الفهرس 
The IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
This dissertation has examined the reaction to violence against the Arabs in general and the Muslims in particular in two Arab American plays as well as one Pakistani play. Violence against minorities especially the Arab and Muslim minorities has been practiced a long time ago. However, it intensely increased during the last twenty years and especially after 9/11.The word Arabs includes Muslims of Arab countries as well as the Arab christians. The word Muslims includes the Arab Muslims and the Muslims all over the world. The history of the Arabs and the West witnessed many changes in the mutual perception of each party to the other. Sometimes, the Arabs are described as the devils that cause most of the disasters, while the Arabs see the West as the conquerors who seek to control the Arabs economically and politically. Before 9/11, the Arabs in general and the Muslims in particular were misunderstood and misrepresented. After the 9/11, the Arabs have been perceived as terrorists and enemies whose aim is to destroy the West, and the terminology ’Islamophobia’ flourished.
The researcher has chosen three dramas: The Black Eyed by Betty Shamieh, a Palestinian christian American playwright; The Domestic Crusaders by Wajahat Ali, a Pakistani Muslim American playwright; and Back of the Throat by the Egyptian Muslim American playwright Yussef El Guindi. Betty Shamieh’s play refers to the Arabs in general while Wajahat Ali’s play represents the Muslims in particular. Yussef El Guindi represents both the Arabs and the Muslims in America. The three writers are immigrants to the United States of America and have the American citizenship. The three writers began writing these plays
Summary
immediately after 9/11 as a reaction to the violence that the Arab and Muslim communities faced after that event.
The introduction has theoretically displayed the history of the Egyptian, the Palestinian and the Pakistani immigrants in the United States of America trying to identify the status of these ethnic minorities before and after 9/11.In addition, a survey of the term ‘violence’ was discussed thoroughly using Iadicola and Shupe’s theory that was examined in their book Violence, Inequality and Human Freedom(2012). Another theoretical discussion for Post Colonial Feminist Chandra Mohanty’s refutation for the Western feminist discourse about Eastern women is also included in the introduction. Finally, the traumatic effect of 9/11 violence on the Arab and Muslim Americans is also discussed.
Palestinians began migrating to America in the late nineteenth century selling religious artifacts, textiles, and handicrafts from the Holy Land. Palestinian migration to America, Muslim and christian, has increased steadily since the 1960s. It comprises largely extended families from the West Bank, where Israeli military occupation since 1967 has stimulated extensive Palestinian emigration. A forced permanence was imposed on the Palestinian community in Chicago when Israeli laws denied residency rights to all Palestinians living outside the West Bank in 1967, as well as to those who subsequently remained out of the area for more than three years. This has enhanced a refugee identity among Palestinians living in America. Palestinians formed about 60 percent of the Arab population of the United States of America.
Muslim immigrants from Pakistan went to the United States as early as the eighteenth century, working in agriculture, logging, and mining in the western states of California and Washington. The passage of the Luce-Cellar Act of 1946 allowed these immigrants to acquire US
Summary
citizenship through naturalization. By 1990, the U.S. Census Bureau indicated that there were about 100,000 Pakistani Americans in the United States and by 2005 their population had grown to 210,000.
The majority of the first Egyptian immigrants to the United States were mainly highly educated people as well as manual workers. Their immigration was reinforced by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which welcomed certain professionals, especially scientists. Estimates of the number of Egyptian immigrants to the United States have varied from 800,000 to two million, with the largest concentration of Egyptians living in New Jersey, New York, California, Illinois, Florida, and Texas. Each year, more than a million people lose their lives, and many more suffer non-fatal injuries, as a result of structural, interpersonal, institutional or state violence.
Violence is defined by Iadicola and Shupe from a sociological point of view as ” any action or structural arrangement that results in physical or nonphysical harm to one or more persons”(23). The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee along with Open Society Institute and Unitarian University Service Committee have co-operated and examined the situation of the Arab and Muslim communities in the United States following 9/11.They found that the Arab Americans suffered a serious backlash and collective violence following 9/11. The worst element of this backlash included a massive increase in the incidence of violent hate crimes. Arab Americans continue to suffer from increased levels of discrimination from their fellow citizens in many fields. Arab Americans, especially immigrants from the Arab world, have been the principal focus of new government powers that restrict individual freedoms and protections, and infringe upon civil liberties