Deepa Kumar, a leading scholar on Islamophobia, argues that U.S. media have turned Arabs and Muslims into the new face of terror, even though only a tiny fraction of Muslims and Arabs have ever committed a terror attack, and terror attacks by homegrown right-wing violent extremist groups have far outnumbered attacks by Muslims and Arabs since Sept. 12, 2001.
In December 2015, the political rhetoric against Muslims was escalating. Dr. Larycia Hawkins, an African-American political science professor at Wheaton College—a prestigious evangelical school outside of Chicago—wanted to show support for Muslim women. She posted a photo of herself in a hijab on Facebook. “I love my Muslim neighbor,” she wrote, “because she/he deserves love by virtue of her/his human dignity….we worship the SAME GOD.”
Here, look at Islam and violence from different perspectives. Shed light on the negative stereotypes and representations common to discrimination against Muslims. Explore how Islamophobia depends on generalization and exaggeration, then consider Muslim theological sources of violence in the modern world, as well as significant examples of Islamic revolution.
On January 29, 2017, a lone gunman entered a mosque in Quebec City, took the lives of six people, injured 19 others and left an entire community in complete shock and grief. This act of hatred, fuelled by racism and Islamophobia, transformed a place of worship and community to a site of unthinkable trauma, devastating Muslim communities the world over and forcing Canadians to question how we got here in the first place.