By Reem Yousef al-Harmi/Doha


Mourners holding a candlelight vigil to remember Shaima Alawadi outside her home in El Cajon, California
With all the laws in America granting African-American citizens the same status as its Caucasian citizens, you would naturally err into thinking that racism in America is a distant memory. Recently, there has been a lot of news coverage about the 17-year-old African American, Trayvon Martin, who was shot dead by 28-year-old George Zimmerman, a man of Peruvian and white American descent.
Lest you think that Muslims are safe in America and that there is no Islamophobia there,  a few days after the Martin shooting, Shaima Alawadi, an Iraqi-American woman, was beaten to death at her home in California.
These two incidents highlight the hate and racism that still exist in communities all over the world and is not just confined to the US. You can’t just tell someone to stop being racist towards other people who look different or believe in something different, inasmuch as we would like to think that such a thing were possible, but the crucial question is whether the wanton violence and killings linked to these hate crimes can be stopped. 
If some irresponsible and ignorant people in society keep on committing crimes like these without the fear of consequences and punishment, then I think civilised society is at a great risk because there is no strong institution that’s willing to stop, or at least go toe-to-toe against racism in any appreciable and effective way.
This lack of a swift retribution has resulted in a surge of hate-crime related murders such as the aforementioned killing of the Iraqi woman and an Iranian activist in Texas during the month of January.
Now, I am sorry to say that the media and its cohort, the entertainment industry, have played a not insignificant role in this. This prejudice is not a recent phenomenon; rather it is an example of the bias exercised by the media in a long history of portrayal and misrepresentation.
For example, the images of an African American as a thug, of Muslims as terrorists and the identification of the hijab worn by some Muslim women as a symbol of oppression and backwardness are just a few of the many negative images which we see and hear every day in the mainstream media.
According to a recent poll conducted by the Sentencing Project, one out of eight black men who are in their 20’s are in jail, and one out of three African-American males who are born today are expected to go to jail. These numbers are downright terrifying but more importantly, how did a nation like the US stoop to such lows?
How is it that, in this era of technological highs, we are still talking about racism, racial profiling and hate crimes within the US, a so-called “melting pot” of the world? Maybe, the sad truth is that some people just don’t like the taste of this melting pot and want to reconstitute it.
What I would like to know is what makes a person an American par exemplar? What are the traits possessed by this “perfect” American that renders them above reproach, freeing them from the threat of racial profiling?
Take the case of the murdered Iraqi-American woman Shaima Alawadi. A note was found next to her corpse telling her to “go back to your country, you terrorist”.
So, according to her killer, if you are not white, and if you are not a Christian, then you don’t belong in the US. Additionally, if you are a Muslim, then you automatically become a terrorist. However, the last time I checked, with the exception of the native Americans, none of the present-day citizens of the US can really claim America as their own since either they or their ancestors arrived in the US as immigrants.
Moreover, terrorism did exist in the US before the events of 911 and way before the first wave of Arab-American immigration in many forms.
Take the example of the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) who terrorised the people of the US, coloured or otherwise, in the name of White supremacy and Christianity. The US government proved ineffective in stopping them and their lynching of African Americans, because of the support for the KKK within the ranks of the government itself.
Therefore, racism isn’t something new. Killing in the name of racism and getting away with it is certainly not new either.
Unfortunately, the case of Shaima Alawadi hasn’t really been given a lot of publicity in the US media. There has been next to no coverage, and no investigation. As a matter of fact, I attribute this perceived ignorance of the US media to a heightening sense of Islamophobia in America, despite the efforts of many organisations and individuals to put an end to this ignorant hate of all things Muslim.
In the end, we want justice to be served; we don’t want revenge, and a strong message dissuading people from intolerance, hate and racism needs to be propagated among the masses. 
In the cases of Trayvon Martin and Shaima Alawadi, a woman wearing a scarf and a young man wearing his hoodie gave certain people a wrong impression because they identified the victims with certain negative stereotypes solely based on their clothing, something totally unacceptable in a modern civilised society.
It is quite horrific to think that what one wears could give the other person the right to be suspicious. This ignorant way of thinking could ultimately end up in fatal incidents as in the cases of Trayvon Martin, Shaima Alawadi, and many others who were killed in the name of their ethnicity, colour or religion.
It doesn’t take too much to realise that this has to stop. It doesn’t even cost a penny to be a human and act in the name of humanity.
With the help of the media and the justice system, along with police enforcement, as responsible members of society, we have to take a stand against all forms of racism, which doesn’t just end with prosecution and arrest, and find a common cause to end all sorts of racism.

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