The Muslims stereotype in the American society: Is Islam the problem?

Ashogbon Habib and Shovik Shyamsundar

Introduction Islam is an Arabic word that means to submit which got its root from peace salaam. Muslims are the followers of the religion Islam. Islam is suppose to be a guide to the Muslims, and Islam teaches equality, patience, and righteousness. Results Our prediction in the data collated from the survey shows 78% think Muslims are violent while 15% think theyre not, 5% are undecided. In the same result, 90% of male think theyre violent while 2% think theyre not , with 8% being undecided. 80% of female think theyre not violent with 16% being undecided, leaving 4% to the women who disagrees. This show the problem exist mainly with the male gender. We came up with this predictions based on the result retrieved from interviewing religious scholars. Americans constituted 80% of the people in those Muslim communities. In-depth interview with the Islamic leaders and religious scholars gave me better understanding of the text I originally analysed. Based on findings in both textual analysing and interviewing key informants, surprises werent to be expected. Only a few people differ in what is expected of them. They differ in behavioural traits and manner of approach. Aim Addressing the issue of Muslims being seen as violent. We intend to understand if the issue is true or somewhat false. Most importantly, wed like to make changes by finding a solution if need be. These findings provides a foundation to assert that people of the Islamic faith are human and do have variation in so many ways.

After the September 11 attack on the United States, Muslims have been tagged with violence. This stereotype causes psychological harm to the people of the Islamic faith.

Our research is to find out why the Muslims are been viewed as violent, and try to profer solution based on our result.

Method
Ethnographic study of some Muslim communities including Shiites and Sunnis of different ethnic backgrounds in a state (Georgia) in the United States. Textual analysis of the Islamic religious books i.e. Quran. This is to get an insight to what their religious books says about violence. Random survey of 50 male within 25-45 and 50 female within the age range of 25-40; This random sampling would be to justify if the issue really exist at large. The survey would be in an American community, but the people used would be selected randomly . In-depth interview with Islamic leaders and religious scholar in the region of my research to better understand what is expected of the Muslims in terms of their practices, and to draw a favourable conclusion or differences between religious practices and nonreligious ones. Conclusion Distributing pamphlet in the same community that the research was conducted. This is a good way to start raising concern about how these violence tag causes psychological illness.

Airing it on T.V after commercial break on ABC (TV station) when soap operas are been aired. This is to make the viewer more relaxed when watching the commercial been made. The commercial would be made based on our findings.
In conclusion, the solution is helping uninformed people get acquainted with information that they necessarily need to know in order to reduce the violence stereotype issue facing the Muslims. What we learned The one major difficulty we faced was linking up all the methods to form one central idea. Our thinking didnt change much about the subject matter. This research made us view anthropology as jack of all trade rather than just study of human because we weren't just studying human, we were studying their culture as well.

Acknowledgements Special thanks goes to Mr Mark Flanagan for his invaluable support throughout this project.

Participant observation would be done in a few Muslim communities since Im a Muslim I may get access to data, but it may be little due to me being an anthropologist. My living with the people is to gain much knowledge about variances in their practice.
The combination of these methods will provide us with a holistic perspective of the view on Muslims. Through these methods we will learn about Muslims beliefs, the context of their culture and what the American people think of Muslims. By connecting these results a solution to reduce the tendency of Muslim been viewed as violent can be reduced.