Muslims’ Representation in Donald Trump’s Anti-Muslim-Islam Statement: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

The Muslim community in America has been facing turmoil, particularly after the events of 9/11. Muslims are facing a number of anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim discriminatory practices, biases, and sentiments from many Americans. These religious prejudices are apparent at the public and political leadership levels, as well as other facets of the country. The current study has concentrated on Trump’s emerging ideology that positions him within anti-Islamic and anti- Muslim discourses since he announced his candidature for the presidency. The study aims to examine and pin point the self-other representations that are evident in the Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments in Trump’s statements during the American Presidential Elections of 2016. In order to examine Trump’s prejudicial discourse, the research engaged with Critical Discourse Studies as its framework, with a specific focus upon Van Dijk’s Ideological Square Model as well as NVIVO 12 Pro for linguistic inquiry. The results showed that the self-other binary is strongly evidenced in Trump’s statements and that he employed various discursive techniques to represent Islam and Muslims in a negative manner, while representing himself as very patriotic to the country. To legitimatize his arguments, he deployed several rhetoric strategies, including victimization, presupposition, authority, number game, evidentiality, polarization, and populism. Keeping the religious and economic context in view, the research reveals that Donald Trump has represented Islam and Muslims as a negative phenomenon and presented himself as an Islamophobe by negatively targeting Islamic components, like Shariah and Jihad. In his prejudicial representation of Islam, most of the Islamic beliefs are represented as anti-women and anti-American, threatening the security of America and its very way of life.

Wakanda for everyone: an invitation to an African Muslim perspective of Black Panther

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“…19 This aligns with the uptick of Islamophobia in the West, particularly since the election of Donald Trump, empowered in large part by his Islamophobic stance. 20 More work should address these issues and propose tangible solutions to combating American Islamophobia. Specifically, we must continue to combat what Nazia Kazi describes as attitudinal Islamophobia, "that which rests in people's prejudicial worldviews -is inseparable from the systemic workings of anti-Muslim action, both in Muslim-majority countries and in the West."…”

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“…Such controversies are occurring, of course, in a contentious background in which some political interests in the West have been ideologically attacking and denigrating Muslims and Islam, possibly out of fear and their own insecurities (Sharify-Funk 2013), a process with a long history (Firestone 2019;Ismail and Mat 2016). Naturally, Muslims resent such attacks and have vigorously analyzed them and defended against them (Bazian 2018;Haddad and Harb 2014;Khan et al 2019;Larsson 2012;Mohammed 2018). Although some may see science and statistics as a tool of the oppressor who wants to merely "display" objectivity [falsely] (Khan et al 2019, p. 7, point number 20), I prefer to see science and statistics as a way to at least partially control for bias and to improve objectivity if done well, even though I also recognize that research can be distorted to conform to political objectives (Schumm 2015;Schumm and Crawford 2020).…”

US Presidential Elections 2016: A Comparative Study of Media Coverage of CNN and FOX News

“…First time in the American history, the nomination of a female candidate; Hillary Clinton, by the Democrats for the primaries made the Presidential Elections more interesting. Though Hillary Clinton was considered the real nominee for the candidature (Khan et al, 2019). Nevertheless, Francia (2018) argued that Senator Bernie Sanders was an independent candidate, but he did well during the primaries.…”