What Would You Do?
Posted on February 28, 2008 by Tariq Nelson
ABC had a hidden camera experiment that shows people’s reaction to bigotry against Muslims. Some of the people defended the Muslim lady actor in the film, while others had been reading anti-Muslim propaganda and defended the bigotry
UPDATE: Video is below
Filed under: Changing World | Tagged: Muslim Americans
Mr. Nelson,
That is just plain awful! When I looked at John Quinones clip about the Muslim actress in the bakery, I wanted to believe that I was watching a preview to a television series. The vile language and the treatment of the actress was terrible! I was so bothered by it that I also came close to stop watching it.
Nearly three years ago, my classmates and I signed a petition to the head of Fine Arts department after one of our favorite Foreign language professors( The religious demographics of the class consisted of Muslims, Christians and one guy was raised in some Flower People -like religion) was fired from the college. Although the department head did not come out and mentioned his religion as a cause for his demise, anybody could have evaluated the problem put two and two together and concluded that he was wronged because of it.
” Do unto others as you want them to do unto you”. That is a saying I have often heard people say from the beginning until mostly will hear until the end of their lives. If I would have seen that lady being treated the way that the actress was, similarly to what my class and I have done with my professor, I would have defended her because it wasn’t’ right. She came in the bakery just to get some thing to eat and she couldn’t even do that.That is something else.
Like I said, I’ve seen some instances of anti-Muslim bias. I knew women who confessed to not wearing their hijabs because of their fear of people like those fools in the clip. One Muslim woman in at the mosque that I have attended said that some women ran away from her because of her religion and even as recently as nearly one month ago, my current professor was talking about cultural/racial sensitivity being implemented in class, but when she was telling the class to be sensitive about Arabs/ Muslims , she assumed that two guys in my class were Arab Muslims. (The truth is that the guys were Latinos and were of the Christian faith. I didn’t assume anything about the guys as you cannot always determine ones background by physical appearnaces. Even if they were, so be it because I don’t judge people one their religious background).
After the 9/11 incident, people would think that such treatment of Muslims quell down. It’s pitiful to see that there are people in this world who just can’t past their prejudices.
That is just like the thing they had on 20/20 the other day. They decided to get a group of white kids to vandalise a car, keeping tabs on video. Only one person called 9/11 and only a couple said anything to the kids.
They then got a group of black kids to vandlise a car in the same place and there were numerous phone calls to 9/11 and many people stopped to comment to the black kids.
I was dumbstruck, it was such a blantant displace of racism. I think you can talk about it all you want but when you see it right before you it really hits home.
I posted a response to it on my blog.
I am not surprised at all about the hidden camera segment. I was in the army before and during the Gulf war. Rag-heads, hajjis and sand niggers is common talk for Muslims not just Arabs. Hatred and prejudice is ingrained and left un-checked becomes natural and a part of life. Muslims need to toughen up a little and join the real world where things are not fair. Racism, prejudice, hatred, discrimination are a part of life. Like the cartoon of the Prophet(saw) white people are goading you because the ummah is weak. The problem is that muslims are weak, not that non-muslims are dis-respecting you and hurting your feelings. Abu Sinan the real fault line in America is between blacks and whites not muslims. Never be dumbstruck about this. The country was founded on this principal and it is part of our foundation. My mother is from Georgia and she recieved her K-12 and college education never in contact with one white person. Not one from the Principles,students, teachers, coaches and janitors. While Muslims came here and went to Universities freely with white people. Sixty years ago a black person would have lost their life trying to eat in the wrong restaurant. While Sayyid Qutb was here in an all white university in Colorado I don’t remember him saying anything about how blacks were treated here. I do remember Jews losing their lives in Mississipi though….hmmm
I must agree. Even though we know that racism/Islamophobia exist in thid world, I still have a hard time stomaching some of the ugliness that the actress had to endure.
I grew up a mixed community and fortunately, the experience was positive. She also was literally and open-minded person. She was basically a ” What you you see is what you get kind of person”.She didn’t try to hide anything .She used to me of how my siblings and I would be victims of racism and to get used to that fact. Whether ithe racism/Islamaphobia is in the West, the Northeast, the South or in the Mid-West, it exist, no matter where we live, we cannot escape it. She just taught us that we just had to learn how to balance the ugliness and the beauty of the real world.
I have visited several mosques. I remembered visiting a predominately immigrant mosque. One time I was there the imam discussed how racism shouldn’texist. The second time( 2 months later, he was raisng funds for the guy in Philadelphia( I forget his name) who is unjustly serving time for the killing of a cop and third, he was raising money for several Somali families who lost their homes in an apartment fire. While I thought all of his gestures were to commendable, I’m also always thinking about the people in countries like Mauritania and Sudan. I’m curious about his take on that.
When you heard about the British teacher who got in trouble with the teddy bear incident in Sudan, there was a world outrage. There just as many Muslims as well as Christians who was outrage with the incident. Don’t get me wrong , I was just as horrified about about her ordeal, but there was barely any world outrage and presidential intervention being extended to the Southern Sudanese or the Mauritanian people. That isn’t right.
When it comes to God, he doesn’t see color in his followers and he sure doesn’t see prejudice. It’s wrong for what took place with the actress in the clip and it is wrong for people to look down on the racial or other backgrounds of people. One cannot claim to be followers of god and look down on others. It just don’t work that way.
dayam! good on ABC for thinking up this one. i wonder how the responses would compare for other religions being persecuted.
thanks for posting this, btw. I hadn’t seen it anywhere before.
salaam,
crazy stuff. one thing tho is that on the comments on Youtube u get the feeling that viewers think that stuff like this is isolated to small town Texas. Incidents like this and racism in general is NOT just a Southern problem and could be in a big diverse city just as well as in a small town…I personally have had weird experiences with overt prejudice in San Francisco and in Chicago, for example. I think calling it a Southern thing makes people think that they are excused from taking the blame for this kind of behavior if they are Northerners.
The part that blew me away was when the presenter followed the bigot outside to his car and then he told the Hispanic presenter that he wasn’t American either. The look on that guy’s face was priceless.