Muslim Empowerment
BASICS OF ISLAM
- Islam Fact Check
- Muhammad Fact Check
- True Islam: Offers opportunities for coffee meetups and online chats with a Muslim
AMERICAN MUSLIM EXPERIENCE
- This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror by Moustafa Bayoumi (2015 September)
“Chagrined about the treatment of Muslim Americans after 9/11 and still puzzling over even more strenuous anti-Muslim demonstrations since the election of President Barack Obama, Bayoumi probes the so-called ‘War on Terror culture,’ which ascribes a malevolent aspect to all things Muslim…A thoughtful study [and] certainly relevant.” —Kirkus Reviews
MASS MEDIA & PERCEPTION
- A is for Arab: Stereotypes in U.S. Popular Culture (Exhibition and Film Curriculum)
Powerful, accessible and compelling, A is for Arab, which features images from the Jack G. Shaheen Archive, reveals and critiques the stereotypical portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in U.S. popular culture. Providing historical context about these images which range from film stills to comic books to editorial cartoons, this traveling exhibition aims to educate and stimulate discussion about the impact of stereotypes on both individual perceptions and national policy. A PDF of the exhibition panels is available for download here. - Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation after 9/11 by Evelyn Alsultany (2012 August)
“Arabs and Muslims in the Media: Race and Representation”While Asultany states that the issues of human rights in the post 9/11 period are of greater concern than the media’s representations of them, she seems hopeful that an increase in diverse representations of Arabs and Muslims as human beings rather than simply as ‘terrorists’ or ‘not terrorists’ may help to usher in a positive cultural environment in which the human rights of American Muslims and Arabs will be given greater consideration.” —Jason Archbold, Media International Australia - Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America (2011 August)
A study of seven charitable groups which provided $42.6 million to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009, and the outcome of their work. (See also: a quick video interview with Faiz Shakir about this group.) - Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People by Jack Shaheen (2014 December)
“Shaheen (mass communication, Southern Illinois Univ.; Arab and Muslim Stereotypes in American Popular Culture) has written a meticulous, passionate, and very articulate description of the persistent and prolonged vilification of Arab peoples in mainstream Western movies. Offering primarily reviews of the 900 films he has seen or researched over 20 years, he documents a century of offensive stereotypes and shows how the image of the “dirty Arab” has reemerged over the last 30 years, even as other groups have more or less successfully fought to eliminate the use of racist stereotypes.” – Andrea Slonosky, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn, N.
TERRORISM
- Countering Violent Extremism (2016, Brennan Center for Justice)
“Regardless of whether CVE is called Countering Radical Islam or not, the programs initiated under this rubric by the Obama administration — while couched in neutral terms — have, in practice, focused almost exclusively on American Muslim communities.” - Countering Violent Extremism: Actions Needed to Define Strategy and Assess Progress of Federal Efforts (2017 April)
“Violent extremism—generally defined as ideologically, religious, or politically motivated acts of violence—has been perpetrated in the United States by white supremacists, anti-government groups, and radical Islamist entities, among others. In 2011, the U.S. government developed a national strategy and SIP for CVE aimed at providing information and resources to communities. In 2016, an interagency CVE Task Force led by DHS and DOJ was created to coordinate CVE efforts. GAO (U.S. Government Accountability Office) was asked to review domestic federal CVE efforts.” - Why Do Some Terrorist Attacks Receive More Media Attention Than Others? (2017 March)
“We examined news coverage from LexisNexis Academic and CNN.com for all terrorist attacks in the United States between 2011 and 2015. Controlling for target type, fatalities, and being arrested, attacks by Muslim perpetrators received, on average, 449% more coverage than other attacks.”