As you have probably already heard, a stabbing occured at UC Merced recently. The crime was committed by a Freshman student named Faisal Mohammed, and was determined to be the result of an overreaction towards a study group member. After stabbing four students, he was subsequently shot and killed by police forces.
The fact that this stabbing happened is insane, and it hurts my heart to see these kinds of things continue to happen at schools. As students, we come to university seeking knowledge, but all too often violence is part of the package. With this being said, ever since the identity of the UC Merced attacker was revealed, the investigation has taken a turn that I am beyond sick of. The attacker’s name was Faisal Mohammed. Upon reading his name, you will likely assume two things: 1) he was Muslim, and 2) he was brown. The problem with the investigation of this crime is that the media began throwing words like “terrorist” around. The county sheriff even said that “there is nothing to indicate that there is any political or religious motivation pertaining to what he did yesterday.” Why must the automatic assumption be that he was motivated by religion?
Back in June, Dylann Roof murdered nine Charleston churchgoers in cold blood, yet the media defended him and instigated the possibility of his mental illness. In May of last year, Elliot Rodger shot dead seven UCSB students and was still assumed to have some sort of mental illness. The common factor? Both Roof and Rodger were white. Faisal Mohammed had brown skin and a Muslim name, so of course the media reverted to the old habit of hurling the word terrorist around. I’m not excusing Mohammed’s actions in any way—frankly, I’m disgusted to see these things continue to happen—but I am condemning the way the media and the investigators presented this case. Without fail, every time a brown person commits a heinous crime, other brown people are used as a scapegoat for these crimes. Muslim people and brown people are blamed for crimes we have nothing to do with and have to live with the stigma that results from the media’s representation of these tragedies.
Consider this: I am a Muslim, Arab-American woman. In addition to this, I wear hijab, the Islamic veil, on my head; the hijab marks me as Muslim for all to see, and I couldn’t be more proud to wear it. Since the hijab makes me recognizable as a Muslim, however, I tend to have to deal with the Islamophobic garb that is aimed at Muslims. There is a constant fear that exists in the back of my mind that something could happen to me, a fear that is reignited every time I see something like this happen. Representing Muslims as terrorists or automatically assuming these (very rare, might I add) crimes are religiously motivated increases stigma against Muslim Americans.
Innocent Muslims are murdered and harassed every single day over the terrorist stereotype. I don’t want to be held responsible for every horrible thing a person who happens to be Muslim or Arab does. I don’t want to be afraid anymore.