddening that, in the case of the Others of society, unforgivable acts by individuals become tied to their whole culture, race, or people simply because an entire nation of people feel that they need a bigger enemy to blame than the individual person. This post offers very valuable context to this week’s material and the way that the American sentiment towards Muslims has evolved (or devolved) over its history.
This context presentation gave me a better understanding of the negative effects on closing our countries borders to prevent foreigners from entering our country. I never thought about how there was a push for islamaphobia and that many people reacted negatively towards islamic people in our country because of it. Thank you for giving me a new perspective on this controversial event that recently occurred in our country.
This context post is really important to talk about. This is the often untold story of the events proceeding 9/11. Most people in my generation only know the after, but they don’t know what life was like before. I think that’s why this week’s reading is important.
Hi, thank you for your presentation. I learned so much, especially about the after affects of 9/11. It’s so unfortunate that even after all these years, as you mentioned, Islamophobia is still a rampant running problem in this country. In fact, it seems that people are becoming even more bold and proud while demonstrating their hatred towards Muslim people. When I hear about these events on the news, it makes me really wonder if this place is truly the “land of the free” for everyone or just certain people. I think that it goes to show how much work and critical thinking still needs to be accomplished so that our society can completely be obliterated of these biases.
Great post, I’ve never really been invested in learning the effects of 9/11 because I thought school would teach me all that’s needed, boy was I wrong. I knew that there were people that hated Islam but I didn’t know that there was islamophobia and now that it’s pointed out I can see so many instances where this was a thing.