Graphic by Megan Eloise/The Gazelle
Western media, Islamophobia and my family
Imagine being your school’s center of attention for a nonsensical rumor. Imagine feeling like an outsider because of other people’s belief in a ...
Mar 8, 2014
Imagine being your school’s center of attention for a nonsensical rumor. Imagine feeling like an outsider because of other people’s belief in a fallacious statement. Imagine having to face the effects of the media’s vindictiveness against you. I have had to live with these conditions for a long time. This is the story of my experience of being viewed as a member of a terrorist family.
During the nine years when I lived in Spain, there is one significant period I will never forget. I came home from school one day to find my mother white as a ghost. With great difficulty, she managed to tell me that the Spanish police took my father because he was accused of being affiliated with terrorists. Why the accusation? We failed to find an answer to this question.
No one contacted us for three days straight. I had no idea where my father was, and for all I knew, he could have been sent to Guantanamo Bay. I did not know if I was ever going to see my father again. During this horrid time, my family’s name was displayed in almost every news agency’s headlines in Spain. Words that were far from describing my family flooded the reports. Even though I was certain all the newscasts regarding my family were false, I was strongly affected by the absurdity. But this did not cause me to lose hope. I knew we had nothing to hide. The problem was that the people around us thought otherwise.
Attending school after the press release was awful. Everyone, students and faculty members, stared at me with accusatory eyes and whispered as I walked through the hallways. I was in complete shock — everyone seemed to believe the media. Some of these people had even known my family for years. They knew who we were.
As it turned out, over those three days in which my father was held in a police department, he was simply questioned. Our entire history was explored and the police found no evidence to back up their accusation. So why the accusation? Because we are a Muslim family — an easy target for such an allegation. After realizing the truth, the judge involved in the case apologized and admitted it was all a big misunderstanding. A misunderstanding that could have broken our family apart and completely destroyed all of our lives.
Today, Muslims do not have the best image in the world. A large number of the world’s population is ignorant and narrow-minded, and many of these people associate followers of Islam with terrorism. The Western media is only making this issue worse. It fails to portray the true identity of Islam, and as a result, many of its viewers choose to believe it — just like people in my international school.
We live in a world where the media has become the number-one source of ignorance and close-mindedness. The media’s ability to rapidly manipulate opinions and perceptions is to a great extent ruining certain religions’, cultures’ and countries’ reputations. It is incredibly easy to fall into the media’s trap and become a believer of its exaggerated messages. Sometimes, it is even hard to remind yourself that what may be said is not entirely true. We do not always know the full story, and because of this fact, we need to be aware of the high chance of misinterpreting or misunderstanding the information that is given. From this experience, one learns to question the media’s truthfulness and accuracy in all matters.
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