EPC 542 CROSS CULTURAL INTERACTION

SHARIFAH HAJJAR SYED ABDUL RAHMAN

ACADEMY OF LANGUAGE STUDIES

My Name is Khan is a Hindi movie that carries significant and meaningful

messages that will touch everyone’s heart who watch it. The main character or the hero

of this movie is a famous Indian actor, Shah Rukh Khan and the heroin is Kajol

Mukherjee. Shah Rukh Khan, acting as Rizwan Khan who is a Muslim man with

Asperger syndrome successfully carries the role as an innocent and honest man who
has to endure many difficulties in life after the 9/11.

Rizwan Khan is a Muslim child with Asperger syndrome, a type of autism. He

lives with his mother and his brother, Zakir who is a few years younger than him.

Despite the fact that he has the syndrome, Rizwan has a special ability in repairing

things. Zakir, his brother later on leaves to United States for a life. A few years later,

their mother passed away and Zakir takes Rizwan to San Francisco and lives with him.

Zakir’s wife, Haseena is the one who detects that he has Asperger Syndrome. Later on,

he starts working for his brother, introducing and selling the products from his company

to people. It is at this moment, he meets a Hindu woman, Mandira who is a hairdresser

in a salon. He grows to like her and her son so much that he starts asking her to marry

him. Affected by his honesty and kindness, she accepts him and they get married and

live a happy life. But that is not for a long time because conflicts start to arise after the

9/11. Muslims has been subjected to anger because of the incident and Mandira’s son

Sam was killed by his schoolmates because he has ‘khan’ in his name after his mother

marries Rizwan. Emotionally affected by her son’s death, Mandira blames Rizwan for

everything that happened. So, she asks him to tell the President of United States, ‘My

name is Khan and I am not a terrorist’. So, he does it and he manages to change
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people’s perspective towards Muslims and Islam. The most important thing is he gets to
be with his wife, Mandira again.

‘My name is Khan and I’m not a terrorist’. This sentence, to me not only carries

meaningful messages but also deliver what the people, especially Muslims really feel

and endure after the 9/11. As we all know, after the event, Muslims’ life all over the

world change drastically within one night. The attitudes, treatments and perceptions

towards Muslims undergo sea-change. Before this, Muslims are treated equally. They

get to go to any school that they like, they get to eat at any place, they get to go to
anywhere at anytime. But, after the event, they lost everything; freedom, respect, and

happiness. We are not only talking about Muslims in United States but also all over the
world even here in Malaysia.

However, many people do not know the truth that there are a number of Muslims

who died in the attack and they were all Americans. But, just because they are Muslims,

their death means nothing and to make it worse, they are accused as being partners

with the attackers. Not only that, many Muslims are harassed, humiliated, abused and
discriminated after the attack.

Discrimination is a common thing that happens to Muslims all over the world after

the attack. Discrimination according to Wikipedia is the kind of treatments that others

give towards a group of people usually in term of rejection or exclusion. There are many

types of discrimination. For example, age discrimination, racial discrimination, sex and

gender discrimination, religious discrimination and etc. in this movie, we can see in the

movie, Muslims are discriminated because of their religion, Islam. Mandira who is

Rizwan’s wife is a Hindu but since she is married to a Muslim, she and her son Sam

carry his sir name that is Khan. After the attack, Mandira loses her customers from her

saloon and finally leads her to close the saloon and find another job. Unfortunately, she
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finds that it is hard for her to get any job with her status as a Muslim’s wife. This

scenario does not only happen to Mandira in the movie but it is happening in real world.

However, the real situation is worse especially in New York because not only Muslims

are discriminated but also Arabs and people of South Asian origin. These people have

directly experienced discrimination and because of that they feel afraid to go outside

and thus reduce their contact with the general public and hide their ethnicity and

religion. People discriminate Muslims, Arabs and South Asians because they feel that

since the terrorist organization originated from their countries, so, these people deserve

hostile, vicious and discriminatory acts that prevent them from fully participating in

education, work, recreation or finding housing. Therefore, there is nothing else these

people can do except to live in fear and change everything from behavior to

appearance. (Bloomberg, Gatling, 2003, Discrimination Against Muslims, Arabs and

South Asians in New York City Since 9/11). Apart from that, Executive Director of the

Arab- American Institute in Washington, Nidal Ibrahim reported on Voice of America

News that Muslims may walk on the street but could be physically attacked. Not only

that, Sikhs wear turbans were shot and killed because they were mistakenly taken for
Arabs.

We cannot deny the fact that we often stereotype people or group based on our

previous experiences. We create an image about the group and attribute certain

characteristics to the group. Therefore, we assume that a person who belongs to the

group must have the same attributes as the group. Stereotype can either be negative or

positive. For example, when people judge whether the people of a country are rude or

not, they usually observe or refer to their previous experiences with the people from the

country. In the movie, we can see that most of the people in US are stereotyping all

Muslims in the country and all over the world. Since the terrorist claim that they are

Muslims, the people started to categorize all Muslims as terrorists. Rizwan’s family
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experiences this when they receive poor treatment from everyone just because Rizwan

is a Muslim. Not only him but many Muslims are badly treated and are asked to go back

to where they come from eventhough the fact is they are all Americans. When people

are stereotyping people based on the characteristics of others who are in the same

group, they are not being fair. Therefore, it is difficult for Muslims to do almost anything

because they are often given bad treatment and people are suspicious about them.

They cannot pray in their office or visit mosque what more doing anything that express

the values of Islam like wearing clothes that cover the whole body for Muslim women.

Simply stated, they are having difficulties and restrictions in doing all the obligations as

Muslims. Most of the time, no matter how hard they try to explain to the people that they

are not terrorists, they are not bomber, they still cannot delete the negative perceptions

about them. Therefore, it is difficult for Muslims to mingle around and get involve in any

organizations or in the societies. We can see from the movie, Rizwan travels from place

to place just to meet the president of United States and tell him “My name is Khan and

I’m not a terrorist”. From my experience, when I enter a chat room, and tell the other

chatters in the room that I am a Muslim, they will disconnect and are not interested to

carry on the conversation. This is only in chat room; I can imagine what the other

Muslims are facing out there especially in the countries which Muslims are only
minorities.

Ethnocentrism and racism are closely related to each other. Ethnocentrism

actually leads to racism. According to White in his journal ‘is ethnocentrism adaptive?’,

he refers to ethnocentrism as the feeling of superiority of a group because they think

that they have a better mode of living, values and patterns of adaptation than other

groups. Whereas, racism, according to Merriam-webster dictionary is a belief that race

is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and those racial differences

produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. In the movie, one of the situations
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that portray racism is when Rizwan is detained at the airport after one of the passengers

at the airport hears him saying praises to God. He is not only detained but also treated

harshly by the security officers on the airport. They are mimicking him and they cause

him to miss his flight to see Mr. President. There is a very solid truth in this incident and

it is actually happening in real world. After the attacks, many Muslims are not allowed to

travel to some countries and detained at the airport. What else should we call this if not

racism? The same thing happens to Sam, Mandira’s son when he was brutally killed by

his schoolmates just because his stepfather is a Muslim. When he tries to get Ries’

explanation, who is his neighbor and best friend, he is stopped by a group of white

students and punched badly and finally leads to his death. In US, Muslims students in

high schools and universities are given all kinds of names- ‘towel head, bombers,

terrorists, Osama Bin Laden and etc’ by their classmates. Not only that, when they

report this harassment to the school and university authorities, no action is taken and

they just ignore them. The reason why they do this is because they have less respect
towards Muslims and they feel that they are superior as compared to Muslims.

As a conclusion to this issue, I think what is happening to the Muslims should not

happen especially in United States of America, a country which claims that it is a

country of freedom of choice, ideas and minds. The movie ‘My Name is Khan’ has

successfully highlight this issue and therefore gives people awareness on how we all
have been so far apart.

Reference:
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Summer, (2003). Discrimination against Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians in New York
City since 9/11.

Communique Partners, (2005). Western Perception of Islam and Muslims. California,

www.wikipedia.org/discrimination

www.meriam-webster.com/dictionary/race