Because 1.3 Billion People All Look the Same

by Latoya Peterson

Take a look at this cover:

What is the impression you get from the photo accompanying the headline?

Kabobfest asks if the cover is racist.

Fatemeh, when she forwarded the Kabobfest link to me, said she thinks it is racist AND islamaphobic.

After checking out the source of the photo, the articles accompanying this issue of the American Interest don’t look too promising either:

What Do Muslims Think? amir taheri
Unprecedented intellectual ferment in the Muslim world is likely to have a happier ending than many Westerners suppose.

The Irrelevance of the Middle East philip e. auerswald
Neither our ‘energy insecurity’ nor the danger of terrorism is all it’s cracked up to be. The Middle East just isn’t that strategically important.

I’m throwing in my bid for racist, islamaphobic, and xenophobic – after all, they are playing up that fear of the scary ethnic “other” from a foreign land.

Thoughts?

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Please note: I tend to get tons of static for covering Muslim issues here, many of the issues stemming from the fact that “Muslim” is not a race. And yes, I am well aware that a group of adherents of the same religion are not necessarily of one set race. However, the treatment of Islam in the media (and the subsequent discrimination that manifests against Muslims) is racialized. So, we cover it. Also, the fact that Islam is associated with one set group of people (with one set look) is problematic in itself.