Living in America we deal with a lot of diversity, especially those in the criminal justice field where situations caused by religion and ethnicity can lead to a problem. Stereotypes are ideas held by some individuals about members of particular groups, based solely on membership in that group. Stereotyping is one of the biggest problems that we deal with, particularly in law enforcement. Stereotype threat can result in a self-fulfilling insight whereby a person comes to resemble his or her reputation, living up or down to social expectations. Over the years there have been many allegations of police officers accused of going after individuals and accusing them of a crime based on the sole fact of what their religious beliefs might be. This has been going on for a long time; however in recent years, it has gotten worse. The main job of police officers is to uphold the law, not to break it. Although stereotyping is not against the law, police officers have taken an oath to protect all human beings, regardless of their race or religion and stereotyping based on religion should not take place. Just because an individual is of a certain race does not give us the right to stereotype them as a bad human being. Thus stereotyping one’s religious beliefs is wrong, and it goes against what America is all about, that everyone is equal.
The book American Dervish is a perfect example of diversity and religion in the United States. The book is good but some of the characters the author creates who are practicing Muslims or depicting themselves as practicing are all mostly hypocrites and also called out as sheep who cannot think for themselves. I almost wanted to take offense to this and say that the author shouldn’t make Muslims look that bad, but I realized that Ayad Akhtar did not set out to tell us a politically correct story about Islam and Muslims.