Featured Photo By: Samir Mohamed- Three Arabic Qurans lie on a Sajjadah. A Sajjadah is an Islamic prayer mat placed between the ground and the worshipper to insure cleanliness during the five prayers Muslims undergo daily.
Growing up as an Ethiopian Muslim immigrant in the United States is both extremely challenging as well as infuriating. Minorities have been distinguished and treated as second class citizens, dating back to the establishment of this country. It is hard for me to grasp why equality and righteousness are still foreign ideologies in the United States for a large percentage of its population.
With society’s silence and lack of intervention, the fastest growing and second largest religion has become a group that has been set to one stereotype and belief by society. Up to date, Islam has been portrayed negatively and unjustly by the world. Many base their viewpoint on Islam off of the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. These individuals lack the facts and foundation Islam is built on through the word of the Quran. The Quran is the central religious text of Islam, and the answer to solving all of the stereotypes and Islamophobia issues present in today’s society.
Islamophobia has become the mainstream media discourse, “where images of Muslims as murderous fanatics abound in movies, videos and computer games,” said F. A. Noor, the professor of biology at Duke University. Noor also claimed, “Muslim identity and the concerns of Muslims are increasingly being defined in terms of an oppositional dialectic that pits Islam and Muslims against the rest of the world.”
Society has effectively created stereotypes based off of one major incident and that comes off as quite unreasonable and ignorant. An overwhelming amount of stereotypes neglect to consider the facts and truth because they shatter the stereotypes itself.
The Quran contradicts and abolishes all stereotypes society has accumulated. If the entire world picked up the Quran and read the primary facts and compassion I feel is bestowed within it, this would resolve the dispute that Islam is the religion of evil, terrorism, and wrongdoing. The Quran has a strong level of ethos so it persuades even non-believers that Islam is a misunderstood religion that has many similarities to Christianity and Judaism.
Non-Muslim historian Stanley Lane-Poole substantiates: “The day of Muhammad’s greatest triumph over his enemies was also the day of his grandest victory over himself. He freely forgave the Quraysh all the years of sorrow and cruel scorn in which they had afflicted him and gave an amnesty to the whole population of Mecca.”
The facts are there. The truth is exposed. But open mindedness and autonomy of thoughts are being polluted. Misconception and negative connotations about Islam slink into the minds of people primarily because their disposition is influenced by the media’s headlines opposed to the Holy Quran itself. Many fail to realize that not only are individuals oppressed due to the pigmentation of their skin, but also based off of their religious and spiritual beliefs.
Society needs to do better. We as a collective, need to be better.
