by Faysal Ruwayha

Created on: March 22, 2007   Last Updated: April 24, 2007

WHY ISLAM IS MISUNDERSTOOD IN AMERICA?
I will attempt to address the burning issue of why Islam is misunderstood in America?
It is one of the least understood religions in the United States due to several reasons. The first is ignorance because most Westerners learn about the Muslim world through the biased media which invariably dwell on Islam, especially in more recent times, in association with the rise of Muslim fundamentalists and its violent acts and in the process give much less weight in explaining the religion.

Many American "experts" on Islam labelled these radicals, who caused thousands of deaths in Algeria and other parts of the Arab/Muslim world long before the heinous attacks on September 11, as "Islamic Fascists." The "experts'" political rhetoric will deepen anti-American and anti-Western sentiments even among the mainstream Muslims. Why? Has any one labeled the Irish Republican Army terrorists as Catholic terrorists? Has anyone labeled the Jewish militants that murdered British soldiers in Palestine prior to the birth of Israel, as Jewish terrorists? The former was referred to as IRA terrorists and the latter were called the Jewish underground movement. Has anyone labelled Timothy McVeigh a Christian terrorist for murdering hundreds in Oklahoma City?

Another element for misunderstanding Islam is deliberate. It is the result of systematic denigration [i.e. Christian fundamentalists] to belittle Islam to justify the superiority of their own faith, which goes back as far as the time of the Crusade when Christian armies were led into Palestine under the banner of liberating the Holy Land from the Infidels [i.e. Muslims].

The well-known British historian Arnold Toynbee has referred to this Christian hatred of Muslims as the "Crusader Complex" Thus the Crusader Complex is the "prism" through which a large number of Christians, consciously or not, view Islam through it.

In the past many Westerners did not speak of Muslims but referred to them as "Mohammadens." This was a form of intentional denigration because what they meant was Islam was a religion established by a man and hence was of much less value than Christianity and Judaism in terms of God. It deprived Mohammed of his status as God's messenger like Moses and Jesus and inferred the worship of the Prophet as a divine being.

Until the September 11 attacks, American educational system devoted very little to Islam. Professor of political science at Rice University, Fred R. von der Mehden, wrote, "One

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>