Muslims After 9/11

After a horrible terroristic attack that shocked the whole world on September 11th in the center of New York City, Muslims in the Western world have been constantly fighting against prejudice. After September 11, media interest in Islam increased, where Islam was usually portrayed in a negative way. Before 9/11, many Muslims lived the normal, everyday life. However, the attack has changed lives of many people that belonged to the Muslim community, where they were the victims of guilt. Unfortunately, many Americans were introduced to Islam, after the 9/11 attack, thus even till today, Islam is associated with terrorism. For the past ten years, Muslims felt excluded from the American society by being rifled, attacked, discriminated, checked by FBI and controlled at the airports. At first, it might have seemed that with time the Western world will heal from the scratches, however, the scratches of 9/11 turned out to be the scars. Even now, Muslims and their religion are insulted through the nasty gazes and comments, threat of burning of the Quran, and publication of Muhammad cartoons, as well as the anti-Islamic movie. Though Muslims were isolated from the world stage before 9/11, they have, since then, been vilified through the influence of the mass media.
Nowadays, for many people, terrorism is closely related to Islam. However, not many know that most Islamic terrorists, such as suicide couriers are linked not to all Islam, but rather to a specific branch, Wahhabism. Wahhabi is predominant mostly in Saudi Arabia, and for the past decade has been exported to Afghanistan and to the United States (Mamdani, 2). Wahabbists are the fundamentalists of Islamic religion; however, they are the minority of people living in the West, while the majority of Muslims are people that are just fighting for their equal rights (Werbner, 8). Also, let’s not forget that fundamentalism is not only unique to Islam, but exists within other religions. Islam cannot be only stereotypically