Break and Week 7

Yay! I did it! I finally finalized my questionnaire!

I don't dance so there wont be any victory dancing... so here is a very enthusiastic high jump.

If you are interested, here is the link to my questionnaire that I made through esurv.org: https://eSurv.org?s=LCIEOH_49a08bd9
 If possible, share this survey with your family and friends so I can get as much data as possible!

The rest of the week I'll be drafting a script for the video I'll be making as my final project.

As usual, at the CAIR office I have been researching hare crimes and sharing them with my advisor. But now I get to write the articles too! If you haven't already, check out the site hatehurts.net to see the kind of stories that we track and share.

Week 6

I have been doing more research this week and found an interesting study pertaining to my project.

It turns out that Islam and Muslims are more negatively portrayed than cocaine, alcohol and cancer!

Wut...? Wow...

 Yup... This study was conducted using New York Times headlines between 1990 and 2014 by Owais Arshad, Varun Setlur, Usaid Siddiqqui, Jai Setlur, Di Yan and Steven Zhou. The headlines were then compared to a dictionary of words with sentiment ratings which created in 2005 by research done by Minqing Hu and Bing Liu at the University of Illinois along with "Violence Vocabulary" that was compiled in 2015.

Headlines were then broken up to get rid of words including "as", "and" and "the" to isolate the content of the headline. Each individual word was then given a rating (0 if neutral, +1 if positive and -1 if negative). With each word scored, the total score of the headline would be calculated by adding the rating of each word. If the total was above 0, then it was classified as a positive headline, if it was below 0 then it was a negative headline and if it was 0 then it was classified as neutral.

 

At the end of all the classifications, the data revealed that out of all the headlines with regards to Islam, only 8% were positive while 57% were negative. Look at the charts below to see the comparisons between other topics.

 

So, without a doubt, Islam presence in the media highlights more negative aspects of the religion than positive. This makes sense in the recent rise of ISIS and many attacks, but again, the extremists that hare highlighted in the media don't represent the majority of Muslims. 

In fact, the researchers discussed how collective responsibility has alienated many groups in history, including the Jews, the Germans and the Japanese. The media's focus on these groups has caused the public to fear Muslims and Islam in general causing the increase in unrest now days. 

It is said that fear comes from the unknown, but I think it can come from the known as well.

I have a story to share:

So, my family and I were coming back from a trip to California where our cousins live. On our way back, we stopped by at a gas station where a man in traditional Muslim clothing was standing and smoking. 

Well, needless to say, we had a reaction. We weren't violent and we didn't approach the man but we were all a bit nervous. 

I guess we were fearful too. My family and I study about Islam every Saturday so we know about our religion, but I guess it was odd to us that we found the man there. We were fearful that there might be an incident. Either on onlooker would instigate or he would. These were the types of thoughts we were having, so what about the others there? I know that I was keeping alert.

Well, thank goodness that nothing happened. The man had left by the time we came back to our car after stretching our legs and buying some snacks. 

So my main point is that this stereotype has not only affected those who don't know about the religion but those who are part of it too. 

Here is the link to the complete research paper: 

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/558067a3e4b0cb2f81614c38/t/564d7b91e4b082df3a4e291e/1447918481058/nytandislam_study.pdf

Week 5

This week has been pretty slow... I'm still in the process of working on my questionnaire... I can't wait to finalize it and get some actual results!

So in order to get a rough idea of what people already thought about Islam, I started watching some social experiments that were posted on YouTube.

One that stuck out the most to me was done by word association. The YouTubers asked New Yorkers to  say the first thing that came to mind when shown words like Jihad, Islam, Muslim, Ramadan etc.
While I was watching it was surprising to see that someone people really had no idea what they were talking about. My favorite word association was for "Ramadan" (fasting) when a girl said "Ramen" (noodles).

Some people were really aware of the media's role and the topics they were discussing while many others did not know what the words meant at all. If you have time, take a look and let me know what you think:

Of course this is just an example of just a couple of people, but these are the types of responses that I'm probably going to be expecting. Some people just don't know enough about Islam to give an answer, some have the view of the stereotype while others understand that the media portrays a skewed perception of Muslims/Islam.

Here is another word association one that is (I think) more experimental. It starts the word association with things that have nothing to do with Islam to clear the subjects' minds.

Week 4

So this week I have been working on the type of questions I want to ask in my questionnaire. At first I thought there would be only a few questions but with all the multiple choice options and pictures,  it looks kind of lengthy (5 pages...). But hopefully with some finishing touches I can make it short and quick, and allow me to get all the information that I need.

Additionally, on Thursday, I visited Arizona's capitol hill (in downtown Phoenix where Arizona's legislature is located) with CAIR (my internship). This is the first time that CAIR has set up meetings with Arizonian legislatures to talk about certain bills and to encourage Muslim community members to participate in their government.

As with any event, their are always last minute cancellations, so we had a small crowd (I'd say about 15 people), but nonetheless the outcome was great!

There were two specific bills that we wanted to discuss: HB 2401/SB1125 (School Desegregation Funding) and HB 2617 (Israel Boycott and Divestment).

First, let's talk about HB 2617. Essentially, this bill wants to limit the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement that many individuals, college groups, companies and organizations have started. The BDS movement protests Israel's unlawful settlements in Palestine as well as Israeli companies that are complicit with human rights abuse. Additionally, if there is any company/organization that supports BDS, they will not be able to do business with the government and pension systems will be divested from these companies/organizations.

This bill infringes upon the people's first amendment right. We have the right to boycott certain goods to show our support, in this case lack of support, for certain ideas/actions/events. So why is Arizona trying to pass the bill? Boycotts have been a major part of American history (remember the Boston Tea Party and the Montgomery Bus Boycott) and this right is what makes America so great.
So it was important to us to convey the importance of this right to our legislators. As it turns out, I got to meet with the legislator of my district, Martin Quezada. He was very receptive and he told us that he was the only one to vote against the bill when it was under discussion at one of the committee meetings.

What surprised me regarding this bill is the fact that Republicans are usually against any type of law that interferes with business...so why do they want to regulate the boycotts? Won't it be better for this to play out by itself? Companies should have the choice to BDS rather than worry about the government trying to stop them.

HB 2401/SB1125 is a bit more complicated. So, after the Supreme Court Case Brown V Board of Education, all schools had been ordered to be desegregated. In order to do this and provide certain programs for their students, school districts were given the ability to impose property taxes.

So you may be thinking "why is this important? Aren't the schools already desegregated?"
Well, yes and no. Though the schools are not segregated as they were in the past, especially in Arizona there are many schools that only have minority students at low socio-economic standing. So taking away the schools' main method to provide a better education for their students will be stripped.

Education in Arizona is already at a low, by taking away this right will only make things worse. And the fact that this tax right was granted to the school districts from a federal level, it is highly likely that there will be lawsuits in place against the state and federal government which will be ultimately funded by tax-payer dollars.

These were the only two bills we discussed but it was important to show the state that the Muslim community was involved with aspects of daily life. Muslims are as much part of the community as everyone else; they are parents whose children go to school and business men and women.

Many people are only aware of elections and issues at the federal level and don't even know what bills are being passed right under their noses. Regardless of ones religion, participating in government is the way to ensure that you are aware of your surroundings and being represented.

This was an excellent experience to see not only how the government works but to also show others that Muslims are part of the community and that we care about "normal" issues like school funding and the first amendment right.