I can speak from experience as an American-born Muslim who was raised in the US when I say that Muslims will always be socially stigmatized. The worst thing I could do was sit in my social studies lessons, praying that September 11th wouldn’t be right around the corner. I would always try staying home that day. When the subject was discussed on the day of the lesson, everyone would turn their heads, and the classmates would smirk cruelly as I sat there with nothing to say and nothing I could do because that’s how the people around us saw us Muslims. It’s the worst feeling a Muslim could experience. Islamophobia was initially defined as an unjustified hatred of Islam and hate against all or many Muslims. Middle Eastern communities, especially Muslims and Sikhs, were stereotyped as “terrorists.”

Due to the prevalence of Muslim representations belonging to non-White populations, racialization and religion are typically intertwined. Islamophobia has an impact on the lives of Americans with Muslim-like aspects. It goes beyond race and includes things like attire. External qualities that make one more susceptible to Islamophobia include having a particular skin complexion, donning a headscarf or turban, and conversing to a particular accent; nevertheless, non-Muslims like Christians can also possess similar traits.

Numerous faiths have adopted racism from a phenomenological perspective, but Islam is a religion that it has significantly impacted. Its fundamental objective is to demonstrate that prejudice as a form of poor socialization is not a temporary deficit that automatically vanishes in completely functional societies. Islamic racism has an authoritarian impact that affects the lives of its own followers, altering their routines and, ultimately, religious representations. I’m among them. Phenomenology is sometimes referred to as the study of phenomena as they appear in human perception, as well as the awareness, cognition, and meaning that they have for us. Phenomenology, to put it another way, is the study of how people actually perceive their surroundings.