{"id":1358,"date":"2012-10-04T18:54:14","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T18:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/jsuflash\/?p=1358"},"modified":"2012-10-04T18:54:14","modified_gmt":"2012-10-04T18:54:14","slug":"students-reflect-on-muslim-outrage-due-to-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/2012\/10\/04\/students-reflect-on-muslim-outrage-due-to-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Students reflect on Muslim outrage due to video"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Tiffany Edmondson and <\/strong>
\nDe\u2019Arbreya Lee<\/strong>
\nBlue & White Flash \/ Staff Writers<\/strong><\/p>\n

The man responsible for creating an anti-Islamic video that sparked violent protests around the world has finally been arrested. Fifty-five year old Nakoula Basseley was arrested last Thursday, Sept. 27 for violating terms of his probation, which had nothing to do with the video.<\/p>\n

Nakoula has been identified as the primary individual behind the United States produced anti-Islamic video entitled \u201cThe Innocence of Muslims\u201d, which portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, womanizer and a child molester. The video was released on YouTube in July and has since sparked controversy and violence in North African and Middle Eastern countries.<\/p>\n

The high profile video has also contributed to several killings and uprisings in several countries, including the death of United States Ambassador Christopher Stevens, a diplomat and two American State Department security officers who were killed by a mob attack on the U.S. Consulate in Bengazi, Libya. Dozens of other people have been killed in recent protests.<\/p>\n

President Barack Obama and other international leaders have tried to block the video in several countries but it has not ended the riots and people\u2019s perceptions of the muslim\u2019s reaction to the video.<\/p>\n

People around the world are now pointing the finger to decide who is really responsible for bashing and rocking the Muslim nation and if the violent murders and riots are justified because of the 14 minute video.<\/p>\n

Thousands of miles away, Rim Marghli, a Jackson State University graduate English Literature student from Tunisia, Africa said that the video does not justify a backlash of violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on the facts, these riots in the sake of Islam led to acts of vandalism and thievery of the American Embassy in Tunis and the American School. The American government is going to reopen the school and fix the embassy with the financial support of the Tunisian government,\u201d said Marghli.<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cShocked by these unusual types of riots orchestrated by the group of Islamist radicals called Salafists, not Muslims, who went on and vandalized these locations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in Tunis, on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and the murder of U.S. ambassador Stevens, has led the State Department to issue new travel warnings in affected cities including Tunisia. Even though these raging rallies have mostly taken place overseas, there are students on campus who are from some of those neighboring countries.<\/p>\n

With the encouragement of diversity throughout college campuses, Jackson State University is called home by people of many nationalities, religions, and cultures. Even though many Muslims and other African and Middle Eastern religions have received negative stereotypes, one JSU student wants to help shed a positive light on them as well.<\/p>\n

Anas Alfarra is a senior computer engineering major from Gaza Strip, Palestine and he said that the stereotypes don\u2019t effect him but it gives him the opportunity to talk to more people and convince them to change their perception.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy problem is that this country has a lot of great examples of Muslims and Middle Eastern people starting with this place, Jackson State University. People do not know how many Muslim and Middle Eastern people are very effective in this country and they are proud of being American and serving this country; and teaching Americans and non-Americans like me to build and improve this country,\u201d said Alfarra.<\/p>\n

Improving his home country and representing it is a personal obligation for Alfarra.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel that every person is obliged to represent their own country. To be a good representation and ambassador of their country, their culture and religion. If not, we\u2019ll leave the space for people who are not even from that culture to represent us,\u201d added Alfarra.<\/p>\n

Corinthians Sanders, a sophomore art studio and urban development major from Chicago, Ill., is a Muslim and said that his religion is one of the fastest growing religions in the country but too many people try to associate them as being terrorists.<\/p>\n

\u201cTerrorism was done by the Ku Klux Klan and this happened before this place in time. People fail to learn and realize their own history, only what\u2019s portrayed in the media and they go on and believe that,\u201d said Sanders. \u201cWhat\u2019s portrayed in the media and the contents of the \u201cInnocence of Muslims\u201d has caused chaos internationally and on American soil. Some of the violence could have been prevented if YouTube would have accepted the government\u2019s request to block the video in certain countries where the riots were increasing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why did it take Google so long to respond to the President\u2019s request while knowing how much this affected people? is the question that Sander\u2019s keeps asking himself to help him understand the video and the reaction behind it.<\/p>\n

Sanders said that you can\u2019t fault the people because they took it personally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey gathered in honor to defend their religion but those people didn\u2019t have to get hurt or die. Google could have taken the video down,\u201d said Sanders.<\/p>\n

In addition to causing outrage, the video has also contributed to a few problems for students. Something that has been overlooked is the fact that there are many international students from the countries affected studying and living in America.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis video has created religious tensions and will make it harder for students who are studying in the U.S. to return to their home countries,\u201d said Sanders. \u201cOnce these students return home, their communities may turn their backs on them and may call them cowards for studying in the country where a film was made they degraded their religious faith and culture.\u201d
\nOther students at Jackson State feel that the Islamic reaction to the video was extreme.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s morally wrong to react in such a wrong way. I\u2019m sure the Prophet Muhammad wouldn\u2019t want them to react in that way at all if they truly believed in that religion,\u201d said Jesse Leech, a senior criminal justice major from Columbus, Miss.<\/p>\n

Cedric Sorrel, a sophomore civil engineering major from Atlanta, Ga. said, \u201cA video like that can cause other religions to go against other countries and religions even more than they are today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Time will pass but the mental scars that were created from the anti-Islam film may take months, years or a decade to heal. First, it was the terrorist attacks that changed the world\u2019s perception of the Muslims and now it\u2019s a video that influenced the Muslims perception of Americans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                Tiffany Edmondson and De\u2019Arbreya Lee Blue & White Flash \/ Staff Writers The man responsible for creating an anti-Islamic video that sparked violent protests around the world has finally been arrested. Fifty-five year old Nakoula Basseley was arrested last Thursday, Sept. 27 for violating terms of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1358","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-campus-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.jsums.edu\/theflash\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}