The Treatment of Juvenile Muslims and Arabs in the United States of America

Ever since the world trade center bombings took place on September 11, 2001 juveniles Muslims and Arabs have been treated differently. Since that tragic and horrifying day, Muslim and Arabs have been called many hateful and hurtful names. Some of the words that have been used to describe Muslims and Arabs have been words such as killers, radicals, psychopaths, murderers, suicide bombers, and even the term, (which is used often by Americans to profile Muslims and many other Middle Eastern people) terrorists. The reason that many Americans call Middle Easters terrorists is because they remember the events that took place on the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Muslim Americans and Arabs face a lot of hate and many other things while they are here in America. While they are present in America, people racially profile, stereotype, discriminate, and mistreat them every day on so many different levels. Even in the courts or when they do something wrong, they always get hated on. Here is some information on how Juvenile Muslims and Arabs are mistreated in America.

According to The Treatment of Arab Americans Today, Hussein stated “Recent Hollywood movies both reflect and perpetuate these stereotypes. Movies like the Siege, which depicts the U.S. military declaring martial law and imprisoning American Muslims and Arab Americans following a series of terrorists bombings, graphically connects Islamic religious practices like prayer, ritual cleansing, Islamic dress and beards, and even the American-Arab anti-discrimination committee.” Anyone can understand his logic and has seen it for themselves in movies where they have Middle Eastern people in movies, what they are portrayed as, and what their actions are in the movie. More than likely they are the villain(s) in most cases. They also depict the roles that Arabs and Muslims play in these movie films also. Juvenile Muslims in most movies are mocked or used as jokes or punchlines. In most cases they are known as the enemy or terrorists. According to the Cair post, movies such as The World Trade Center, Zero Dark Thirty, Seal Team 6, & Reign Over Me, are just a few films that use Middle Easters as terrorists.

The stereotypes that Juvenile Muslims and Arabs go through is unforgettable. There are cases of where Muslims and Arabs fall victim to stereotyping in the events of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in the year 1995, and also the Midair explosion of the TWA Flight 800 in Long Island in 1996. White American supremacists were identified as the terrorist suspects in the Oklahoma City bombing, but according to the Treatment of Arabs Today, Arab Americans in the United States reported intimidation and harassment in the upcoming weeks. A mosque was set ablaze, and an Iraqi woman had a miscarriage after men were screaming and shouting at her telling her “go back to where you came from.” They also busted a pregnant woman windows out of her home. Another report on the intimidation and harassment was a young Muslim woman (who was born in America) said that cars were honking their horns at her in the streets, when she went into local stores people stayed completely away from her, and people even shouted at her telling her to also go back to where she came from.

As people already know, the fact that Arabs and Muslims are being racialized as terrorists is no surprise. The media in the earlier years and even up to this year are still identifying Arabs and Muslims as terrorists. According to The Treatment of Arabs and Muslims in America, “In 1999 a bipartisan coalition in congress sponsored a resolution condemning anti-Muslim intolerance and discrimination urging recognition that organization that foster such intolerance create an atmosphere of hatred and nothing that law enforcement agencies should avoid the rush to judgment that followed the Oklahoma City bombing.

However, just before congress adjourned, the bill was effectively gutted and pulled off the calendar.” President of the Arab American Institute, James Zogby said “instead of becoming a slave to heal the wounds of the Muslim community, this has become evidence of the problems that created the wounds in the first place.” As just read, there have been steps to try and stop the racial discrimination and the prejudice of the Arab and Muslim people, but it was not effective enough or given a fair chance to at least try out because it was gutted and pulled down off of the calendar.

Another thing that Arabs and Muslims fall victim to while being present in either the Middle East, or even in America as being portrayed as violent or aggressive human beings. According to Civilrights.org, Kareem Shora, ADC’s executive director, stated that in the 1990s, his organization received an average of 70-80 complaints a year about violence or discrimination against Arab Americans since 2002. However, the group has received around 120-130 each year. The number of violent crimes against Arab Americans is down from the 700-plus documented by ADC in just a few weeks immediately following September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, but Shora says, the late remains higher than pre-sept 11 levels. Shora also said that the states may not represent the full extent of the problem since many hate crimes go unreported. This is because either the person is too afraid to report the incident, or do not fully know how to report what happened to them or someone else. A hate crime is known as a criminal act that is motivated by race, color, gender, religion, or nation origin. These hate crimes are often done against persons, property, or society.

According to the recent FBI statistics, there were 155 anti-Muslimism hate crimes committed against Arabs and Muslims in the year during the year 2012. The deadliest of these was the Sikh temple shootings in Wisconsin. What happened was in this situation was, a white supremacist incorrectly believed that he was attacking Muslims, but he murdered six Sikh and was then shot by police before he tried killing himself. Since the September 11.2001 attacks, 30 anti-Islamic hate groups have been created in the US, according to the southern poverty law center. This group was formed in the year 1971 to fight racism against black people in the south. Richard Cohen, who is the president of the Sothern Poverty Law Center said, “We’ve seen some horrible crimes committed against people who are perceived as Arabs or Muslims.”

The hatred that juvenile Arabs and Muslims face on a day to day basis will never go away. It’s almost like hating someone for the color of their skin because you can see or feel that they are up to no good. Things are getting worse and worse for not only juvenile Arabs and Muslims in America, but just their people overall. It’s getting so bad that even presidential runner Donald Trump had to say what he wanted and will do if he wins the presidential election this year. He also did not have nice things to say about Arabs or Muslims in America. As a matter of fact, he wanted a complete shutdown from Muslims and Arabs entering and leaving the United State of America. Trump stated “I think Islam hates us. We have to get to the bottom of it. And I can’t allow people [Muslims and Arabs] coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States.”

Trump also shared that “I back a total complete shutdown of the Muslims entering the United State until we can figure out what the Hell is going on.” Trump later commented saying that he believed that what he said was necessary, and he said he wanted to do this so that the United States can be protected by Islamic Extremists. He also said that “If we do not have this shutdown, we will have more events like the World Trade Center’s bombings, or even worse.”

According to Pew polls, Polls that were carried out in Muslim countries after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York did indeed show that minorities were prepared to say they supported Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. But, an overview of Pew polls shown from the year 2003 shows the support for Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda was declined across the Muslim world before he died in 2012 by Seal Team Six. A lot of Muslims that were polled by Pew last year said that suicide bombings could never be justified against civilian targets in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Juveniles also fight in terrorists’ groups such as al-Qaeda, and ISIS.

The big question that Americans are asking is where did these Middle Eastern people come from, or what are they doing here in America? The question is, what are we all doing here in America? Some people hate Muslims and feel that they have no right to be here. The following research may be surprising of where they came from and how they got here. According to Arabs in American, before Arabs started immigrating to America (United States) in the 19th century, earlier travelers of Muslim descent are known to have landed in this country. Pre-Columbian expeditions is the earliest information that they have about Muslims who traveled to America.

Some Muslims may have reached American in the 10th century. Muslim geographer and historian Al-Masudi (857-957CE) said “There was a large area in the ocean of darkness and fog while I called the unknown territory representing the geographical space of the Americans.” In the late 15th century Portuguese and Spanish explorers (like Columbus) was able to sale on his ship across the Atlantic Ocean by Geographical and navigational tools that were created from Muslims. Also it is known that on Columbus’s first voyage, he traveled with two captains who were in fact Muslim descent. There are Muslims who came as slaves from Africa in the old times. They have been identified and this shows that even slaves from different countries came to America. These famous Muslim slaves are Omar Ibn Sayyid, Adbul Rahman Ibraham Sori, Job Ben Solomon, Abu Bakr Al-siddig, Salih Bilali, Bailai Mohamed, Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, and Mahammed Ali Ben Said. Overall, this means that Muslims and Arabs have just as much as a right to be here as other people do in the United States of America.

The discrimination, racial profiling, and prejudice people of Muslim and Arab descent will never go away. Events such as the Boston Bombings, Paris Attacks, and the September 11, 2001 attacks will be a reminder to Americans that Muslims and other Middle Eastern people cannot be trusted. Now are all Muslims terrorist? The answer to that question is no. Saying that all Muslims are terrorists would be like all White people are supremacists, or all Black people are thugs, or all German people are Nazi’s. No matter how hard we try there are going to be people in this world who will not get over the fact that they do not like certain people because of what someone else did to affect them.

The best thing that we can do is try and talk to these people because not all Muslims or Arabs are as bad as the media make them seem. Some of these people are just like the rest of us that is here in the United States and that is to live a normal life and take care of our families. That does not mean there are some terrorists here in the United States but not all of them want to spread terror or threats to the American people. If we want to get along with these people we have to find out more about and not just judge them on the way they look. Muslims will forever be treated the same, and people will always fear them the same unless we all come together as one and take care of our brothers and sisters. Whether they are juveniles, or adults, Muslims and Arabs deserve respect.