Chart blog

Hello! My name is Maryem Shalaby and I am writing this blog to explain the graph on shown to us and posted on our Professor's blog. The graph illustrates the amount, (by numbers) of anti-Islamic hate crimes that have occurred between the years 1995 and 2008. The numbers on the bottom are the years starting from 1995 through 2008 at the right end, while the numbers on the vertical axes are the numbers of incidents that have occurred in intervals of 50. As we can see, the highest amount of incidents occurred in 2001, (which is no surprise) with 481 incidents . The chart shows us that there were very few anti-Islamic hate crimes that occurred before 2001, and although they have dropped since then, they are still relatively high compared to post-2001. The trend starts out very low, then jumps up to 481, and then stays around the 105-156 range from 2002-2008. This is very important information because it  tells us that racial/religious discrimination does actually exist. We can link this chart to the book "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers. I would consider what happened to Zeitoun an anti-Islamic hate crime because he was targeted because of his racial background, not because he was actually wrong or at fault for committing any type of crime. The problem with this chart is it doesn't explain or show where these statistics apply? Its missing information about if this is in a specific state or if these numbers represent all the anti-Islamic hate crimes on a national level.

In Class Zeitoun Quote Sandwhich

One of the major ideas illustrated in "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers, is the notion of social injustice. Social and federal injustice is the misuse of authority to discriminate, racially profile, and wrongly accuse/abuse people based on stereotypes.  One example can be found when Zeitoun was seized and taken violently out of his home by men who may have been part of some type of army or police force. They forcefully take Zeitoun and treat him as if he is resisting, while he is not, by tackling him into the ground, pushing him, and aggressively handcuff him. This is an illegal seizure as no rights have been read to him and they didn't even look at his ID when he was asked to show it. One of the men asked Zeitoun for his ID. As Zeitoun handed over his ID, "the man took the ID and gave it back to Zeitoun without looking at it", (Eggers, 206). Who are these people? What do they want from Zeitoun and why are they treating him like this? Another example of the idea of social and federal injustice is when Zeitoun was taken in to be interrogated. He was even denied a phone call. He was completely clueless as to what was going on until Todd asked why they were there. They were told by one of the soldiers, "you guys are al Qaeda", (Eggers, 212). Zeitioun was stunned. He was being accused, profiled, and associated with the most dangerous terrorists known to mankind. How can someone who has been feeding dogs and saving people after a hurricane be accused of such? This is social injustice. Zeitoun has been profiled as a "Taliban" and a terrorist. Both of these examples are evidence of social and federal injustice. They both illustrate how Zeitoun has been treated differently sand stripped of his right and wrongly treated. These soldiers are misusing their authority and wrongly accusing Zeitoun of something he has nothing to do with just because he is Muslim.

Zeitoun shows us what Islam is really about, "Love for your neighbor what you would love for yourself". Zeitoun stayed behind for several different reasons. Although they were not all completely consistent throughout the whole book, his main purpose was to help people. In the beginning, he stayed behind to save the house and the business. During the storm, Zeitoun wanted to save people and help his neighbors. After the storm, I believe that Zeitoun began to exhaust efforts into going above and beyond to show that the religion of Islam was not as bad as people had made it seem to be, especially after 9/11. He did this still while having the intention of helping people. In the book, "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers, he discussed how awesome Zeitoun felt about helping people. "There was a reason...that he remained in the city. He had felt compelled to stay by a power beyond his own reckoning. He was needed" (Eggers 106). He started to feel alive and stimulated after he realized that he had saved a number of people in such a short time. He didn't want to be a hero initially, however he just became one when the opportunity presented itself.