These so-called “no-go zones” ban all non-Muslims from entering, including police.

“No-go zones.” (Islamophobia 2015) This is the term being attributed to areas of religious discrimination which are appearing everywhere it seems, forcing non-Muslims out of these areas unreasonably. How are they allowed to do this?? The Muslims must be wreaking havoc inside their walls, breaking any normal laws and using their crazy terrorist rules instead, wrecking any sense of normalcy and trapping anyone caught inside their reign. These can only lead to ISIS outbreaks everywhere, right? Consider for a moment that all of that information is false. “No-go zones” are a falsification produced by the real plague, which goes by the name of Islamophobia. Whether reported by Fox News or Bobby Jindal (Islamophobia 2015), this misinformation is force fed to us by the ones that we are supposed to trust.

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Islamophobia is a threat to society. Looking at the origins of it, through politicians or celebrities or even news networks, as shown above, it’s not hard to wonder why it stuck. Though really examining it, Islamophobia is highly questionable; it derives mostly from inaccurate stereotypes made up by those who really have no complete interactions with anyone of the Islamic faith. In other words, they’re making up reasons to hate Muslims. Not only this, but they call for action to react to these “threats”. For example, Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plan involves a system where Muslims would be required to “register in a national database.” (Rosenthal 2015) The problems with this shouldn’t even need to be explained, but yet these sorts of ideas keep showing up.

Now here’s something a bit more real than the inexistent “no-go zones”. In Susan Shabazz’s culture, it is custom that she wears a burka. There’s nothing wrong with this. She gets home from work early one day, and is in a baking mood, so she wants to make some cookies for her kids before they finish school for the day. However, she didn’t have eggs, so she needed to go to the store. She went to the only grocery store in her town, because if she took the trip to the next closest one then she wouldn’t be back in time. However, the speed of the trip comes with its tradeoffs. Upon entrance, the men at the register stop their conversation. After exchanging a couple words, the one behind the counter shouts over to her – “We don’t sell to towelheads in this establishment.” She tried to ignore it, going to pick up the milk, but a reiteration of “Y’hear me? Or are those rags making you deaf?” made her replace the milk in its slot, mutter an apology, and head out of the store. One of the men follows her out. “And don’t come back now, ya hear? F---in’ terrorist raghead scum.” Luckily, he didn’t follow her home. No cookies today.

Bigotry doesn’t really care who you are. Hatred consumes all placed in its path.

Now, by no means is this to say all racism and religious discrimination comes from racist store owners with accents. Everyone can be prejudiced, and with current events being as they are with unrest in the Middle East, perhaps the easiest path is to not think, and decide that all Middle-Eastern looking people, no matter where they’re from, are evil. Ignorance is highly prevalent, but Islamophobia has no excuse.

Now, it is a common argument against Islamophobia to say that a very, very small portion of Muslims are terrorists. However, it is also commonly reasoned in response that well, what percentage of terrorists are Islamic? This statement alone is highly misleading. In fact, before doing the research, I also was very misinformed as to the answer to this question. The truth? Between 1980 and 2005, according to the FBI, 94% of terrorism in the United States was conducted by non-Muslims (Obeidallah 2015). In fact, in 2013, Americans were more likely “to be killed by a toddler than a terrorist.” (Obeidallah 2015) A very miniscule percentage of Muslims are “terrorists”. Additionally, only a small percentage of terrorists are Muslim. Furthermore, terrorist is such a broadly used term. The “enemy” (which in itself, is a ridiculous concept) has come to be labeled as all terrorists. The US and its allies have been fighting terrorism in the Middle East for over a decade. Yet, that is not all they’ve been fighting. The focus is kept on the “war on terror” so that the public doesn’t completely abandon their support for the conflict. ‘Our boys will keep killing terrorists, yep, support our troops while we combat evil, don’t worry about the fact that ISIS has risen up even after all our apparent efforts to stop terrorism. We’ll stop them too, just like we did the terrorists. Give us time.’ To clarify, the military isn’t necessarily at fault here, but it is important to re-examine what we’ve been fighting for in the Middle East.

Islamophobia is a plague. If it is left unattended, it will grow its roots and further sink into the domain of social ideology. The time is now to inspire change. The dominant group, being those not of the Islamic faith, has the social and moral responsibility to ensure the fairness of its actions and mindsets. There is no utilitarian appeal to Islamophobia, there is no greater good in exhibiting an unfounded mistrust in Muslims. Those who have Islamophobia may very well likely be more dangerous than the Muslims they target. In fact, this is almost purely a moral issue. Islamophobia is not fair, as it ignores the rights of Muslims, and works against justice and virtue. The question remains: What is the basis for Islamophobia? As it stands in my mind, there is no reasoning, ethical or otherwise, why Islamophobia is justified or acceptable.

Don’t be on the wrong side of progress, avoid the bigoted mindset of Islamophobia; it has no place in modern society.

References

Islamophobia in the 2016 Presidential Election. (2015, September 28). Retrieved December 1, 2015, from http://www.islamophobia.org/

Obeidallah, D. (2015, January 14). Are All Terrorists Muslims? It’s Not Even Close. Retrieved December 1, 2015, from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/14/are-all-terrorists-muslims-it-s-not-even-close.html

Rosenthal, A. (2015, November 20). Donald Trump's Horrifying Plan for American Muslims. Retrieved December 1, 2015, from http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/donald-trumps-horrifying-plan-for-american-muslims/?_r=0

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Thank you for reading my article, and I apologize for the infuriating title, but I find that it's more effective on these sorts of topics to pretend to start with the opposing view. This is an article I wrote for my Focused Inquiry class, which is based on developing critical thinking and writing. The article is dated 2015.12.01. I hope you enjoyed reading this, and encourage you to read my other posts if you like my writing.

To clarify, the map at the beginning of the article is a map of zones urbaines sensibles (ZUS), areas of higher crime which might be targets for development projects. The map is not based off Islamic populations.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below~