The Iran Hostage Crisis
The Iran Hostage Crisis was displayed as one of the first incidents that involved radical Islam. The September 11th attacks were some of the first big terrorist attacks on the United States of America that involved Muslim extremists. The first attack occurred at the pentagon around 8 or 9am, by a plane referred to as plane 77. The plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was one of the only planes that stopped the terrorists from getting to their destination, which was the White House. The passengers being held hostage inside the plane sabotaged the terrorists and ended up causing the plane to crash. The two main attacks were the crashing of the two planes into the twin towers, which ultimately made the two buildings collapse, taking the lives of thousands of Americans. These extreme disasters were the main cause of racial profiling of Muslims in Amer-ica today. The stereotypes that American individuals place on Muslims in public areas is another consequence of these events. People are usually frightened when they witness a Muslim in public places and already have negative connotations of them based on the events of the September 11th attacks and the Iran hostage crisis. Events such as The Iran hostage crisis and the terrorists’ attacks on American soil that happened on September 11, 2001, opened up opportunities or ave-nues for the media to negatively portray the people of the Middle East in a stereotypical way in-ternationally.
The Iran Hostage crisis involved students from Iran and American Embassy workers in Teheran, in which many Americans were taken hostage due to the problems that the Iranian gov-ernment had with the United States of America (Farber 45). Following these attacks people ulti-mately reveal cultural stereotypes when violent events occur that involve one culture. Poole states that “Muslims are most likely to be represented as terrorists or cited as terrorist sources, whilst ordinary Muslims are marginalized” (Poole 5). It is contradictory that people around the world do not value the lives of Muslims on a social standpoint, yet they are also viewed as an enemy. It will be difficult for a Muslim in America to change the views of other people when they are being labeled as a “terrorist” or a “threat” to those around them. The world we live in today has become deluded by the reports made by the media that they never tend to think that Muslims are regular people who happen to live in a different part of the world. Muslims and Middle Easterners are usually harassed by officers at checkpoints while traveling. They, in some cases, are treated like dogs and people grow distrust for them. Middle Eastern people usually can’t practice their own culture freely in America because others might automatically view and confuse this as an act of terrorism.
The Iran hostage crisis was America's first encounter with radical terrorism and sparked issues that involved other countries. People often use the events that happened dealing with Is-lamic cultures to generalize Middle Eastern countries as a dangerous and terroristic place. The events that led up to the worldwide opinion on Muslims first began with the Iran Hostage Crisis. The Iran Hostage Crisis occurred in the late 1970s when Iranian Students stormed the U.S. Em-bassy in Tehran and took 60 American hostages (history.com). The Iranians kidnapped the Americans because of the actions taken by the U.S. that allowed the casted out President of Iran to receive poor health treatment in the United States (Nacos 35). The Iranians took the hostages for a period of four hundred forty days in which different methods were taken to try and get them back (Houghton 45). The event itself would ultimately make Muslims an easier target for the la-bel of terrorists, because when people view only a couple of extremists causing harm they tend to generalize the population in which they came from as a dangerous and terroristic community. Mahan states, "In the search for a simple explanation, the idea that the media are the contagion of terrorism has been widely heralded. According to the theory of contagion, terrorism is cultivated and spread by media coverage." The author speaks of the perspective of terrorism and the mo-tives of the media when displaying terrorist attacks. The purpose of the media displaying images of terrorism and political violence is to cause anxiety in viewers, in order to spark a reaction out of Western people. The author stated that the media does this in hopes that people in the West will shun and turn away from Islam people since they are looked at as a threat (Griset 224). The media portrayed the event as the Iranians taking the Americans hostage as a terroristic attack, but in reality it was a retaliation that the Iranians took due to what America had done to Iran and its political influence. The real reason on the kidnapping of those Americans was not included in the media's report of the situation.
The media often portrays events that happen such as terrorist attacks and actions as a one-sided ordeal. They often never state the real reason on why attacks happen, the events that led up to the attack, or why the countries such as the Middle East are fed up with the U.S. The mass media is made up of wealthy people who use the news, and internet to their own advantage with-out any care for the lives of other people. Mahan states in her work about the way that the media uses terrorist attacks in order to gain money from anti-terrorism groups. In no way shape or form do the government or mass media corporations care about the outlook that people have on Mus-lims who are trying to live normal lives in Western countries (Mahan 229). The media is the main reason why the Islamic culture is looked upon as a terroristic society. The media has a great amount of influence on the way the world functions and views of the world. The media only gives out what they want people to see, such as only displaying the negative aspects of Muslims, but in reality, the word Islam means peace. In truth there are more Muslims that have nothing to do with terrorist activities than the actual terrorist groups but people choose to only see what the media shows and displays to them. Some of the news that the media plays out is not true or hardcore facts. People don't often realize that they live their life by the news and act out their dai-ly activities based on what they see in the news. Sometimes it's as if the media aims or points out more of the other countries terroristic events than our own countries. The Western and different parts of the world has shown that we can also be xenophobic in the way that we look at Muslims in an alienated type of way (Griset 35). The media often shows a misrepresentation of Muslim and Islamic people and that allows us to think what they are showing is how most or all of Mus-lim/Islamic people act. In the book Muslims and the news media Elizabeth Poole states, "The EU heads of state, senior police officials and civil servants, through forums such a Trevi, have sent out a strong signal to security services that foreigners,