Sunday, March 11, 2012

American Muslims.

I choose to look at American Muslims due to the controversial issues they bring alight in America. Since the 9/11 attacks majority of Muslims have said they felt discriminated against, due to their clothes, colour of skin and religious beliefs. This may be down to the fact that 4 in 10 Americans have an unfavourable view on Islam, 5 in 10 Americans believe Islam is more likely than any other religion to encourage violence and 6 in 10 believe Islam is very different to their own religion.

However this may show a very naive view of Americans and how they see the world as of their lack of knowledge about Muslims and their culture and religion. Since the 9/11 attacks the U.S Department of Justice recorded a 1,600 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes from the prier year and these numbers rose 10 percent between the years 2005 till 2006. It is clear that many Americans do believe that Muslims may appose a threat to American civilisation, and as it's estimated that there could be around 8 million American Muslims, ( the US census cannot ask this question to identify their religion), although compared to American Christians who represent 74% of the population only 0.6% identify themselves as Muslims. This could either be due to people being ashamed and not wanting to show themselves as Muslims to decrease discrimination or whether over the past few years due to the increase in racial discrimination people have changed paths, or no longer believe in anyone at all.

No comments:

Post a Comment