TOW #11- Muslims in America

It seems as though every time we turn on the news there is a another terror attack that has happened in the world.  It also seems that behind each of these attacks, the news focuses on the religion of the attackers, rather than their inhumane minds that prompted their actions.  Muslims in America have never been more on edge after the recent Paris, San Bernardino, and other Middle Eastern terror attacks.  Writer for the New York Times, Laurie Goodstein writes a piece on how American Muslims condemn extremists, and they are not the ones to be blamed.  Goodstein is the Time's main religion reporter and has wrote everything to little columns to front page articles on the Pope's visit to the States.  In this piece, Goodstein spreads awareness of the discrimination that American Muslims face by using quotes and current events.  

To establish her cause first, she quotes Nabihah Maqbool, a Muslim who is also a Law student at University of Chicago.  "It all becomes collapsed into these senseless acts of violence being committed by people who are part of my group" (Maqbool).  She uses this quote to not only to establish that her cause is credible and real, but to show how it personally effects one.  It places the reader of the Times in a new position which allows them to think differently.  It implies the rhetorical question as well; "What if a Christian committed an attack and the News portrayed all Christians as horrible people?"  Once she has the audience intrigued, Goodstein moves along and lists off current events to further her point that discrimination is happening to these innocent Muslims.

Goodstein names current evens that have happened to show that Muslims in America are constantly getting battered by ignorant Americans.  "Muslims have report a spate of violence and intimidation against them: women wearing head scarves accosted ; Muslim children bullied; bullet shot at a mosque in Meriden, Conn,; feces thrown at a mosque in Pflugerville, Tex" (Goodstein).  These events appeal to pathos, in that they give something the reader can emotionally react to.  If a church in Philadelphia was shot at in an act of prejudice, then the nation would surely mourn about it (as they should), but yet only few know about the constant acts of ethnocentrism that occur in our country.

By using quotes and current events, Goodstein is able to spread awareness of the discrimination of Muslims in America.  It is important to know that just because they claim to worship Islam, terrorists that practice these extremist views are not the same as the innocent American Muslims that hate ISIS just as much as white Christians do.