Tossed Salad

Found this in the Washington Post today…

As the war in Iraq grinds into its fourth year, a growing proportion of Americans are expressing unfavorable views of Islam, and a majority now say that Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The poll found that nearly half of Americans — 46 percent — have a negative view of Islam, seven percentage points higher than in the tense months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when Muslims were often targeted for violence.

So is this any wonder given the rabid nationalism American media?

In the months leading up to the Iraq war, all the cable news channels beat the drums for war, with barely any scrutiny of the evidence presented. Since 9/11, television and movie studios are constantly pushing out more terrorism and combat related shows; a vast majority of them portraying Arabs and Muslims as terrorists. What sort of an example does our own Congress set when it throws more attention into blocking an Arab firm from managing our ports than it does into vetting Supreme Court nominees?

I could understand resistance to allowing foreign firms to manage ports if the reason was to create more opportunity for American businesses, but lets face it, the ports have been managed up until now by a British company. The reasoning for Congress’s latest moves can be summed up by the word prejudice.

Additionally, a growing trend in evangelical America is a growing, unwavering support for Israel- under the notion that they are “God’s chosen people.” Thus building the impression that the Palestinians, and by association Arabs in general, are nothing more than a bunch of savage thugs. Little concern is given to the fact that the Palestinians live in fetid conditions and have been living in occupied territories for nearly 40 years. While I do not support attacks on civilian targets, people do have the right to defend themselves against a vastly superior military force.

Little has been done to underscore to the American populous that Islam is an scholarly religion, whose image has been hijacked by a small number of extremists. There have been Public Service Announcements encouraging vigilance, but none educating the ignorant among us to the dangers of these prejudices.

The past few years may have damaged the image of America throughout the world, but sadder still, we have damaged the already fragile image our own citizens have of the Arab world.