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Moreover, the American media represents Islam as a religion of the sword, promoting violence and bloodshed. The U.S. government and media alike disparagingly stereotype Arabs, especially Muslims, and often depict them as dangerous terrorists or exotic foreigners. Arab women are often perceived as either heavily veiled, austere Muslims or as sexually available belly dancers. In academia and in social justice settings Arab women appear either in connection with sensationalized topics, such as female circumcision, the veil, and honor killings, or not at all. Hence, prior to 9/11, a somewhat negative but not particularly well-articulated stereotype of Arabs and Arab Americans prevailed. Since the dramatic and terrifying events of 9/11, however, Arabs and Arab Americans have increasingly received more overt discrimination, negative stereotyping, and hostility in the United States.
American society tends to lump all women from Muslim countries into the Arab category (as in the case, say, with Afghan women), to view all Arabs as Muslims, and to consider all Muslims as practicing a particular, rigid kind of Islam. Significantly, this represents one of the challenges that Arab American women have faced, especially post-9/11. In this unique position these women face a conflation of ethnic and religious identity when, in fact, not all Arabs are Muslims and all Muslims are not Arabs. The West conceives of Islam as monolithic and Arab women, whether Muslims or not, as passive victims of their religion and/or culture.
In the aftermath of 9/11 the Bush administration exhibited a kind of colonialist feminism to justify its invasion of Afghanistan: it painted the picture of beaten, covered, and silenced Afghan women. The U.S. set up these women as the norm for Arab women said to suffer from an oppressive and misogynistic religion and patriarchal social system. These Afghan women may be Muslims but it is their oppressive political system rather than their religion that is plaguing their lives. More important, however, these women are NOT Arabs. In fact, Arabs account for only twenty percent of the world’s Muslim population (Schur, 8).