Compare And Contrast The Salem Witch Trials And The Persecution Of Muslims

Many of us might think that such barbarous acts such as the witch trials have long been forgotten on the practices of man, but such an assertion if believed would plainly ignore the reality of many events since the trials ended. Of the many events that have occurred one that is most recent to us would be the on going persecution and/or discrimination against people of the Islamic faith known more commonly as muslims. Now while these two instances may have many differences such as reasoning, methodology, are even varying in how much damage has been committed the persecution of muslims and the witch hunts share great similarities. Aforementioned similarities include attitudes of distrust when around the targeted group, the spreading of lies and

As can be glanced in summary from an article about the witch trials on the website for the History channel the witch trials first started to occur when several girls accused some older women of witchcraft. After this initial event a wave of mass hysteria flooded through the province of Massachusetts and led to accusations of many more people of the crime of being witches. At the end of this hysterical accusation spree and the use of illegitimate evidence by the court, that judge the accused, twenty were left dead. Now for comparison, the main event that triggered the major persecution of muslims in the United states was 9/11 (Lichtblau 2016). As NBC News has pointed out after the event of 9/11 many muslims were accused hysterically of being fellow terrorist due to belonging to the same group as the one who committed the attack. Also reported upon in the same story from NBC News is that these people accused of being terrorists have been attacked, their religious buildings burned, and had their faith publicly insulted since this began. With this information presented it is now proper to examine the similarities between our two chosen

First both events began with a certain traumatic event, traumatic that is towards the accusers, these events are obviously 9/11 for the muslims and the initial acquisition by the little girls in the case of the witch trials. Secondly in both situations these initial events, usually reinforced through other acts, led to the development of a hysterical fear among the common people. This fear would continue to grow as more people are accused and certainly once the state, the US in general for 9/11 and Massachusetts for the trials, get involved with witch hunting/paranoia. Finally in both cases the accused and related people were either attack, killed, or in some other way harassed. Another thing of note is that even some muslims have pointed out that muslims can learn a valuable lesson from the experiences of the witch trials (Argon 2012). Despite the mass amounts of similarities however it is only fair to acknowledge the difference, though they be mostly superficial, between this two fits of