my passion Syrian refugees and islamophobia

​The Syrian refugee crisis is a direct consequence of the Syrian Civil War. Although we are called upon to act, our political parties are very polarized; some do not believe that the theUnited States should play much of a role in helping refugees directly or indirectly. Helping Syrian refugees is not the ultimate goal of the U.S. government because Congress is extremely divided on this issue. The only way to solve this humanitarian crisis is if western nations and the world come together regardless of their differences. As a result, an objective approach to ending this crisis would be to create solutions through a worldwide collaboration of countries sponsored by the United Nations. However, in order to find solutions to the Syrian refugee crisis, Islamophobia must be overcome. Even though Islamophobia is not the direct cause of the crisis,it is still a strong barrier to finding solutions to this social problem. 

An increase in Islamophobia and an irrational belief that all Muslims and refugees are terrorists is now causing an unprecedented ban on Muslims entering the United States. Such a belief is irrational because it labels and stigmatizes all Muslims, including the majority who practice the actual religion of Islam correctly and peacefully. Muslims are not radicals who justify killing innocent people. Such a notion goes against the teachings in the Quran, which absolutely prohibits the killing of innocent people. In fact, the Quran states that if anyone kills a person, it would be as if he killed the whole of mankind; and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole of mankind” (The Holy Quran, Chapter Five, Verse 32). Because a great many Americans have misconceptions about the religion of Islam, many politicians, especially Republicans, wish to stop accepting Syrian refugees into the United States. This prejudiced action is simply based on the stereotype that all Muslims are radical extremists like ISIS, which is a politically motivated organization of radicals who justify killing their own kind. In order to cure Islamophobia, people need to become educated about the Muslim religion and its actual teachings. If the American people could join with the worldwide, peaceful Muslim majority and get past their Islamophobia, there would be no reason to fear Syrian refugees or need to stop them from coming to the United States.

There have been many studies on the political, social, and economic status of Syrian refugees who have been living in countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011. These studies include one by Susan Bartels and Kathleen Hamil; the authors discovered the fact that 500,000 refugee children have been living in Lebanon for more than 10 days since November 2013 (Bartels & Hamil, 2015). The researchers reported two main findings in this study. First, the difficult choice that many parents have between sending their children to work in potentially dangerous environments in order to support the family or sending children to school. However, even families who want to send their children to school have very limited opportunities or resources. Food, income, and schools open to accepting Syrian refugees are scarce. The lack of opportunity and education for the children resulted in a second finding for Bartles and Hamil; the two authors discovered that these constraints and limitations deprive children of adequate food, education, health care, and play. As a result, many Syrian refugee children have suffered both short- and long-term physical and psychosocial development issues (Bartels & Hamil, 2015). This finding is significant because it shows that the safety and well-being of Syrian refugees is compromised. Furthermore, these findings show the internal and external struggles that Syrian refugees face, thus shedding light on the complicated dimensions of the refugee crisis that western society often ignores. This is why the refugee crisis is now a serious global phenomenon that has not only affected Syria, but also the entire world. Western countries must expand their constrained perspectives on the Syrian refugee crisis and realize that they might be the refugees’ only chance at survival. In order to truly to help these refugees, westerners must overcome their emotional disengagement from problems other people face. Unlike the westerner who can turn off the news and choose to watch a cartoon instead, the refugees face violence every day from which they cannot escape. Westerners are so alienated from other people’s problems that they do not see that war and economic livelihood are interlinked with the emotional and educational needs of children. In addition, many westerners turn a blind eye to other nations because the problems do not involve them.

Another study, conducted in January 2014, by Claude Bruderlein at Harvard University, produced an ethnography, which looked at wider refugee problems caused by the conflict in Syria. The study produced four main findings. First, despite the fact that most people believe Syrian refugees live in camps, they actually live in urban settings. In fact, the five most popular host countries (Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan) where Syrian refugees live, the number of refugees living in non-camp settings has risen from 81% in 2013 to 84% in 2014. It is important to make mention that Bruderlein was indeed correct in her prediction: The Syrian refugee population has increased since 2013 (Bruderlein, 2015). The second finding was that because Syrian refugees prefer to live in urban settings, the registered refugee population of Jordan’s Za’atari camp declined by almost 40% between April and December of 2013. However, the Za’atari camp received an additional new 100,000 refugees during the same time. This indicates an increase in the absolute number of refugees; as a result, that turnover is very high and the camp is used as a way station to the cities. The third finding is the fact that many Syrian refugees are willing to make significant sacrifices to leave camps, as their safety is in Jeopardy, as many Syrian refugees owe a significant amount of debt to smugglers. According to a survey by CARE International, more than 50% of participating refugee households living outside Jordanian camps reported incurring debts to smugglers of between 75 and 1,500 Jordanian dinars (roughly $105 to $2,115 U.S.) (Bruderlein, 2015). The last finding is that because there is a limited supply of houses and economic opportunities for Syrian refugees, they are forced to live with many people in unsuitable settlements such as tents, chicken coops, and garages. These overcrowded informal settlements lack basic amenities, such as electricity, heating, and access to water(Bruderlein, 2015). 

In order to understand how the Syrian refugee crisis became a social problem, we need to go back and analyze the meaning of Islamophobia. Islamophobia is the reason why the majority of the Republican Party, as well as many other Americans, are not letting Syrian refugees come to the United States. This goes beyond President-elect Trump’s bitter and sarcastic remarks about Muslims. According to the Washington Post, 55% of the GOP wants to ban Muslims from entering the country and deport the Syrian refugees that are already in the US (David, 2015). TheRepublican Party wants to ban Muslims because they see them as a threat to national security; however, this belief is not supported with evidence. Although terrorism is a real threat, the threat to the United States from Muslims is greatly exaggerated. In fact, according to a Washington blog by Global Research, which shows data from the FBI, only Muslims perpetrated a small percentage of terrorist attacks carried out on U.S. soil (Global Research, 2016). The report shows that radical extremists, not the entire Muslim population, commit only six percent of terrorist attacks. Moreover, the report shows that Latinos, not Muslims commit the majority of terrorists’ attacks (Global Research, 2016).

As a result, people need to realize that Islamophobia is not only unfounded, because it goes against the teachings of the religion of Islam, but because people unfairly associate all Muslims with the actions of radical extremists, who make up a very small percentage of the Muslim population. In reality, people have cause to be afraid of terrorists and radical extremists like ISIS. People have misconceptions surrounding the Islamic religion as an ideology. They have come to believe that all Muslims support killing both innocent people and their own kind for no reason. Instead, people need to have a cultural education of the Muslim religion and its actual teachings, as Muslims practice the peaceful religion of Islam and renounce the violent practices of radical extremism.  

A study by Amir Saeed (2015), emphasizes the rise of Islamophobia in Britain, and the media's contributions to the increase. The study shows that because of Islamophobia in the media, the public assumes that the Muslim population is radicalizing. As a result, people who used to be identified with a place of origin, or even as “people of color” have become recognized by their assumed religion. For example, this notion is most evident by the racist stereotype, ‘Pathe Ki.’ The author explains how the racial category of ‘pa the ki’ is used to identify a person from Pakistan, living in Britain. Despite having poor stereotypes as Muslims, British Muslims want to identify themselves as British. Furthermore, after the events of 9/11 and the beginning of the so-called War on Terror, it is now British Muslims who are identified as a group of potentially ‘false nationals’ and systematically constructed as “the other” (Amir 2015). The author makes an important point about how the representation of Islam and Muslims in the media is extremely negative, especially for British Muslims. According to Saeed, we have to make more strenuous efforts to ‘integrate’ British Muslims into British society and reassert their loyalty to the British state. He is not only describing the media’s discourse about British Muslims, but stating that the fact that people associate British Muslims with a war group like ISIS, is not going to create an anti-war effort, and instead of integrating Muslims, this discourse just alienates them further (Amir 2015). This study is important because it shows that the media  Britain---and by extension, the world---makes negative portrayals of ethnic minorities as the ‘other,’ and as a result, they are portrayed as alien outsiders to the ‘British way of life.’ This negative representation of British Muslims and other ethnic minorities originates in ideological thought (Orientalism) and recreates itself in a ‘new form of racist’ thinking (Islamophobia). Therefore, this system of thought suggests that British Muslims (regardless of citizenship) are still tied to the ‘foreign’ culture of Islam. The study proves how important the role of the media in representing Muslims is, and that the portrayal of the religion of Islam is crucial to how British Muslims are treated as British citizens (Amir 2015).

The rise of Islamophobia, as a consequence of the refugee crisis, is highlighted in a study by Enes Bayrakli and Farid Hafez, conducted in 2014. There are two major findings that resulted from this study; firstly, how Islamophobia gives insight into the preconceived notions of the anti-Muslim racists (Bayrakli, Hafez, 2015). For example, in countries like Hungary, Finland, Lithuania, or Latvia, where only a small number of Muslims live, Islamophobia functions as a successful agent used to mobilize people (Bayrakli, Hafez, 2015). As a result, not only do a majority of people significantly overestimate the country's Muslim population but also, although Muslims have not committed any violent acts in most countries, they are still often labeled as violent radical extremists, including innocent Syrian refugees escaping from the war in their homeland. In addition, the fact that Islamophobia was used as a fear-mongering tactic after the attacks in Paris, has led to the debates on Islam and Muslims throughout the West. It also led to a new increase in concerns about letting Syrian refugees enter the United States and Europe. The study also discussed how former Secretary of State László L. Simon urged Hungarians to return to their Christian spirituality and make more babies in order to counter the negative cultural effects of mass migration. The secretary propagated the message that the “impending victory of Islamic parties imposing polygamy was destroying the remainder of European culture” (Bayrakli, Hafez, 2015). This strong Islamophobia is not restricted to the extreme right. In fact, refugee migration has become increasingly associated with Islamic terrorism, and it has become the standard argument justifying a number of Islamophobic domestic and international measures. For example, the social democrat, Czech President Milos Zeman, claimed Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as “an organized invasion” to “gradually control Europe” (masterminded the influx of refugees into Europe. (Bayrakli, Hafez, 2015).

These findings are significant because not only do they show the consequences and connection between Islamophobia and the refugee crisis, but they also prove that without such high Islamophobia in western countries, there would be less fear of letting Syrian refugees into the U.S and Europe. This study also demonstrates how dangerous the disease of Islamophobia is. Facts are forgotten, and fiction, created from fear, takes over; thus, people believe that Muslims pose a great risk to the democratic foundations of the United States and other western nations. In addition, racist attitudes towards Muslims also jeopardize social peace as well as the coexistence of different cultures throughout the world. Therefore, both civil society and states have to work together to acknowledge the seriousness of this issue and develop concrete policies to counter Islamophobia. People in western nations should be educated by qualified personnel in regards to combating negative perceptions of Muslims. In addition, Muslim civil society has to be empowered with information to help combat Islamophobia, especially in the direction of how Islamophobia is in western nations.

A study on Syrian refugees in Jordan offers a personal look at the Za’atari refugee camp and the surrounding urban areas of the conflict environment in order to gain first-hand experience of the extent of the crisis. As the conflict in Syria continues to unfold, Jordan provides an excellent case study, due to its close proximity to the civil unrest and its past as a sanctuary for the refugees fleeing conflicts in Iraq, Palestine-Israel and Kuwait. This camp hosts more than 50,000 refugees receiving assistance from a number of governmental, non-governmental international and local humanitarian and religious organizations. (University, York 2014) This study is important because it gives western nations a first-hand experience of the scale of the crisis so that they are more aware of the problem. This study also looked at the living conditions in the refugee camp, specifically highlighting the fact that not only do they have a limited supply of food and shelter, but the area is so crowded that 95 families live in one street. (University, York 2014). As a result, this study provides education for people all over the world about the severity of the crisis and what happens to refugees in the camp. Moreover, All of these facts show how poor the living conditions of refugee actually are. The purpose of this research is to not only make important contributions to literature but to strengthen services to help Syrians within the Zaatari camp through indicating the issues and challenges facing refugee communities and reporting them to camp authorities. However, this research also shows the extent of the crisis to western nations, to encourage them to provide aid to people fleeing war-torn Syria. 

An article by Davis Harris on the refugee crisis discusses how the Institute of International Education, ‘has helped Syrian refugees attain a college education’. According to Davis, the Institute of International Education has assisted students and scholars who are persecuted and displaced (Harris 2016). The institute has enabled more than 200 Syrian university students to resume their studies at institutions in the U.S. and globally (Harris 2016). Most recently, IIE developed a program called "From Camps to Campus", which is a pilot project that will provide scholarships to students from the Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan (The Institute of International Education 2016). This research shows how important getting an education is for Syrian refugees, as it gives them more opportunities for jobs social mobility and education is the best way for refugees to improve their life circumstances and move on from this tragedy. (The Institute of International Education 2016).
             A study by Rochelle Davis and Abbie Taylor from The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, at The Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, shows how countries hosting Syrian refugees have played a major role in averting much larger humanitarian crisis, however, the crisis can only be solved by ending the fighting in Syria. We can not ignore or neglect the voices of Syrian refugees in the discussions of Syria’s future and finding solutions for the crisis.  Therefore, it cannot be overstated that the solution to the displacement issue requires a political solution to end to the violence and insecurity in Syria, and the United Nations current efforts are not enough because they don’t address this political solution.

In another study, Oxford University conducted a one-year project across the three most popular host countries for Syrian refugees, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. The objective of the project is to inform policies that can enhance protection space for displaced Syrians within the region of origin. (Oxford University The Politics of the Syrian Refugee Crisis 2016)).  In order to create a solution for the refugee Crisis, we need to understand all of the politics that influence the crisis. This, in turn, will point to new policy levers available to donor governments and the international community. There has been a growing body of research on refugees from Syria. However, people lack a focus on understanding the politics of responses by the main host states including Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey. Although we already know a lot about those governments’ basic positions at the capital city level, there is a lot more to understand at the local level. For example, how do municipal or district level authorities shape responses, and what potential opportunities does this open up? 

Western countries need to understand and define Islamophobia and the roots of this type of racism to fix the refugee crisis. In regards to the many studies conducted, the findings bring me to the same conclusion: The reason why the Syrian refugee problem still exists is that most Western societies lack a focus as well as an understanding of what goes on in other parts of the world. They do not pay attention to the consequences of the struggles other people go through and fail to see that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (King). Hence, people continue to misconceive the religion of Muslims because they do not address it and allow Islamophobia to take over their approach to solving this refugee problem. Despite the fact that there has been humanitarian involvement in Syria by the United Nations, these efforts are inadequate to the scale of the crisis. Therefore, the refugee crisis requires the implementation of innovative programs and policies to address the short- and long-term needs of refugees and host communities, which are essential to the long-term stability of the Middle East.