Fighting misconceptions associated with Muslim headscarf, Muslim students at California State University arranged a hijab handout to their colleagues to educate them about criticism and negative image drawn by media over the past decade.

"The goal was to teach what Islam really is because there's so much negativity going around about Muslim people who are portrayed so negatively in the media," Amina Hasan, organizer for the Muslim Student Association (MSA), told Daily 49ER, the university's news website, on Sunday, December 2. "We're regular people just like anyone else."

The event, held last Thursday on a rainy afternoon, was sponsored by students of MSA at California State University Long Beach (CSULB).

Standing to welcome students, MSA students suggested hijab handout as an attempt to educate CSULB students about Islam that has received criticism and negative press over years.

Hasan said that being a Muslim and wearing a hijab are oftentimes associated with terrorism. "I always get stopped for a special screening at the airport, which can be frustrating," Hasan said.

For her, the hijab handout was an attempt to correct misconceptions about Islam. "People think we're all terrorists," Hassan said. "In one occasion … my luggage accidentally bumped into a seat and people screamed out of fear thinking it was a bomb."

Hasan added that just after this incident, her sister overheard one seated passenger express his gratitude as Hasan and her sister made their way to their seats, saying, "Thank God they're sitting in the back."

OnIslam, 3 December 2012

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Islam is the largest growing religion in the world and the second largest religion, right after Christianity. The history of the religion is of hundreds of years and people from time to time entered and embraced Islam because of the attractiveness in the religion. Let’s put some light on this sacred religion and discuss the misconceptions about it. People have their own way of thinking and have their own perceptions. The need of time it to bring a change and show people the true and actual side of Islam. This blog will move around the misconceptions about Islam and how we can snub them and how we can change the discernment of individuals against Islam.

Every religion has good and bad people and we should always look towards good to spread happiness and to avoid conflict. Islam is a prominent and well spread religion worldwide and it contains people of all kind. There were several incidents after which people and especially people of the west started thinking that Muslims are terrorists, extremists and merciless people like the incident of 9/11. This perception is wrong and we should not blame all the Muslims for this bizarre incident done by some ruthless people. Jihad is another issue and people do have misconceptions about it as well. People of the west have a perception that Jihad is totally wrong and it is an attempt of killing people without a purpose. But this is not actually what jihad is and it is wrongly portrayed and depicted worldwide by the global media. If you want to learn what actually is Jihad, what are the pros and cons of jihad, and what is Islam then you should study the holy book Quran. Quran contains all the details about all these things and is the most authentic book. You will get to know about Islam and about the actual religion by going through this book. There are plenty of examples present that people who were non-Muslims studied Quran and turned into Muslims. This shows us the power of the book.

Another issue that got highlighted within the last few years was of the oppression of women is Islam and the issue of veil. There is a strong observation that women in Islam are not treated humanely and were not given proper rights as well. Some incidents of karo-kari gave this issue hype as well. Muslim women were not allowed to cover their faces with veils in many foreign countries and protests were done in order to pass a bill against it. All these things are there in this world and we should take steps to come up from all these things. Women in Islam are given proper rights and they move hand in hand with the men. Women in Islam is respected, love and extolled. The covering of body and face by a veil is actually for the protection of the women and one can read Quran to understand this concept.

To be laconic, one could say that Islam is a religion of love and peace. We have seen the misconceptions about Islam above and we should avoid such things in order to avoid conflict. The need of time is to respect each other’s religion and to spread love.                               

About the author

shoaibali

My name is Shoaib Ali and I am a professional article and content writer. I am currently doing my engineering and working on freelance as well. Writing is my passion and exploring new horizons in the field of writing is my aim.

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As promised in my last blog, I will discuss the reasons for the cultural misconceptions like the ones i  I mentioned in my last blog post that was in the form of questions and answers. These misconceptions are due to the image that the West has of us Arabs of the Middle East. I’ll talk specifically on Egypt, of course since I am an Egyptian.

I will start with the cultural misconceptions that the west have about us regarding the culture and the country itself, I’ll leave aside any religious or terrorism related misconceptions, because this is a whole other story and will need a post of its own.

One of the main reasons is the media, and I’m not talking about the govt. or the news, I’m talking about simpler media, movies and shows. All the movies show the Middle East or especially Egypt as this huge desert that has the Pyramids and the Sphinx in the middle of it, which nomads living in tents riding camels. This, as discussed in the last post is false. The first movie that comes on the top of my head is Transformers 2, I have nothing against the movie, I am a big fan of Optimus Prime, I am just talking about how they viewed Egypt, all what they showed is a desert with palm trees. So this is a pretty good example of why the West thinks that got is just a big desert. Another movie is Jumper, when he was jumping to different places, Paris, they brought the Eiffel tower, Italy the coliseum, and of course when it came time for Egypt, a huge desert with the Sphinx standing the middle.

So it is no mystery why Western people see Egypt this way, it is what the media gives them, as for the reason behind this, I doubt that it is because the movie creators don’t have the knowledge that Egypt is a civilized country with more than a desert. It can be probably this is the image that western people have, so they don’t want to change it, I don’t know. But the media should start to show the Middle East and Egypt in a more truthful point of view. So I don’t really blame the Western people about having these cultural misconceptions, but I certainly blame the media for delivering this picture to the viewers in the West. But this is the case for most countries; it is a known fact that the media is the basic source of stereotyping anywhere, whether is cultural or religious stereotyping, in our case, Arabs of the Middle east, it is both.

But as for the religious and terrorism related misconceptions, it is not only movies, it’s the whole political system and news system of the West, but as I said it is a whole other story, so tune in on the next blog. I will discuss these misconceptions, the reasons behind them alongside the real facts behind these misconceptions.

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As discussed in the previous post, I talked about the reasons of the misconceptions that the west has regarding the culture and the state of the country. Although I talked about Egypt alone, but the misconceptions are pretty similar to most of the Arab countries of the Middle East. So in this post, as promised; I am going to focus on a very popular subject that is always linked to the Middle East and Arabs, “TERRORISM” and religious misconceptions. First of all, the religious misconceptions, if I am Arab, it doesn’t mean I am a Muslim. Yes, a high percentage and a majority of Arabs are Muslims, but believe it or not, there are Christians, Catholics and even Jews who are Arabs.

And now onto another major misconception, which is probably the reason you are all reading this, Terrorism. Contrary to public and the worldwide belief, as mentioned before, the Middle East is not a big training camp for terrorists, despite what the media is conveying. Some people have this image, which of course is not true, about the Middle East, it goes something like this.

“We Egyptians or Arabs walk in the street, wielding Ak-47’s and rocket launchers, we are all masked and we wear I Hate America T-shirts while screaming Allah-Akbar in the streets, and of course, we are constantly planning how to destroy the west and talking about the latest terrorist bombings that is going to take place.”

This image can’t be further from the truth. The idea that Arab countries support terrorism and fund it is ridiculous. As a matter of fact, here in Egypt; we suffer from terrorism as much as the West does. Come to think of it, we suffer form it even more. Terrorism didn’t get invented in 9/11; it was present years and years before that. Here in Egypt we have been fighting internal terrorism since the 70’s. If we compare the statistics and the damage terrorism have done in Egypt over the years and compare it to 9/11, you will not stand a chance. I’m not trying to underestimate what happened, but I am just saying that we have been suffering from it from years. For example, the president “Gamal Abd El Naser” was killed and assassinated by extreme religious terrorist groups. So do you think a country whose head of state was killed by terrorists will support terrorism?

What I am trying to say is that Terrorism has no religion or country, it uses violence to achieve its own goals that is driven by greed and personal interests. It only uses the cover of religion to pursue its own devious goals. So if you are from the West and you met an Arab online, there is a 99.99% chance that he is “NOT” a terrorist, and he hates terrorism as much as you do. As for the reasons behind these misconceptions that are terrorism-related, they are many, so tune in on the next post where the reasons for such misconceptions will be discussed in details.

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