collective identity of islam

ORIENTALISM

§The paintings, created by European artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries, depict the Arab World as an exotic and mysterious place of sand, harems and belly dancers, reflecting a long history of Orientalist fantasies which have continued to permeate our contemporary popular culture.

§Said explained that at the start of European colonization the Europeans came in contact with the lesser developed countries of the East. They found their civilization and culture very interesting and established the science of orientalism (the study of the orientals/people from these exotic civilization).

§Said argues Europeans divided the world into two parts; the East (Orient)and the west (Occident) or the civilized and the uncivilized-an artificial boundary

§The Europeans used orientalism to define themselves. Some particular attributes were associated with the Orientals.  Europeans defined themselves as the superior race compared to the orientals; and they justified their colonization by this concept. They said that it was their duty towards the world to civilize the uncivilised world

Characteristics of Orientalism

•a society in which Muslim lives are apparently not as important as lives of other Europeans, Americans (The Occident).

•sees Muslims as uncivilized and inherently violent;

•societies in West are being socialized believing that Islam is inferior, savage and irrational system of beliefs, with extremist followers more then ready to kill in the name of their God.

•Post-colonialism explains demonization of Islam with concepts of orientalism, imperialism and (neo)colonialism.

•West needed justification for subordination of East, thus depictions of Orient as inferior, undeveloped and uncivilized.

•These inaccurate and Eurocentric cultural representations have persisted and developed into stereotypes we are very familiar with today and represent an important foundation of current conflicts in western societies as well as around the world.

•Demonization of Islam serves the imperialistic ambitions of political elites in West, which act on behalf of capitalist greed and multinational businesses.

Runnymede Trust’s newly established Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia (Head 2014).

•The report identified eight patterns of behaviour that characterise Islamophobic attitudes:

•“Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.”

•“It is seen as a separate ‘other’. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.

• “It is seen as inferior to the west. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive, and sexist.”

•“It is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supporting of terrorism, and engaged in a clash of civilisations.”

•“It is seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.”

•“Criticisms made of ‘the west’ by Muslims are rejected out of hand.”

•“Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.”

• “Anti- Muslim hostility is seen as natural and normal”. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34967994

I do not believe that 1 in 5 Muslims really sympathise with Jihadists. The questionnaire asked if they sympathise with young Muslims who leave to join fighters in Syria, never once were Jihadis mentioned in the questions. The answers were then mediated to make the audience feel a certain way towards Muslims living in the UK. The Sun would have done this to make audiences fear Muslims and to get them to associate them with the extremists that we hear about so often. They only used the statistics of the people who answered "some" sympathy as that was the answer that had generated the most responses. They rounded that up to 20% to make it 1 in 5 and then completely changed what had been asked by turning the questions as if they had been asked about Jihadis when in fact they were never mentioned.

 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/charlie-hebdo-cover-cartoon-jokes-about-death-of-drowned-syrian-toddler-aylan-kurdi-10499645.html 

Charlie Hebdo decided to create a cartoon of the syrian child who had just recently drowned whilst fleeing to Greece from Syria. The reason behind it in his opinion was to highlight the western consumerism going on whilst there are people risking their lives to find a better one. However this satire has extremely offended people as it has come across as though the French are against immigrants and that this cartoon has been produced to mock them. 

http://harvardpolitics.com/world/portrayals-violence-abroad-dehumanization-home/

I feel that the lack of media coverage of the chapel hill shootings is absolutely sickening because if the three people who had been shot were all white americans and had been shot by a Muslim it would be front page news everywhere. Giving these three Muslims no publicity just puts across the message that there lives do not matter. It also sort of supports the killer as it is not humiliating him and shaming him in front of the world. It asks the question, would we be protecting him from humiliation if he was Muslim? If the killer was Muslim it is almost certain that he would be called a terrorist for killing a number of atheist because of they opinion on religion, however if a white man does the same does that make it ok? This brings forward the idea that the western world do not find importance in the lives of Muslims. 

•As of 2010, Christianity was by far the world's largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31%) of all 6.9 billion people on Earth.

•Islam was second, with 1.6 billion adherents, or 23% of the global population.

•the fastest-growing major religion in the world.

•4% of the British public claim that they know 'nothing or next to nothing about Islam’

•64% of the British public claim that what they do know is ‘acquired through the media’

•Research from 2006 suggests that the press coverage relating to Muslims and Islam in British National newspapers had increased by approximately 270% over preceding decade

•91% of that coverage was deemed negative

•84% of press coverage represented Islam and Muslims either as ‘likely to cause damage or danger’ or as ‘operating in a time of intense difficulty or danger’

(Dr Chris Allen 2012)