http://gawker.com/5520077/a-picture-of-911-is-not-a-thing-to-put-on-your-truck
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
American Perceptions of Islam
I saw this picture the other day and thought it was relevant to we were talking about today. Someone said that we generally have more knowledge about Islam and the Middle East now than pre-9/11. For the Macalester crowd, this most likely led to a greater understanding of Middle Eastern culture, but for the rest of the US, 9/11 may remain the only thing people associate with Islam.
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I agree that many remains still have a very negative perception of Islam. I think a lot of this stems from Orientalist thought. I come from a small rural town in Wisconsin, and the majority (if not majority, then at least A LOT) of people at my school were very racist toward Middle Easterners, especially Muslims. While I can't see anyone from my town actually having this on the back of their truck, the sentiment is definitely still there. I doubt anyone from my school had ever met anyone from this region of the world, or even met a Muslim American, so all they had to base their perceptions of this regions and these people on was what they heard others say and what they say portrayed in the media (most likely, shows like South Park)and what they saw on the news. And when the Middle East is covered in the news, it is almost always because of violence. There aren't really a lot of human interest stories about the Middle East being covered in the mainstream media. The people I know wouldn't think of themselves as racist or discriminatory, but simply as describing things as "the way thing are." I think these racist feelings arise out of misinformed "imaginative geographies", mostly due to a lack of information, experience, and empathy.
ReplyDeleteI agree that most people, not only in the US but the rest of the World as well, will associate the Middle East with 911. I also agree with Said’s argument on power and culture. Actually we can apply his argument to explain this misrepresentation of the Islam. Simply put, the US has power to dominate the world perceptions of the Middle East and in this way influence the Islam Culture in other people’s eyes. I am pretty impressed with the movie clips in Said’s interview. As a movie fanatic, I cannot be more familiar with those kinds of representations of people from the Middle East. And the movie industry is actually an example of the culture dominance of the US. China, actually, imposes a cap on the maximum movies imported every year. Although many people use this as an example of the censorship in China, we can actually see this as an example for a developing country to resist the culture dominance of the developed country. With American films everywhere and English as the world language, the American culture actually has a power over the Islam culture. It can shape how people all over the world perceive people from the Middle East. It will not strike me as odd If some day, not only the US, but Europe and other Asia countries demand special pass from people in the Middle East.
ReplyDeleteThe truck says,"Everything I needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11," and I would be unsurprised if all the driver does know about Islam was learned on 9/11, gleaned from the rhetoric constructing the U.S. as the innocent victim of a violent and regressive monolithic culture. As Gregory expands upon the extremely prejudicial language invoked by the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, it is clear that the imaginative geography of the Islamic world (as developed by this truck driver and presumably many more citizens of the United States) was fundamentally underwritten by a political agenda that depended upon its other-ization and corresponding vilification. Anna said that the Middle East is always portrayed as an entirely violent place, and Gregory goes further to assert that in creating this identity for the entire Muslim population, through the invocation of Orientalist assumptions and manipulation by political and media spheres, we have mapped out an understanding of the world in a stark dichotomy that pits the forces of evil against righteous America. The practical application of this discourse is incomprehensibly destructive.
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