After 9/11 it has induced negative attitudes towards Muslims who tend to be strongly associated with any act of terrorism. The media has played a colossal role in developing such negative association where they constantly portray Muslims in combination with violent terrorist acts. It makes it so that both go hand in hand. In other words, it is as if the Islamic religion was synonymous with terrorism. The media has perpetuated Muslim stereotypes in the years since 9/11. For this reason, society has developed, and continues to develop, this prejudicial mentality towards the Islamic religion and Muslim communities around the world. People immediately assume that any violent act depicted through the media is the direct result of Muslims. They automatically generate the idea that the act was carried out by a Muslim terrorist even when he was not involved in any way. Regardless of whether it was true or not, the Islamic religion and its Muslim followers are high on the agenda of societies and are just waiting for evidence to be generated so they can then safely blame them for such world affairs. Once again, this has led to the attack on the Islamic religion itself where people have come to posit Islam as an act of oppression, violence and hatred towards non-Muslims. Anti-Muslim sentiments and campaigns are the result of such misinformation that the media has generated and fed to their viewers. Islamophobia has become a new topic of interest among social scientists, political leaders and media commentators. People in society have developed this phobia towards religion and Islamic people. It has become a new “form of racism in Europe and America based on discrimination… at the center of the paper… attitudes towards Muslims and their religious faith and their views on terrorism among students at the University of Halifax which includes a pool champion from Saint Mary's University, Mount Saint Vincent University and Dalhousie University. We will examine current attitudes associated with the Islamic religion which will give us an idea of whether or not there is a connection between those who are familiar with the Islamic religion and those who hold favorable attitudes. Our hypothesis is that those who are familiar with the Islamic religion will likely hold more favorable attitudes or at least not have discriminatory perspectives towards that religious group. We also hypothesize that first-year college students will have more prejudice and discriminatory attitudes toward Muslims than fourth-year college students who will have more favorable attitudes.
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