As a first-generation Muslim and Arab woman living in post-9/11 United States, some of the mainstream discourse in America has been consistently packed with Islamophobic stereotypes and rhetoric. It is not a surprise that ever since the tragedy of 9/11, hate crimes towards Muslims and Middle Easterners in the United States have risen based on negative views from the media or stereotypes that have circulated. In the past years, many incidents have occurred towards Muslims, some even fatal and leading to the deaths of these innocent people. It has, unfortunately, been normalized to justify these horrendous actions as one committed because of hate towards someone’s beliefs or their appearance. The previous government administration alone appealed to much of the American public using this Islamophobic discourse that was guised under Donald Trump’s executive order of the Muslim ban in 2017.
My family is originally from Baghdad, Iraq, a place that has been on the news and in American history for the last few decades now. My experience with stereotypical discourse goes back further than the ban, however, to the first incident that I can remember when I was in the 4th grade in 2008. For all of my elementary, middle and high school years in America I went to schools with a predominantly white or Hispanic population and for most of those years the United States had occupied Iraq as part of the supposed “War on Terror.” I remember one day coming to school when my friends were all giving me the cold shoulder and would not talk to me, although we had been fine just the day before. It wasn’t until one of the girls said to me, in front of our entire friend group,
“Our teacher told us that YOUR people are killing American troops so we can no longer talk to you.”
This was the first time that I actually was made to feel as if I was not a part of this country as an American. What made it worse was that a teacher was spreading this information to students and I was not strong enough to have spoken up to an adult about this. Instead, I sought refuge in the front office as an office aid so that I would not sit at recess and lunch by myself.
At just ten years old, I shouldered the burden of America’s foreign policy and the Islamophobic discourse that had been projected onto its citizens. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, after visiting Iraq for the first time since my family and I had left (11 years prior) in 1998, that I gained my voice. After that experience, I was able to confidently portray my beautiful country and background in a perspective that was not shown in the media. It was during this trip that I became very aware and passionate about Middle Eastern affairs and the impacts of American rhetoric on the region and on people from a Middle Eastern background.
As the world becomes more interconnected, people of different beliefs and ideas, backgrounds, and identities are no longer being welcomed nor respected by everyone. People of different genders, religions, races, ethnicities and sexualities are receiving hate for who they are. People fear their safety in a country that is supposed to be united and tolerant. We have become divided in respect and acceptance and that is a detrimental issue, one that needs to be acknowledged and dealt with. Love trumps hate, does not discriminate. Strength in numbers and solidarity brings about great change, especially in dismantling the stereotypes and rhetoric around Islamophobia in the United States, while hate and separation achieve less but create an even bigger divide.
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Rose Hattab is a current Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Middle Eastern & North African Studies at the University of Arizona with a minor in English Rhetoric and Composition. She is interested in the politics of representation within art, media, and visual culture as a result of war and religious and social development, particularly in Iraq and in the diaspora. Looking at the broader area of gender studies, she is also interested in the way historical context and events have influenced the construction of urban politics in response to social and political change.
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