Reflection #9: Covering Religion, Terrorism, and Peace
I recently watched the documentary “Constructing the Terrorist Threat” and learned about yet another marginalized group that the US continues to treat unfairly and ultimately dehumanizes; Muslims. Muslims are one of many groups that have been turned into one thing that is the opposite of everything good in the US. Americans are taught that Black and brown men are threats that should be viewed as inferior.
Japanese people are another example of the US turning an entire group of people into one thing, then they justify hating and dehumanizing them. All Japanese Americans were held responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor. They were treated horribly, put into camps, and constantly attacked. People from Japan were also banned from entering the US, similar to Trump’s (2016) 90-day ban on 7 predominantly Muslim countries in a “fight against terrorism.”
Terrorism can be defined as, “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” However Americans have a very specific image that comes to mind when they think of terrorists. Yet this image of brown Middle Eastern men is so far from the truth behind who is more likely to commit terrorist attacks.
The media does not focus on race when (Christian) white males commit the textbook definition of “terrorist attacks” instead they justify. The “shooter” had mental health problems, etc. The sad truth is that Muslim terrorist attacks are not a leading cause of death in America; health complications are.
This documentary demonstrated multiple examples of how the US has a long history of turning a specific culture, religion, group of people, etc. into one race, and then making that race a known threat because they are somehow inferior. One of the primary examples of this would be how the US killed and dehumanized Native Americans.
This country decided to make Black people the same value as property. The list goes on and on; one people are turned into a threat, and the media keeps the fear of said threat alive. When the US government/society behaves this way, usually it is because “larger political and economic agendas are at work.” This is the same mentality of any colonizing nation that only seeks to gain, no matter the cost. This potential to gain is then used as a means for the US government to enforce harsher policies and stereotypes that further dehumanize the “racialized others.”
Terrorism is simply one of the latest examples of how the US makes society push the stereotype forward that all Muslims are angry and violent terrorists. In order to make society see this group of people as this one single thing, they dehumanize them, by calling them a “threat to civilization”. The media helps spread these anti-Muslims stereotypes and hate by calling them barbarians and savages.
The media does this with constant “war on terror” coverage of the Middle East and images/movies/shows featuring brown bearded men with rifles. The media helps solidify the hate against Muslims by ultimately saying that everything in the west (“liberalism, equality, humanization”) is perfect, and the Middle East is uncivilized.