Hot Topics: Examining Islamophobia in America
September 22, 2010
The planned construction of a Muslim community center near the World Trade Center has put Islam squarely in the center of a national debate over religious freedom and protecting the sanctity of a site where thousands perished in the 9/11 attacks. Against the backdrop of the mosque controversy, a Florida pastor threatened to burn the Muslim holy book and battles over mosques have broken out in other communities around the country. The events sparked a Time cover story: “Is America Islamophobic?” At a recent summit in New York City, U.S. Muslim organizations joined in solidarity to support the project in spite of a rise in anti-Muslim sentiments and rhetoric that has accompanied the debate. Deepa Kumar, a professor of media studies at the School of Communication and Information, weighs in on the anti-Muslim fervor and the role of the media in shaping public perception. Kumar’s area of research includes media, war, and imperialism as well as Islam, the Middle East, and U.S. foreign policy. She is active in social movements for peace and justice.
Rutgers Today: Do you think there is widespread fear of and animosity toward Muslims in the United States?
Deepa Kumar: Unfortunately, yes. I don’t think, however, that this anti-Muslim attitude comes from regular Americans. Rather, since the events of 9/11, the mainstream media and the political elite have helped generate an attitude toward Muslims that has been largely negative. Most recently, this rhetoric has been taken up a few notches by forces such as the Tea Party Initiative. The controversy around the planned Islamic community center in lower Manhattan was polarized by groups on the far right of the political spectrum. One such group is "Stop Islamization of America," which is based on the premise that Muslims are conspiring to take over the U.S. These forces managed to frame the debate in such a way that you either had to support the families of 9/11 or the center. This is a false choice, since many of the victims’ families have come out in support of the center. But given this limited choice, people who otherwise might not harbor anti-Muslim sentiments found themselves against the center.
Rutgers Today: Do you support the plan to build an Islamic center near the World Trade Center?
Kumar: I believe Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is trying to change public perceptions of Muslims to counteract images of fear and terror associated with Islam. He chose the location two blocks from ground zero so he could present a different face of Islam, one that is more representative of the more than 1.5 billion Muslims around the world who have no sympathy for the actions of the extremists. Shouldn’t we, as a country that guarantees religious freedoms, permit him to offer a different perspective of his culture?
Rutgers Today: If you feel most Americans don’t have animosity toward Muslims, why do you think anti-Muslim rhetoric is prevalent?
Kumar: The majority of Americans have been manipulated by a politics of fear generated after the events of 9/11. Every country that seeks to obtain the consent of its citizens for war must construct an enemy that is feared and hated. When President George W. Bush declared that we were involved in a “war on terror,” we were told that the new enemy was the vicious Muslim terrorist. This generated a politics of fear similar to that which existed during the Cold War when we were told to fear the Soviet Union and “communists” in our midst. After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were vilified and more than 100,000 descendants of Japanese origin in the U.S. were put into concentration camps. Over half a century ago, Japanese Americans were collectively blamed for the attack at Pearl Harbor. Today all Muslims are viewed as responsible for the events that took place on 9/11.
Rutgers Today: Do you think this level of tension always existed between Muslims and non-Muslims in America? If so, why now are the tensions so apparent?
Kumar: Strains of anti-Muslim attitudes have existed in the United States for over a century. Yet, we did not witness large-scale discrimination against Muslims and Arabs in the way we have since 9/11. As civil rights groups have documented, not only have Muslims been the victims of hate crime they also have been racially profiled, imprisoned indefinitely without the ability to go to court, deported, and tortured in secret CIA prisons around the world. Just like during World War II, when there was no public outcry around the mass punishment being meted out to Japanese and Japanese Americans; today, too, there isn’t enough attention cast on the violations of Muslim Americans’ civil liberties.
Unfortunately, the logic that all Muslims are worthy of suspicion has been accepted without much debate. For example, in 2006, when a company based in the United Arabs Emirates was contracted to manage several U.S. seaports, the new management became a debate about national security and whether a foreign company could be trusted to run these ports. Yet, the ports were previously being run by a British company. The underlying argument was that Muslims cannot be trusted.
Rutgers Today: What role do you think the media has played in shaping the perception of Muslims? Have the media encouraged or discouraged fear toward Muslims?
Kumar: Hollywood has produced a steady stream of films that reinforce stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims. These stereotypes include images of Arab men as barbaric, violent, gaudy, lascivious, and of Muslim majority countries as uncivilized, misogynistic, irrational, and undemocratic.
The mainstream news media in the U.S. take their cues from the “primary definers of news;” that is, people who are the key political and economic leaders. These members of the political elite, with some notable exceptions, have branded the Muslim community as untrustworthy and anti-American. Largely, mainstream media have not deviated from this script.
Over the last few months, however, we have witnessed a few counter examples. As the backlash against the Islamic community center grew more hostile, some media outlets started to push back because the notion of religious freedom had come under attack. The very notion of the U.S. as a multiracial and open-minded society was under threat. In this context, Time magazine did a cover story titled “Is America Islamophobic?” The New York Times questioned America's religious tolerance in the days leading up to the proposed Quran-burning set to take place in Florida. The Quran-burning which was averted in Florida but carried out elsewhere are, in my opinion, reminiscent of the cross-burnings in the South that served to intimidate African Americans.
Rutgers Today: Do you think there is widespread fear of and animosity toward Muslims in the United States?
Deepa Kumar: Unfortunately, yes. I don’t think, however, that this anti-Muslim attitude comes from regular Americans. Rather, since the events of 9/11, the mainstream media and the political elite have helped generate an attitude toward Muslims that has been largely negative. Most recently, this rhetoric has been taken up a few notches by forces such as the Tea Party Initiative. The controversy around the planned Islamic community center in lower Manhattan was polarized by groups on the far right of the political spectrum. One such group is "Stop Islamization of America," which is based on the premise that Muslims are conspiring to take over the U.S. These forces managed to frame the debate in such a way that you either had to support the families of 9/11 or the center. This is a false choice, since many of the victims’ families have come out in support of the center. But given this limited choice, people who otherwise might not harbor anti-Muslim sentiments found themselves against the center.
Rutgers Today: Do you support the plan to build an Islamic center near the World Trade Center?
Kumar: I believe Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is trying to change public perceptions of Muslims to counteract images of fear and terror associated with Islam. He chose the location two blocks from ground zero so he could present a different face of Islam, one that is more representative of the more than 1.5 billion Muslims around the world who have no sympathy for the actions of the extremists. Shouldn’t we, as a country that guarantees religious freedoms, permit him to offer a different perspective of his culture?
Rutgers Today: If you feel most Americans don’t have animosity toward Muslims, why do you think anti-Muslim rhetoric is prevalent?
Kumar: The majority of Americans have been manipulated by a politics of fear generated after the events of 9/11. Every country that seeks to obtain the consent of its citizens for war must construct an enemy that is feared and hated. When President George W. Bush declared that we were involved in a “war on terror,” we were told that the new enemy was the vicious Muslim terrorist. This generated a politics of fear similar to that which existed during the Cold War when we were told to fear the Soviet Union and “communists” in our midst. After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were vilified and more than 100,000 descendants of Japanese origin in the U.S. were put into concentration camps. Over half a century ago, Japanese Americans were collectively blamed for the attack at Pearl Harbor. Today all Muslims are viewed as responsible for the events that took place on 9/11.
Rutgers Today: Do you think this level of tension always existed between Muslims and non-Muslims in America? If so, why now are the tensions so apparent?
Kumar: Strains of anti-Muslim attitudes have existed in the United States for over a century. Yet, we did not witness large-scale discrimination against Muslims and Arabs in the way we have since 9/11. As civil rights groups have documented, not only have Muslims been the victims of hate crime they also have been racially profiled, imprisoned indefinitely without the ability to go to court, deported, and tortured in secret CIA prisons around the world. Just like during World War II, when there was no public outcry around the mass punishment being meted out to Japanese and Japanese Americans; today, too, there isn’t enough attention cast on the violations of Muslim Americans’ civil liberties.
Unfortunately, the logic that all Muslims are worthy of suspicion has been accepted without much debate. For example, in 2006, when a company based in the United Arabs Emirates was contracted to manage several U.S. seaports, the new management became a debate about national security and whether a foreign company could be trusted to run these ports. Yet, the ports were previously being run by a British company. The underlying argument was that Muslims cannot be trusted.
Rutgers Today: What role do you think the media has played in shaping the perception of Muslims? Have the media encouraged or discouraged fear toward Muslims?
Kumar: Hollywood has produced a steady stream of films that reinforce stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims. These stereotypes include images of Arab men as barbaric, violent, gaudy, lascivious, and of Muslim majority countries as uncivilized, misogynistic, irrational, and undemocratic.
The mainstream news media in the U.S. take their cues from the “primary definers of news;” that is, people who are the key political and economic leaders. These members of the political elite, with some notable exceptions, have branded the Muslim community as untrustworthy and anti-American. Largely, mainstream media have not deviated from this script.
Over the last few months, however, we have witnessed a few counter examples. As the backlash against the Islamic community center grew more hostile, some media outlets started to push back because the notion of religious freedom had come under attack. The very notion of the U.S. as a multiracial and open-minded society was under threat. In this context, Time magazine did a cover story titled “Is America Islamophobic?” The New York Times questioned America's religious tolerance in the days leading up to the proposed Quran-burning set to take place in Florida. The Quran-burning which was averted in Florida but carried out elsewhere are, in my opinion, reminiscent of the cross-burnings in the South that served to intimidate African Americans.
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