"Islamophobia is not a race, ethnicity, or nationality. It's a set of ideas," The Atlantic published.
As I was going through The Washington Post's front page articles last week, one really stopped me, and it broke my heart. A Muslim woman dressed in traditional clothing was window shopping in New York City when a man pulled out a lighter and set her blouse on fire.
What really broke my heart about it is the simplicity of this crime. It is still being investigated and hasn't been ruled a hate crime yet, but if it is then what does that mean? It means that we, as a population, have allowed the stereotypes of Islamic individuals to cloud our judgment. If I learned anything from social psychology, it's that we allow stereotypes to do all of the thinking for us.
If you believe you aren't guilty of this, you're wrong. It's just the way our brain works- we see or meet a person, and in a split second, whether it's correct or quite illogical, we immediately categorize this person. We rely on this so heavily in our everyday lives that we don't stop to think about the dangers of it. Not long ago, I was talking on the phone with somebody and she said she saw a school bus with a few "too many" Muslim children on it. Her exact words were: "Where did they all come from? Why are they all together?"
If we didn't have a set stereotype of Islamic individuals, this wouldn't be something that crosses our mind. But it can't be avoided. The United States has a complicated history with this religion, so it is to be expected, but when it gets to the point where we are harming innocent Muslim women on a street in New York, solely because she is dressed in a hijab, it calls for all of us to stop and think about these stereotypes.
Islamophobia makes us, as a nation, look bad. When reporters and journalists say that the United States is Islamophobic, there are going to be inevitably negative connotations. The earliest meaning literally describes prejudice and hostility toward Muslims, but not necessarily an "irrational fear of Islam." It's a term that has been normalized when speaking about the United States, but it's to be expected.
For example, since September 11, 2001, the process of boarding airplanes has changed drastically. It takes significantly longer, with more screening involved. A Buzz Feed article wrote that a woman was 'profiled' and stopped at least 10 times at the airport during her trip to a wedding. This included after passing through security, being stopped over and over again, and then later being questioned and held overnight.
Life after 9/11 for Muslims in America has changed drastically: not all Muslims have the same agenda, yet there are people that treat them that way- like the man that had the nerve to set a woman on fire in the middle of New York City, the officials that stopped a Muslim family in the airport more times than necessary. In December of last year, Donald Trump called to ban all Muslim travel to the United States. This is still a campaign on his website.
NBC says that anti-Muslim hate crimes are, according to the FBI, five times more likely than they were before 9/11. That day changed America forever, in more ways than one. The act of 19 Islamic extremists has forever changed the way Muslim-Americans are perceived in the country.
