Hate Crimes

Hate Crimes

This past week our Islam class watched the movie, “Mooz-Lum” which released in 2010. The movie was about a Muslim family in modern times and their struggles. The film’s main character, “Tariq”, dealt with the constant struggle of whether or not he wanted to be a member of Islam or not. His father was a devout, conservative Muslim and he wanted his son to follow in his shoes and become even better than him. His mother divorced his father early due to the fact that she heavily disagreed with her husband. She thought that it was her daughter and son’s choice and they should not push it on them. As the movie progresses it depicts Tariq’s youth life at a Muslim school to be brutal and abusive, thus the reason for his doubts. After September 11th, 2001, he sees his sister and friend get abused and realizes where his heart is. At the end his family comes together and sees the bigger picture of what family love is all about.

One of the major themes that come to the forefront in the movie is hate crimes. They depict the week following September 11th, showing how most Americans view toward Arabic peoples of any kind received harsh words and at times violent actions. Hate crimes rose drastically after the events of September 11th. Although this may be very accurate in its simplest sense, there is no place for this in society even now. A terrorist attack of that magnitude was something that we have never seen and hopefully never do again. At once particular seen late in the movie, a group of mostly white males seeks vengeance against Muslims for the terrorist attacks on the United States. They find two young women, one of which is Tariq’s younger sister, and they begin to heckle them. At the same time, Tariq finds the crowd bothering his sister and friend and immediately stands up for them. He is then beat up and before they beat up the women a level headed man says, “Wait we are calling them terrorists, but look at us”. I think that is one of largest...