(RNS) — With the veryfirst 2024 governmental election disputes currently underway, Muslims are showing on the chaos, debate and stress that accompanied the last coupleof election cycles. Most significantly, in 2016 Donald Trump fanned the flames of Islamophobia in the nation, openly revealing his obvious individual hostility towards Muslims throughout the project and making amongst his veryfirst acts as president executive orders prohibiting U.S.-bound tourists entry from anumberof Muslim-majority nations.
In action, lotsof Americans, consistingof those who puton’t recognize as Muslim, came together to demonstration bigotry and assistance the Muslim neighborhood. There is no more indication of the department in this nation than the rhetoric about Muslims over the last 2 years, specifically as it endedupbeing a function of political commitments.
As scientists from varied spiritual and spiritual backgrounds, we are interested in how education can be utilized as a platform to moderate the impacts of social ills, consistingof bigotry, sexism and Islamophobia. We shot to comprehend how young individuals view Muslims and how to produce chances to push back versus Islamophobia and other kinds of hate. Our most current researchstudy about mindsets towards Muslims brings us hope, particularly for informing non-Muslim trainees about Islamophobia and its obvious and perilous expressions.
Over the course of the 2016 election and the Trump administration that followed, we surveyed more than 9,000 non-Muslim trainees at 122 college and university schools 3 times: when they came to college in fall 2015, onceagain at the end of their veryfirst year and a 3rd time simply previously graduation in spring 2019.
Each time, we asked trainees their ideas about Muslims and the level to which they concurred with the following declarations: People in this group are ethical individuals; I have commonness with individuals in this group; People in this group haveactually made favorable contributions to society; I value individuals in this group
Their actions revealed really plainly that even in the existence of a multitude of other affects, such as religiousbeliefs, race, gender, sexuality and, most notably, political leaning, mindsets towards Muslims amongst college trainees endedupbeing more favorable over time. Even the most discriminative trainees — those who disagreed that Muslims make favorable contributions to society or that they are ethical individuals — altered their minds.
How? By getting to understand each other.
In this researchstudy, we specification