With the recent announcement of Pfizer’s potential coronavirus vaccine, the media is only focusing on the fact that Dr. Ugur Sahin and Dr. Özlem Türeci are a Turkish-German couple. One point that is continuously being left out is that they are Muslim.
That negligence, however, is not surprising. Muslims are not applauded for their achievements or successes. Instead, the narrative of them as terrorists continues to be perpetuated.
For instance, films casting Muslims, especially Arabs, have people of those backgrounds play villains or terrorists. In the movie Ali’s Wedding, it’s revealed to the audience at the end of the movie that the person the story is based on, Muslim Australian Osamah Ali, has a film career, but is solely cast in movies as a terrorist.
Islamophobia has always been present in the world, and grows each day. In France, President Macron has issued a crackdown on Muslims after the beheading of a teacher who showed students caricatures of the Muslim’s sacred Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).
Regardless of viewing this incident from a Muslim or western perspective, the fact of the matter is that Macron said Islam does not align with the French republic. He is using one person, the Muslim who killed the teacher, as justification to rage war on the entire Muslim population in France. Under any law, the case should have ended with that one Muslim man. Instead, the killing is being used as an excuse to once more spread the idea that all Muslims are terrorists.
Muslims need to be acknowledged for all the good they do for society.
For example, Muslims have made major contributions to music. “The guitar, as we know it today, has its origins in the Arabic oud – a lute with a bent neck. During the Middle Ages, it found its way to Muslim Spain, where it was referred to as “qitara” in the Arabic of Andalusia,” according to The Huffington Post.
Another example is the invention of hospitals. In fact, the hospitals built today are structured after the hospitals initially built in Cairo, Egypt. “In the Ahmed Ibn Tulun hospital (named for the founder of the Tulunid dynasty), which was established in the year 872,” according to Good News Network.
One might wonder how patients paid for the care they received. Those Muslim run hospitals actually introduced the concept of free health care. Though universal healthcare is a greatly debated topic in the United States, it is already found in more than thirty countries.
The free healthcare so long ago is a testament to the fact that Muslims do not mean anyone harm. In fact, Islam translates to peace. Here they are trying to provide care for the sick and hurt for free, but western society continues to accuse them of trying to hurt others with extremist ways. These negative perceptions are then not rooted in truth.
Even in more recent times, Muslim political activist Linda Sarsour cofounded the largest single day protest in US history: Women’s March on Washington. That event was instrumental in women voicing their needs for equal treatment, pay, rights, along with protesting a whole slew of systemic issues against them. The march Sarsour helped lead was pivotal in United States history. She is just one example that proves saying all Muslims are terrorists is just completely wrong.
Then, of course, there is the Muslim team of husband and wife scientists that have found the coronavirus vaccine. So far, the vaccine is 90% successful in preventing the coronavirus in test patients. No other vaccine has been so successful thus fur.
Once more, Muslims are providing tools and a means to help an ailing society move forward. Instead of focusing on depicting Muslims as evil, people should change their Islamophobic sentiments to see the good that Muslims continue to do for society, even in the face of persecution and hate towards them.
