Islamophobia – Discuss in What Ways This Widely Used Term, Especially in Western Media, Represent a Form of ‘classical Conditioning’. Then Elaborate Ways You Would Propose to Avert This Fear Conditioning Based on the Principles of Classical Conditio

Islam is a religion means submission to God’s will and obedience to God’s law, while the follower of this religion is called Muslim. The term of Islamophobia defined by The University of California-Berkeley Centre for Race and Gender where it was first introduced in the year 1991 as “unfounded hostility towards Muslims, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims”. These concepts pointed towards following beliefs that Islam is monolithic and cannot adapt to new realities, does not share common values with other major faiths, as a religion is inferior to the west. In addition, also added that Islam is a religion of violence and supports terrorism as well as violent political ideology. The world once was ever shaken by an unforgettable incident which caused the death of thousands of lives. The 11/9 incident is a shocking event that has so far affected the whole world. Even today, non-Islamic leaders around the world point fingers to Muslims that the incident was masterminded by Islamic terrorists. After that incident, the non-Muslim people saw all the riots that had become the cause of death and the war was all obstructed by Muslims. Apart from this news, there are thousands of cases of terror attacks by Islamic extremists used such ways as vehicle rampage attacks, bomb threat, stabbings, kidnappings, as well as hijackings. But, how true and sure the media reported about perpetrators is a Muslim? This news, however, gave great impact to the people especially non-Muslim. It gives an insulting view to non-Islam that Islam is a rebellious religion and the cause of death, even whenever war or ruin happened, it will be attributed to Muslims.  In fact, according to FBI, 94% of terrorist attacks done in the United States from 1980 to 2005 have been by non-Muslim.  Surprisingly, over thousands of attacks in Europe in 5 years times, by thorough investigation, less than 2% of those terrorists were Muslim. From the point of psychology, Islam is seen as a terrorist by non-Muslims in every incident of terrorism is from the perspective of classical conditioning. The scenario of classical conditioning where most world population encountered towards Muslims can be explained by the research of behaviourist, Ivan Pavlov and John Watson. Classical conditioning is a term frequently used by psychologists in the simplest way describes the process of learning through association. We can see that classical conditioning is used on a daily scale by western media to provoke about Muslim and related with terrorist around the world. This sentiment of behavioural created negative view to all Muslims. Often it associated with those bearded men (unconditioned stimulus, US) or women wearing hijab (unconditioned stimulus, US) with Islam religion (unconditioned stimulus, US). Whenever western Medias often time sparked the news about Muslims extremist on terrorism (conditioning stimulus), it becomes associated with the unconditioned stimulus, eventually, comes to trigger a conditioned stimulus. Non-Muslims learn an association between Muslim and terrorism and new reflex had been created. Because this reflex was learned, it is called a conditioned reflex. The neutral stimulus has become a conditioned stimulus (Muslim). Multiples paired of Muslim with riot and wars lead to a conditioned stimulus (terrorism) naturally in response to the unconditioned stimulus (Muslims).  Therefore, when any bombings, hijackings, or riots happened, regardless the appearance of the perpetrator, bearded or wearing hijab, Muslims will be the main culprits of the incident. A principle of classical conditioning suggested on discrimination as the way to overcome fear conditioning. In this form, anti-Islam is trained to substitute a relaxation response for the fear response in the presence of the phobic stimulus. This desensitization involves in 3 steps where media plays an important role by, first, training by reporting news so that the readers to physically relax. Secondly, establishing an anxiety hierarchy of the stimuli involved and thirdly, counter-conditioning relaxation as a response to each feared stimulus beginning first with the least anxiety-provoking stimulus and moving them to the next leas anxiety-provoking stimulus until all of the items listed in the anxiety hierarchy have been dealt with successfully. Apart from that, the media should reveal the details of the culprits so that people would not pointing to Muslim for every chaos that happened.