Western perception of Muslims and Arabs, 7 years after 9/11

By the seventh anniversary of the events of 11 September 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 long decades.

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

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

Now and before

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 Ibrahim says: “We cannot deny that the negative images go back prior 9-11, but let us ask why? We can not ignore the 9- 11 issue, when people watched with disbelief what happened in the US and they can not 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, 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 11 September 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 a way or another.

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''.

But this is not a shared view among many here in Britain. Ali Ibrahim 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 may be 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 is not much 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, i.e. 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''.

Varied reasons

Whether the behaviour of immigrant communities in Western countries helps in shaping public's perception of such communities is debatable. As Ali Ibrahim mentioned the issue of integration, the non-integration is sometimes seen as forcing their way of life on host societies.

But Dr Azzam Tamimi disagrees: “One of the fallacies that found listening ears is the assumption that the Muslims had come to the West to impose their own way of life and their own standards on the host populations. Hence is the continued debate about identity and integration. The fact that receives little attention, let alone sufficient discussion, is that 9/11 happened not because the Arabs and Muslims want to change the Western way of life but because of frustration and anger in response to US and Western policies in Muslim lands from supporting occupation to supporting dictatorship''.

Owen John expresses a moderate view on the issue: “I think there is a small group of hardline anti-Muslims who do believe the Muslim community wants to come and change their way of life, but they are a small minority. The rest, unless they positively welcome Muslims into their community, have that common thing, a kind of discomfort about the ‘Other', how s/he may look or behave - but I don't think in general the Muslim community is seen as a threat''.

As for the issue of blaming Muslims and Arabs for making life difficult due to more security measures, John says: “I don't think the increasingly authoritarian nature of policing or the behaviour of the security service is ever blamed on the Muslim community. Either people are happy that the police is "cracking-down", or they blame the government for taking the opportunity to advance the powers of authority''.

That does not mean that all is great among such communities, even Tamimi admits: “Some Muslims do, wittingly or otherwise, contribute to the crisis of negative perception. Things some Muslims or Arabs do or say are used to justify the hysteria and the measures taken to restrict freedoms and violate basic rights''.

Citing examples, Ibrahim goes on to say: “Some factions in the Muslim communities are helping the stereotype by segregating themselves and refusing to integrate. We have to bear in mind that a lot of European societies are multicultural these days, and they are open to different and new ideas. So integrating does not mean completely losing your culture or values, it is just a matter of finding a common ground, and believes that no body owns the final answers to everything''.

All 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.