What are the differences between these races and religions?

Question

after 9/11, racism has become more acceptable, and is aimed mainly at people of middle eastern descent. unfortunately, it seems the the american public as a whole cannot tell the difference between a race and a religion. those targeted are muslims and arabs, and so many others i don't even know. admittedly, i don't the difference, and i am here looking for someone who can explain who the attacks were led by (what race/religion were the men?). what are all the differences between these certain religions and races, because it's frustrating to see so many people accepting racism with open arms, but it's even more frustrating that even i don't fully know what's what. i would at least appreciate some really good, reliable sources that clearly explain our current situation. there are so many ambiguous terms like "hindus", "arabs", "muslims"...and there are so many middle eastern cultures, there's no way they can only be classified under so few terms. would you help me out, please?

Answer 1

People are looking for someone to blame (rightly or wrongly)... in this case it Islamic extremists. Specifically this group Al-Qaeda contains members of many racial denominations but all are predominately Islamic. This does not mean that everyone Islamic is part of Al Qaeda but it does generally make the whole look bad. When one mentioned Islamic one gets the idea that a person would be of Arabic heritage, but Islam is so widespread that there are Indians (East Indians), South East Asians and even Caucasians in central europe/upper asia (some of the ex-USSR states).

Hindu is a person that follows the religion of Hinduism, in the majority of cases this is East Indians but some south east Asians also are Hindus, added to the fact there are some new age followers of the religion who can be of any racial background.

Arabs are anyone from the lands between Egypt and other Arabian states, other than the jews.

Answer 2

Arabs can be Christian, or Muslim. Assyrians, the first Arabs, the ancient Assyrians coined the word Arab, were the first Christians. Other Middle Eastern Christians are Lebanese Christians, Coptic Egyptian Christians, Armenians, and Syrian Christians. Although Lebanese and Assyrians do not consider themselves as Arabs because they are Christian. None of the attacks were led by the groups of people I referred to. Hope I helped!

Answer 3

Personally speaking - we're all one race (human). There are many ethnicities and religions in the world. However just because someone is a particular ethnicity (Arab) does not automatically mean they are of a specific religion (Muslim). There are Christian Arabs as well (and probably some Buddhist Arabs).

Any one ethnic population could have many different religions. Of course there are dominant religions in many parts of the world (often government dictated religions), but it is unfair to say that just because someone is of a particular ethnic group, they are also automatically part of that religion as well.

Answer 4

9/11 had to do with Muslim extremists, it didn't have to do with their race because all races can be Muslim. But you're right people have been racist against middle-eastern people because that's how the 9/11 attackers looked. they shouldn't be prejudiced against Muslims either though, because the attackers were psychos using their religion to do evil things