Blog #4

My case study is looking into the topic of Islamophobia in popular culture and the media, and specifically how Muslims react to it through memes. I’m analyzing memes created from an insider Islamic perspective that seek to illuminate the foolishness and lack of logic found in Islamophopic thinking. The memes that I'm studying all use sarcasm combat stereotypes and false claims about Muslims. Primarily, the stereotype of Muslims, and the root of most Islamophobic thinking, is that Islam is a violent, radical religion, and that Muslims are determined to destroy the West, specifically America. These ideas are not even completely based on previous terrorist attacks, but sometimes simply on the fact that not sharing the same values and beliefs has created a fear of an assumed Islamic threat (Saeed, 2007). This, of course, does not actually make much sense, and these memes attempt to portray how foolish these ideas are. So, in turn, the memes themselves actually portray the Islamic community to be the opposite of what people sometimes claim that they are. The memes I've included in this blog post, for example, use the stock character Ordinary Muslim Man to portray Muslims as peaceful, caring, and tolerant, rather than violent and intolerant. 

http://anonhq.com/26-witty-memes-powerfully-take-down-islamophobic-stereotypes/

http://anonhq.com/26-witty-memes-powerfully-take-down-islamophobic-stereotypes/

The representations of Muslims as peaceful and tolerant lines up quite well with the official beliefs of the Islam faith. While much of the media and the public view them as a violent, terroristic group who are set on the idea of destroying anyone that doesn't believe what they believe, this simply is not the case. The article that I read, written by Amir Saeed, solidifies this when he discusses all of the unwarranted and biased information that is communicated about Muslims. He discusses the idea of Islamophobia specifically, and states that it has been labeled as a new type of racism based on culture and religion rather than color (Saeed, 2007). While the stereotypes of Islam aren't directly mentioned in all of the memes that I've analyzed, they are at least indirectly mentioned, in the form of the opposite being stated. For example, in the Ordinary Muslim Man meme that starts with "About to explode," the reader thinks of the stereotype of Muslims performing suicide bombings. However, the meme ends by finishing the sentence with "with pride now that his daughter can go to school." This actually combats the stereotype by introducing it into people's minds, but promoting a different, positive, idea instead. I think that this can be an effective way to fight Islamophobia and the stereotyping of Muslims because it makes people realize that Muslims are actually normal people just like the rest of us.

Works Cited:

Saeed, A. (2007). Media, Racism and Islamophobia: The Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media. Sociology Compass, 1(2), 443-462.