This past month, Northeast Middle school in Bristol, Connecticut invited a Muslim speaker to share her experiences as a Muslim woman and “dispel misconceptions that are prevalent in today’s society.” After outraged social media posts were brought to the school’s attention regarding this seminar, the school decided to cancel the event. Many complaints were filed stating that the event would concern student’s and faculty’s safety. The prejudices against the Muslim speaker address the issue of stereotyping Muslims through the school’s deliberate ostracizing of this Muslim speaker. The Muslim speaker’s goal was to end common misconceptions and prejudices about Muslims, but the cancellation of the speaker has only enforced these prejudices more. This stereotype is most likely rooted from a miniscule fraction of all Muslims in the world interpret Islam in a rather extreme way, these small groups are known as Islamic extremists. Because this small, yet violent group of Muslims dominate most of the news coverage of Muslims and the Islamic religion, many expect the large majority of the religion to act in the same violent way as the Islamic extremists. The parents at this school were concerned for the safety of their children when they heard that there would be a seminar lead by a Muslim, because all the media has ever covered of Muslims has been groups like ISIL or Al Qaeda committing horrible acts. The vast majority of Muslims are peaceful and against the actions of extreme Islamic groups, yet the public still associates innocent people with these terror groups (Seraaj).
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