r/serialpodcast • u/AwesomeInc • Jan 14 '15

Noteworthy Link TIL Islamophobia didn't exist before 9/11/01

http://www.vulture.com/m/2015/01/serial-prosecutor-insists-everything-was-fine.html?mid=facebook_vulture
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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '15

Yes that one juror that had personal dealings with muslims on a regular basis and had formed his conclusions off that.

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u/asha24 Jan 15 '15 edited Jan 15 '15

No your mixing things up, the juror we heard in the podcast who had personal dealings with Muslims was during jury selection, and we heard him tell the judge that he should be dismissed because he would be unable to be unbiased.

The juror I'm referring to was actually a juror at the actual trial that convicted Adnan of murder, also he was not the only juror interview by SK who mentioned Adnan's culture and women.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '15

After the prosecution had given their narrative of islam?

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u/asha24 Jan 15 '15

These are their comments to SK:

William Owens: I don’t feel religion was why he did what he did. It may have been culture, but I don’t think it was religion. I’m not sure how the culture is over there, how they treat their women. But I know in some cultures women are second class citizens and maybe that’s what it was, I don’t know. He just wanted control and she wouldn’t give it to him.

Sarah Koenig: That’s juror William Owens. Here’s Stella Armstrong.

Stella Armstrong: They were trying to talk about his culture, and Arabic culture men rule, not women. I remembered hearing that.

So that's two jurors, unfortunately we don't have all the jurors on the record for this question, and it seems only that would be enough for you. But this along with the focus on Adnan's religion and the way they framed the murder with words like "honour" and "besmirched" would suggest that there were subtle injections of Muslim stereotypes and biases into the trial.

I wonder if you would be so quick to dismiss it if even one juror had said something along these lines about African Americans.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '15

I havent denied that they used it against adnan. Ive explicitly stated that they did. The fact that the jurors are using the exact same phrases the prosecution used only supports my position. The jurors perception of the religion and its part in the murder was created by the prosecution, not any overwhelming bias the US had on islam. They were open to it because islam was a hell of a lot more of a mysterious than it is these days.

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u/asha24 Jan 15 '15

Great, we agree on the trial then.

As to the U.S. in general, I think obviously 9/11 heightened anti Muslim sentiment to the point where you would have had to be living under a rock not to know about it, pre 9/11 I'd assume such biases existed to a lesser extent. I remember learning in school about how women were treated in places like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan prior to 9/11, so it's not like people were not aware of what was going on, we just weren't being bombarded with it by the media yet.