Jacques Parizeau Quotes

All we talk about is 'Islamic terrorism.' If the two words are associated for long enough it's obviously going to have an effect on how people think about Muslims.

Seeing a man praying to Allah is enough for some people to assume he is a terrorist.

When I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

It is tragic that all Arabs—all Moslems—are stereotyped because of the actions of a few.

We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed.

If you're someone who doesn't have Muslim friends, and your only experience of Islam is what you see on the news - the angry man with a beard doing or saying something terrible - then you may inadvertently associate that with Islam and think that is what it's all about.

I meet a lot of people when I do stand-up in the Middle East, and I don't know any terrorists, yet on TV and in the movies, 9 out of 10 are depicted as terrorists.

Islamophobia emerged from the Western countries, and this is a challenge that we all together need to surmount.

It is very easy to make wild generalizations about Islam. All you have to do is read almost any issue of The New Republic and you'll see there the radical evil that's associated with Islam, the Arabs as having a depraved culture, and so forth. These are impossible generalizations to make in the United States about any other religious or ethnic group.

Europeans ridicule Muslim culture because they don't understand the wisdom behind it. Take swine flu for instance: all the sudden you've got Europeans scared of pigs - we've been saying that for years!

You tend to be afraid when someone seems foreign to you. But if you aren't careful, that can lead to bigotry.

At times one feels that what is being said in the West is that the fact that you are a Muslim predisposes you to this blind, stupid terrorism.

If there is an exotic woman it's always a terrorist role.

There is far more misunderstanding of Islam than there is, I think, of the other religions of the world. So many things are said of it by those who do not belong to that faith.

Since 9/11, every time there is an incident overseas attributed to Muslims or Arabs, we go on orange alert ourselves …. There are individuals here who are off the wall, who think that every woman who wears a hijab or every man named Muhammad is out to blow things up.

9/11. For the West the attack on New York's World Trade Centre conjured up a terrifying new enemy: Islamic fundamentalism. For Muslims it appeared to open the floodgates to a new wave of hatred and discrimination. Suddenly, it seemed, racists had license to attack them, police to harass them, politicians and journalists to revile their religion.

Pakistanis are rarely introduced in popular media in any form except as a member of your friendly terrorist cell next door.

As a British Muslim, I am no stranger to prejudice. I know what it's like to be discriminated against just because of your background or religion.

You just don't see Muslims being matter-of-fact Muslim. They're always defined by their Muslim-ness. We're either terrorists, or we're fighting terrorists. I remember seeing 'True Lies' and going, 'Why are we always the bad guys?'

When the planes crashed into the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, Bush immediately identified what he thought was the true cause. It was because the Muslims were jealous of the freedom of the American people. It was because the Muslims were poor. This exposes a lack of understanding of things on his part.

I remember I was in a San Francisco nightclub, and I started talking to some girl, and it was like, 'Hey, what's going on, what's your name?' You know, 'Where are you from?' I go, 'I'm from Iran.' And literally, she just looked at me and walked away.

The root cause of xenophobia in Russia is not religious differences between Muslims and Christians. Nor is it crime. The root cause is the terrible education that children acquire on the street, at school, and at home.

The entrenched beliefs many westerners profess about Islam often reveal more about the West than they do about Islam or Muslims.

American public opinion sees Arabs as terrorists and has the desert-man image about them. I wish the Americans would see Arabs and Muslims the way I see them... but Arabs are losing the public relations battle in the United States.

I did not want people to know that I was a Muslim; I did not want people to know my name or that I did not have an American name. I did not want that. Because I knew if they knew that, they would cast me as the bad guy.