The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the twin towers in the United States of America really grieved the Muslim community in America with the effects being felt up to date.
Despite the fact that there were several Muslims in America who were victims of the attacks, Muslims in America are still being discriminated as a result of that incidence. To start with, Muslims in the United States of America comprise of over seven million people.
However, the September 11, 2001 incidence led to their great discriminated by the U.S. discriminative policies as well as laws that were enacted following the post September 11, 2001 incidence. As a matter of fact, it has been observed that many Americans have become less friendly to Muslims to the degree of displacing the previous leading discriminated groups of Hispanic, Afro-American as well as Native Americans.
Several American Muslims experience various forms of discriminations that range from physical attacks, casual comments, burning of Quran and Mosques as well as employment discriminations. From the outcomes of a study carried out on August 30, 2011, approximately 43 percent of Muslims in the United States of America had experienced harassment in 2010.
Over 52 percent of American Muslims lamented that the Muslim community in America were being subjected to government surveillance. It is clear that the September 11, 2001terrorist greatly destroyed the mutual relationship that existed between the American Muslims and other Americans in the United States of America.
Consequently, this has influenced the American Muslims who are living in the United States of America as they experience negative remarks as well as stereotypes. The greatest pain for American Muslims is associated to their special method of dressing and their unique names that easily disclose their religious affiliations for of stereotyping.
Furthermore, Arab Muslims are currently being gravely discriminated upon by the media through negative portrayal (Robert, 2005).
After over ten years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the discrimination of American Muslims still persists with the extent of their discrimination continuing to rise and particularly in year 2010 and 2011 with the introduction of the Anti-Sharia bills in approximately 20 States.
The bills were introduced by a 56 years old Jew referred to as David Yerushalmi with an objective of banishing Islam from the U.S. The Anti-Sharia bill introduced in about 20 States proposed a law that would make adherence to Islam a felony that should be punishable by 20 years imprisonment.
To support this bill, two aimed at making it unlawful the Islamic moral code that included religious practices such as prayers and feet-washing. The Anti-Sharia bill passed with a mass vote of 70-30 percent win.
However, the bill was considered as being very discriminative to American Muslims and it was blocked by an injunction that was issued a few weeks later by the federal judge who felt that the banning of Sharia was undemocratic as it was prejudiced against the Muslims.
Consequently, the Anti-Sharia campaigns are biased as they regard Muslims as second-class citizens in America. This is very harmful to the status of the American Muslims as these debates hasten the suitability of stereotyping of Muslims and expression of unconstructive analysis by public as well as government agencies such as the police.
The results released by Gallop polls in January 2010 showed that 53 percent of Americans had negative perceptions towards Islam while 43 percent felt prejudice towards Muslims.
Similarly, the results were in line with another poll results released by the same organization that indicated that 4 out of 10 leaders in every major religion in the United States of America supported the claim that Americans were prejudiced towards Muslim Americans with 66 percent of the Jews supporting this claim.
The Islamic law is regarded as being a debatable topic amongst the presidential contenders. Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, there has been a steady increase in the Islamophobia (Robert, 2005). On the other hand, during the mid-term election crusade, there was an increase of anti-Muslim discrimination and Anti-Islam.
Many Religious Right leaders and speculator politicians argued that Islam was not a religion but a political sect. They claimed that Muslims cannot be royal Americans and mosques are fronts for extremist jihads. This was noted by an increased number of politicians who advocated for Islamophobia in order to lure Americans to vote for them.
Consequently, many Muslims did not vote for the Republic Party during the 2008 and 2010 polls. It was only 2.2 percent of the American Muslims that voted for the Republic Party according to the poll results released by American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights Elections (Marable, 2009).
Nowadays, Muslims are more worried about losing their security clearances as the one witnessed by Jewish scientist in 1950s. During 1940s and 1950s, Jewish scientists were stripped their security clearances that made them lose their jobs or be downgraded to lower security projects.
Thus, the scenario presented in America is not different. For instance, a nuclear physicist named Moniem El- Ganayni who is an Egyptian immigrant was naturalized as an American citizen and his security clearance canceled in 2007 by the energy department.
This was unfair ruling because judges are never fair in such hearings as it is the government that decides who to give clearances and those to deny. In addition, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has noted an increased discrimination of Muslim employment since 2001 terrorist attacks. It was noted that complaints alleging anti-Muslims in the United States of America were over 800 in 2010.
This was a 60% increase since 2005. It is startlingly that in spite of Muslims comprising for less than 1% of the American populace, Muslims experience more than 21 percent of religious discriminations in the workplace. This is despite the burning of discrimination of people on basis of their religion inclination as early as 1964 by the Civil Rights Act.
A study conducted by non-profit Discrimination Research Center indicated that Muslims names have turned to become liabilities for Muslim job seekers. The study indicated that it is very difficult for a Muslim to get a white color job in the United States of America.
This has resulted in too many Muslims changing their names to adopt Christian sounding names in order to enable them get employment opportunities in America (Kidd, 2008).
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, America changed a lot. The Americans were enjoying a cordial relationship with Muslim American before the attack, but the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that happened resulted in great hatred between Americans and Muslim Americans.
The terrorist attacks that occurred escalated hate crimes that were committed against American Muslim who were considered to be Muslims. Those people who were highly targeted were those who were believed to Muslims from South Asia as well as Middle East.
Notably, the consequent anti-Muslim attacks in America rose from 355 to 1,501. The Arab American Institute protested of a high increase in the number of anti-Muslim abhorrence crimes that consisted of cruel threats, demolition of properties as well as attacks that some translated to deaths.
The extent of discrimination continued to increase and in 2007, 53% of American Muslims complained that it was very difficult for them to be Muslim. Most of American Muslims 19% complained that discrimination was the major problem that they were facing because of their Islamic religious affiliations.
Being perceived as terrorist was another problem that was cited to affect American Muslims after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with about 15% of American Muslims complaining about it. 13% of American Muslim complained that ignorance was also a problem that they were experiencing while stereotyping accounted for 12%.
54% of American Muslim complained that the United States of America government was biased to them and the anti-terrorism activities that were implemented to prevent further terrorists attacks in America were mainly directed towards American Muslims.
It was observed that some Muslim women in the United States of America who were distinctive hijab were occasionally harassed which resulted in them opting to stay at home or abandoning the practice. In 2009, a Muslim woman who was practicing hijab was her hijab pulled down following an argument with an American citizen.
Another incidence of harassment of Muslim women is the shooting of a Californian woman when she was taking her child to school because she was wearing a headscarf (Gomez, 1994).
Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, there was worry about potential radicalization of American Muslims. A poll that was conducted in 2007 revealed that approximately 16% of American Muslims aged 30 years and below support suicidal bombings against the locals such as those executed in 9/11. 11% of American Muslims claimed that such an attack was justified while those American Muslims who were over 30 years old is only 6% who supported such attacks.
9% over 30 and 5% under 30 years old opted to keep silent. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks contributed to the current high number of American Muslims who are playing high-level operations in al-Qaeda as well as other affiliate terrorism organizations.
Similarly, there has been noted a high number of American Muslims who are collaborating with terrorism organizations as a way of resentment because of their discriminations by their counterparts Americans because of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
It has been observed that more than 80% of all convictions who have were tied to global terrorist as well as local bombing after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks encompassed of defendants aggravated by fundamental Islamist agenda.
By 2009, the department of Justice revealed that about 47 episodes of local radicalizations and enrollment to jihadist terrorism consisted of approximately 125 individuals. Before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, there were less than 6 such incidences, but such cases increased to 13 after the terrorists attacks (Curtis, 2009).
Despite the high number of American Muslims who have been radicalized and recruited into jihadist terrorism, there has been noted a decline in the number of total indictments of terrorists from 47 in 2009,26 in 2010 and 20 in 2011. Similarly, the number of American Muslims who were indicted for supporting terrorism also decreased from 27 persons in 2010 to 8 in 2011.
Moreover, the number of terrorists’ incidents has also declined considerably. For instance, out of the 20 suspected cases of terrorism, it is only one person who has been charged with terrorism. There has been a great decrease in the number of individuals who have been charged with carrying out terrorist acts because in 2010, it is only 6 people who were charged with terrorism.
This decrease is contrary to believe of many people because it was universally anticipated that the number of terrorists attacks would escalate after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The perception of an increase in the number of domestic terrorist attacks could have been resulted from the high increase of American Muslims who were radicalized as well as recruited to jihadists following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The American Muslims constitutes of approximately 50% of all the terrorists defendants in the United States of America. Despite American Muslims accounting for only about 1% of the total U.S. population, it has been noted that American Muslims represent the majority of those Americans who tip authorities to alleged terrorist plots.
It is noted that American Muslim have been accused of tipping the authorities on 52 accounts for the 140 tipping incidents that have been documented after the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks (Williamson, 2005).
In summary, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States of America had greatly damaged the good relationship that previously existed between Americans and their counterparts American Muslims.
Nowadays, American Muslims are highly discriminated in all the spheres of their lives ranging from employment as well as been suspected as potential terrorists.
Reference List
Curtis, E. (2009). Muslims in America: A Short History. New York: Prentice Hall.
Gomez, M. (1994). Muslims in Early America. The Journal of Southern History, 60 (4): 682-683.
Kidd, T. (2008). American Christians and Islam. Princeton: Princeton University press
Marable, D. (2009). Black Routes to Islam. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Patricia, S. (2007). Islam in America. New York: Prentice Hall.
Robert, J. (2005). The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World. New York: Prentice Hall.
Williamson, J. (2005). The effects of Terrorist Attacks on American Muslims. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres.