Journal Article

Impact of Terrorist Attacks on American Muslim Women in Samira Ahmed`S Love, Hate and other Filters

Selim, Amera Mohammed Abdallah

2024

Overview

This research discusses the relationship between Feminism and the phenomenon of Islamophobia. After the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, the relations between Muslims in the West and Americans have become very bad, as all Americans have come to see Muslims as terrorists and that they pose a threat to the security and stability of America. Therefore, the American government decided to deport Muslims who don`t have the American citizenship to their countries, while the American Muslims are detained in camps outside America`s borders. In these camps, Muslims were tortured and their lives were very harsh. As a result, the author Samira Ahmed decides to discuss this important issue through her novel, titled Love, Hate and Other Filters (2018) to show the danger of the phenomenon of Islamophobia on Muslims in general and Muslim women in particular, and how Muslim women with their courage and their strong will become able to overcome this phenomenon and other obstacles that they face in the American society to achieve their dreams and demand with their rights as any American citizen. In Love, Hate and Other Filters, the heroine Maya Aziz is an American Muslim woman suffers from different types of oppression from her classmate and from the American society as a whole because she is a Muslim women lives in a society where the phenomenon of Islamophobia is widespread. Her family prevents her from travelling to New York University to study what she likes because they afraid of the Americans, who have come to see all Muslims as terrorists and deserving of punishment. Maya exposes to verbal and physical attacks of her classmate who says \" It`s a Muslim terrorist. They hate America ...Is that terrorist your uncle ... Egyptian? Indian? What`s the difference? You `re both ragheads.\" (150). Also, her parents expose to a terrorist attack as someone send them a message threatening to kill them because they are Muslims, and he writes their home address at the end of the message \" a brick came flying through the window . Glass shattered everywhere. Patients started screaming. It was a brick with a paper wrapped around it with rubber bands... You`re dead. You fucking terrorists.\"(160). The author leaves the ending open to the reader`s imagination, but mentions that Maya is still determined to achieve her dream as a filmmaker and study in New York University \" Then I pull myself up by my bootstraps and start over . You taught me that. You came here, started with almost nothing, and built your practice. I know how hard you worked. Please, you have to let me al least try before you decide I1m going to fail.\"(232). She ends this novel by saying \"Maya and her family are victims of Islamophobic attacks.\" (261).

• Publisher: جامعة قناة السويس - كلية الآداب والعلوم الإنسانية
• Subject: الأدب الروائي / الحركة النسائية / المرأة الأمريكية / رهاب الإسلام