Islamophobia in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Oskar suffers from PTSD after 9/11 and losing his father.

"Even after a year, I still had an extremely difficult time doing certain things, like taking showers, for some reason, and getting into elevators, obviously. There was a lot of stuff that made me panicky, like suspension bridges, germs, airplanes, fireworks, Arab people on the subway (even though I'm not racist), Arab people in restaurants and coffee shops and other public places, scaffolding, sewers, and subway grates, bags without owners, shoes, people with mustaches, smoke, knots, tall buildings, turbans."

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Article: Islamophobia: Understanding Anti-Muslim Sentiment in the West

"An exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life.^[1]"

Article: "6 Rules Of Islamophobia In America; The Huffington Post tracked Islamophobia in the U.S. throughout 2016. Here’s what we learned."

Article: "Donald Trump has never stopped lying about Muslims"  via @HuffPostRelig

Article on Trump appointees: "How John Bolton and Mike Pompeo mainstreamed Islamophobia" via @voxdotcom

Article: "Islamophobia is on the rise in the US. But so is Islam."

(Listen to the interview.)
"White American men are a bigger domestic terrorist threat than Muslim foreigners" via @voxdotcom



Survey: 'What a Billion Muslims Really Think' 
(Listen to the NPR interview.)

"Top 10 Books About Muslims And Islam" via @HuffPostBooks

"Media stereotypes and misinformation about Muslims are nothing new. In a post-election world, Muslims are finding more allies who often want to help but don’t know much about us. More and more of our fellow Americans have questions and need answers."

"American Muslims and Religious Freedom FAQ" - Interfaith Alliance

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Quote from transcript:

"If we're going to replace people's misunderstanding of the terrorist threat with an accurate understanding of that threat, I suggest starting with a simple recognition: that even if you added up all of the so-called jihadi fighters in the world, and all these different terrorist groups, the ones who were actually violent threats, you end up with a number that by any reasonable estimate is a less than one percent of the world's roughly one-and-a-half billion Muslims.

And that other ninety-nine percent is the key see that moderate majority is first of all the primary victims. The vast majority of terrorist attacks are not happening in Europe and other Western countries like the United States, as tragic as those attacks are, they're actually relatively rare. Far more terrorist attacks are happening on a daily basis in predominantly Muslim countries with ongoing civil wars and insurgencies. And the vast majority of their victims are Muslims.

So, when you think of it like that, it immediately starts to look more like a common enemy, and you can immediately see the basis for a cooperative relationship between moderate Muslims and non-Muslims working against that common enemy.

Now one of the themes I hear come up a lot a lot is: "Hey if there are moderate Muslims out there, why aren't they stopping this? Why aren't they working against this? What are they doing about this?"

And, again, we've got to start replacing this misinformation with accurate understanding, not only do major terrorist attacks consistently get condemned by Muslim groups, all over the world's expressions of solidarity for the victims.

Not only do you have lots of Muslims working very hard against radicalization and recruitment for these agencies, but you've got moderate Muslims, for example, are the primary soldiers on the ground fighting Isis in the Middle East.

Right now, the overwhelming majority of the soldiers physically fighting Isis right now are other Muslims, but even here in Western countries, there are cases that get ignored.

At our peril, you see we have a tendency to pay a lot of attention to the terrorist attacks that actually happened - and of course, we should - we tend, however, to overlook the terrorist attacks that didn't happen, and we miss learning valuable lessons."



Writer Reza Aslan thinks a Muslim Will and Grace could truly change American perceptions of Islam.