What is a Muslim and why are they discriminated against?

Answer 1

A Muslim in simple terms is someone who submits their will to the will of god, who believes in one god, and has a firm beilef on all the prophets that had come on earth, from prophet Adam to Prophet Muhammad (may peace be upon them all).

Islam is discriminated against because of a lack of knowledge about the religion, especially in the west world. Sadly many of this discrimination stemmed from post 9/11, where media had a big role to play in the wrong portration of Muslims. Muslims have been categorized by the media as being moderate or extremists, where In reality there is no such thing.

A true Muslim will never be an extremists in any form, as extreme in the religion is strictly forbidden, however there are many people out there who misinterprit the laws of Islam and that is when discriminations occurs.

Answer 2

There are two questions here, so let us separate them.

1) What is a Muslim?
A Muslim is a person who believes in the religion of Islam, a monotheistic faith that holds that the Biblical prophets and several Arab prophets, including Muhammad, the last and most important prophet, preached about a single omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent God to whom all people should submit.

2) Why are Muslims discriminated against?
Muslims are discriminated against for three main reasons. The first reason is simply that they are a different group of people who look different, eat different foods, and believe different things. Xenophobia is very common throughout the world and Muslims discriminate against Non-Muslims in places where Islam is predominant for the same reasons. The second reason is that there is a false association between most Muslims, who are generally peaceful people, with the violent Jihadist movements. This does not mean that movements like Hizb at-Tahrir and al-Muhajirun, both antithetical to Western Society and should be monitored, are not a present reality, but they represent only a minority of Western Muslims and their views and intentions should not be extrapolated to the majority. The third reason is that a significant percentage of Europe's incarcerated individuals are Muslims which leads to fear that Muslims are criminals-in-waiting. Of course, this suffers from the same problem of "reason 2" in that extrapolation is unwarranted.