How does religion and religious oppression play out in the documentary? How does the image of religious freedom and rhetoric of religious tolerance promoted in the U.S. clash with what actually happened to racial and religious minorities after 9/11?
We are supposably a country that accepts diversity. We, in fact, find pride in being a diverse, unique nation. When our nation was first forming we fought very strongly for religious freedom.
Yet, there are still many prejudices and false steriotypes created around people of different religious beliefs.
I recently read an article that studied the effects of how Muslim people chose to portray themselves before and after 9/11. The studies shows that before 9/11 most of these Muslims described the Muslim culture of being family oriented with good communications and family values. Post 9/11, the ways in which the Muslim people described their culture very much changed. Instead of talking about family values, they were persistant on where exactly they came from, most likely defending the terroist beliefs.
In fear of what we do not know, the US nation has resorted to blaming anything we can. A nation that has a story of unity and diversity now signals out certain people because of the religion they practice, even though it is vaguely associated with 9/11.
That's a good point, I didn't put 9/11 with this topic really. I mean, I associate Muslim people but I didn't actually associate 9/11. It's interesting to hear about the other article you read and how Muslim people always have to defend themselves against terrorist remarks. It's sad that we just put all these people into one 'category' and don't give them the same chances we'd give a White Christian.
ReplyDeleteI hate how we always need someone else to blame but we never blame ourselves. 9/11 whether we like to admit it or not had a lot to do with our actions invading another country and trying to oppress the muslim people. now we group muslims together as terrorists and its wrong.
ReplyDelete