West v Arab Perceptions

By the seventh anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001, the debate about Muslims and Arabs in the West is not abating.

Since 9/11 the perception of ordinary people in the West of Muslims and Arabs suffered a heavy negative blow, though some claim the negative stereotype image goes back decades.

As 9/11 events in the US was followed by bombings in Madrid and London, Muslim and Arab communities in Europe became targets of suspicion, specially as the perpetrators of such bombings were home-grown fanatics.

How have the events of 9/11 and subsequent events shaped the Western public's perception of Muslims and Arabs? To what extent has the behaviour of those communities reinforced that negative image? And what can be done?

Then and now

Though many agree that the negative perception of Muslims and Arabs is old, 9/11 exacerbated it. Managing Editor of London-based pan-Arab daily Asahrq Alawsat Ali Ebrahim says: "We cannot deny that the negative images go back prior 9/ 11, but let us ask why? We cannot ignore the 9/11 issue, when people watched with disbelief what happened in the US and they cannot understand how some people justify mass murdering for some fanatic ideas. But even that could have been overcome if there were some extra effort from the Muslim world to tackle the problem of extremism with open-minded[ness], and not to try to find excuses".

British journalist, reporting extensively on Mideast issues, Owen John agrees that the negative image of Muslims and Arabs in the West might go back longer in history and says: "It probably goes back to the Crusades! However, 9/11 gave western governments and the right-wing media their chance to start scapegoating the Muslim community living in the west".

Director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought (IIPT) Dr Azzam Tamimi adds: "9/11 only exposed the depth of the political crisis to a much wider audience around the world. We've had problems with perception and with relations long before the attacks took place on that day. It is regrettable, and this only confirms my theory about blackmail. It is as if history started on September 11 and not more a century ago when much of the Muslim homeland fell to Western colonialism and has since been under direct or indirect Western hegemony".

The general perception is that suspicion of Muslims and Arabs grew after 9/11, and ordinary people in the West are becoming more Islamophobic in one way or another.

Blackmail

Dr Tamimi asserts this: "Indeed, more people in the West have shown hostility to Islam, Muslim and Arabs post-9/11. The campaigns run by politicians and certain powerful sectors of the media have contributed to the Western public's increasingly negative perception of the Muslims, and particularly of Arabs. 9/11 has become the biggest blackmail in modern history after the Holocaust. Zionists continue to blackmail Europeans because of the Holocaust while the Americans now blackmail the Arabs and the Muslims because of what happened on 11 September 2001".

Immigration

But this is not a shared view among many here in Britain. Ali Ebrahim says: "I do not think ordinary people in the West are angry with Muslim communities, or perhaps ‘angry' is not the right word. If there is a problem, it is maybe the problem of integration with society, especially with big waves of immigrants in the last two decades. Usually in western societies if people can integrate, there [are not many] problems, but if communities start to segregate themselves then problems and misunderstanding start".

Owen John puts it differently: "I don't think most people are very receptive to Islamophobic discourse coming from such factions, unless they already happen to be of that point of view, ie, they believe in a kind of bogus ‘Judeo-Christian' superiority. The exception perhaps, however, is the right-wing Zionist-Christian movement in the US, some of whose members engage in negative stereotyping of the Arab and Muslim worlds. The church leaders can be very persuasive when talking to their own constituencies. They are, after all, citing God Almighty Himself as their authority".

Way forward

These commentators agree that the best way out of this is education and dialogue, though some have reservations about the role the media plays that might even dampen any effort to correct the negative image of Muslims and Arabs in the West.

- Dr Ahmad Mustafa is a London-based Arab writer.