The Reality of Anti-Muslim Sentiment

FRESNO, CA

You can find Fresno State Junior Ameer Hamza Khan studying for his finals at the Peter’s Business Building. It’s easy enough to see he’s a regular looking student. What you can’t see, however, is that Khan is a Muslim, and that as a Muslim, he has been treated differently simply because of his religion. Even as recently as a few weeks ago, Khan can’t help but overhear the way people talk about his faith.

“He just said, for the most part, to solve the problem in the Middle East, we just need to turn it into a wasteland, and just destroy it,” Khan said, referring to a man he overheard at the gym. “It does nothing for dialogue, it does nothing to help. It does nothing to solve a problem.”

This kind of reaction to Islam isn’t as rare as some people might thing. Raja Tahir, another Muslim student at Fresno State, said he blames movies and television for the misrepresentation of Islam in society.

“Especially from the nineties,” Tahir said. “There was always a stereotypical Muslim portrayed in movies where either they’re terrorists or they’re like very scheming, conniving, people like that.”

To help ease the tension, Zaki Naqvi, the president of the Muslim Student Association at Fresno State, is using his club to shed light on the Islamic faith.

“We’re trying to educate others.” Naqvi said. “We’re not trying to preach, but we want to educate others and make sure that they know the difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’, so we can hopefully clear some misconceptions that may cause negative feelings towards us.”

Freedom of religion is a constitutional right in this country, but members of the Islamic faith feel like they have to look over their shoulders just to live their own American dream.