This I Believe: Fear of the Unknown Causes Islamophobia
Faiha SahirahCarnegie Mellon University-Qatar
Modern Languages – Understanding Cultural Complexities
I believe that ‘fear of the unknown’ causes Islamophobia. In class, we not only talked about how misunderstandings can occur between people of different backgrounds, but we also discussed the sources of these misunderstandings. One of the most relevant applications that I had in mind throughout the class discussions was the ignition and fuel of Islamophobia. This not only opened my eyes to real life events that occur all over the world; it also made me realize the behavior of the people around me could also be explained by a lack of understanding. Especially since every tragedy, massacre, and bombings are selectively covered by certain media, Muslims continue to be misunderstood and generalized to be “terrorists”. We need to interact more with the “other” to understand that what the media portrays may not be true.
The world continues to become more global through migrated populations and this could be the source of negativity. Those who seek work outside of their own countries mean that different cultures are being exposed to each other. These cultural differences can be the cause of negative views against others, and they may not even know so because it is normal to them. For example, if I did not know the culture and customs here in Qatar, then I would freely show my affection without knowing that I am disrespecting the culture here, which may cause negative views against me. This is only one out of the millions of ways that misunderstandings can occur due to cultural differences (which I only realized after taking this class). In addition to that, there is the concept of “othering,” which refers to the reductive behavior of treating others that are different from you based on their social category, whether ethnic or gender. Even if you may think that “othering” does not occur anymore because the world is increasingly getting intertwined, it still happens every day, even though subtly.
Even if the world is becoming more international, we seem to keep our eyes closed at times when we are frightened. You may think this applies to when we see a spider, and our eyes are closed because we are screaming in fear, but that is not the case. What I mean by this is that the more we hear frightening things about others, the more we close our eyes and see them in our heads as what we are told. This finally brings up the topic of how Islamophobia is caused by our fear of the unknown. After the Christchurch, New Zealand Mosque shooting, a few of the CMU-Q community gathered to discuss the events that had occurred, as well as be there for one another. Since it is difficult to realize something unless someone mentions it, at that discussion, I came to realize that interactions with others opens up your eyes to your fear, or to those who you are not familiar with. This is because many who have come to the Middle East have come to love the culture here, and had always said that it completely crushed their preconceived notions about the people of the Arab nations, and most especially Muslims.
Fear of the unknown also hits close to home when my Mother advised me to stop “hanging out” with some of my closest friends at school because she thinks that they are a bad influence. This really confused me because they were the sweetest people I had ever met, and still are. Then I realized that this might be confusing to me but completely rational for my mother. I have lived my whole life in Qatar, and had always been surrounded by people of different backgrounds. In fact, the only school I ever went to was an international school that had students from over fifty nationalities, so I had always interacted with different cultures and backgrounds. On the other hand, my mother lived her whole life in Indonesia, and in a town that is not very developed, so she had never really interacted with the “others,” hence the fear she may have about them. When I asked her about why she thought this way, she told me that from what she sees on television and what people had told her, they are not the best people to be friends with.
Media coverage is one of the main things that led to this fear that my mother had. If this can happen, then Islamophobia could be caused by this as well. Therefore, I went ahead and analyzed the media headlines that had to do with Muslims and I remember saying in my head: “wow, this is crazy.” The amount of negativity that the media selectively put in their headlines struck me because if I were not Muslim, and had never interacted with Muslims, I would be afraid of them.
The media continues to build this wall of fear and to break this wall, or to slowly unlock the door on this wall of fear, we should continue to interact with the “other” to understand them better, as well as allow them to understand us better. Everyone would then be able to read articles and critically pick out the biases that do not align with their experience of interacting with Muslims.