Trejan Rodriguez, Noah Tang

Ms. Townley
Composition
30 November 2015
Actions Affecting Muslims
For over ten years now, Americans have been fearful of the dangers that lie in the Middle
East. Radical groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS are to blame for this fear that is permeating
throughout the world. Ever since the attack on the United States in 2001, people have been
cautious and suspicious of one particular group of people Muslims. And it goes even further
than that actually. Not only are people suspicious of Muslims, but they are also suspicious of
middle-easterners in general. This type of fear and perhaps resentment has led people to doing
fairly racist and biased when it comes to talking about terrorism. But everything seemed to be
coming to a close. For many years there havent been many major attacks from ISIS in the
United States or its allies, but that all changed last weekend. Last weekend a devastating attack
happened in Paris killing 129. This shocked the people in Paris and people around the world.
And now people even here are starting to have suspicions about local Islamic groups in Omaha.
Omaha has always been a city with proud and accepting people, but for some odd reason
it seems to have some level of segregation. America is not proud of its history when it comes to
racial tensions, but neither will it forget them, but now we are seeing similar racial tensions still
happen. In recent news, and Islamic center in Omaha, Nebraska had been the target of vandalism
through the act of graffiti. On the Islamic center peace signs with the Eiffel Tower were spray
painted on it. This vandalism was used as a sign of solidarity with those impacted by the Paris
attacks. While this may not seem like much of a problem, in actuality its quite a big problem.
This shows that people still feel like directing their anger first of all because of something that
doesnt involve them, and second of all to people who dont deserve it. This vandalism can be a

possible hate crime. This is the third time in four months that the vandals have attacked the
Islamic Center. The Muslims in Omaha had nothing to do with the attack in Paris, but people still
feel resentment. "We felt terrible because we have nothing to do with what happened outside of
the country," said Sayed Sartaj, a member. If I recall something similar happened many years ago
in Nazi Germany when they blamed the Jews on something that was out of their control. The
vandalism that targeted the Islamic Center has affected the local Muslims. They were shocked
that people have targeted them when they had no connection to the Paris attack.
People discriminate others based on appearance. A lot of people decide how someone is
in the first few seconds they see them. With the way that the Muslims dress, people are able to
form an idea that they are a Muslim. With the idea of Muslim in their mind, people tend to think
of the bad that the terrorists have done in the name of Islam. Once that idea is in that persons
mind, it is really hard to get rid of the false idea.
Overall I would say that its just not right for local Muslims to be targeted for events that
were completely out of their control. They are completely unrelated to the incident and they
dont deserve to be the center of rage among the people of Omaha. The terrorists that call
themselves Muslims are shunned by the other Muslims. "Looks like the people are associating
Muslims in this community with the actions of terrorists in Paris which is not correct. We
condemn the actions of all terrorist organizations including ISIS," said Rasheed. Muslims are
generally peaceful towards others. Islam is a religion of peace not hate. The terrorists have a
warped sense of mind since they think what they do is for their god. The worst part about the
terrorists is that the majority of good Muslims are defined by the minority of the terrorists. Even
a terrorist group named Al Qaeda shuns ISIS. ISIS doesnt just attack non-Muslims but they also
attack Muslims. People tend to remember the worst and forget the good that the Muslims are.

The people who attack the Islamic Center can be individuals who are less educated about the
Islam or try to put their hate for Islam on others because the Islamic Center is the closest thing
they can vandalize. The vandals got an enormous amount of motivation from the Paris attack.
The vandals turned something that was good like the Paris Peace Symbol into something that
they tried to pin on the Muslims.

Work Cited
Collins, Dave. "US Muslims Face Backlash after Paris Attacks." The Big Story. AP, 18 Nov.
2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
Tillett, Lena. "Vandals Target the Islamic Center of Omaha After Paris Attacks."WOWT RSS.
WOWT, 17 Nov. 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
"Vandals Target Omaha Islamic Center with Eiffel Tower Peace Sign." KETV. KETV, 16 Nov.
2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.