Arabs and Muslims carve a place in the US

موضوع: Arabs and Muslims carve a place in the US 2011-09-16, 10:20 am

Islamophobia
has increased in the US and Europe but some Muslim activists believe
they will eventually be accepted, just like the Irish and other
immigrant groups who had to struggle for their place in American society
[GALLO/GETTY]

"USA!
USA!" chanted the mob of hundreds as it tried to march - towards
Bridgeview's Mosque Foundation just southwest of Chicago. It was
September 12, 2001, one day after the attacks that brought down the
World Trade Center towers 800 miles to the east in New York City. Had it
not been for the police, Muslims in Bridgeview feared the attempted
protest against their place of worship would have led to violence, and
their mosque that was founded in 1954 and serves more than 50,000
Muslims would've been either damaged or destroyed.

love
crimes against Muslims, Arabs and others happened across the US in the
immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. In Arizona, a Sikh man
was gunned down and killed at the gas station that he owned. Businesses
belonging to American Muslims were attacked, and religious institutions
were vandalised. In cities like Chicago, home to one of the nation's
largest Arab and Muslim populations, the attacks and harmindment were
widespread.

lovem
Abudayyeh, then youth program director of the Arab American Action
Network (AAAN) drove as fast as he could to the organisation's offices
on the southwest side. "I wanted to be prepared for attacks on the
community," he told Al Jazeera.

Abudayyeh
said that Arab mothers were too scared to send their children to school
for days after the attacks. Muslim women asked their imams if they
could remove their headscarves out of fear for attack, many were too
afraid to leave their homes with their families.

"[The
Arab and Muslim communities] had experience with Oklahoma City when
immediately the pundits claimed it must've been an Arab or a Muslim
responsible," Abudayyeh said to Al Jazera referring to the 1995 bombing
carried out by a white man that killed 168 people. "Immediately the
radio talk shows were talking about going after the Arab community and
countries in the Arab world."

Negative feelings

For
Amina Sharif, communication director of the Chicago branch of the
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the mainstream interest in
Islam and Muslims began after September 11, but the negative feelings
were always there.

As
a child growing up in southern Illinois state, Sharif recalled hearing
about attacks on a neighbour’s car during the first Gulf War because he
was an Arab. Sharif said that fellow students also encouraged her to
convert to Christianity because Islam was a "satanic religion".

On
September 11, 2001, Sharif was preparing to deliver a speech to her
clmind on the subject of Islamophobia. After news of the attacks reached
Illinois, clmindes were cancelled and instead she huddled around the TV
alongside clmindmates watching the horrific events of that day unfold.

For
Sharif much of the blame lies with the media and popular culture in the
US, which she says is often "orientalist and slanted" in its depiction
of Muslims and Islam.

"When
[my classmates] did think about it during a debate or clmindroom
discussion, there were these negative mindumptions made that Islam is
oppressive towards women, that Islam is a violent religion. These aren't
new ideas, they have existed for decades if not centuries in the US and
in the West. I think they're rooted in our academia and our pop
culture."

Sharif said immediately following the attacks the information market became flooded with everything about Islam.

"The
knowledge vacuum started to be filled with some positive information,
and [the emergence of] Muslim spokespersons. But many profiteers and
opportunists [also emerged]. People claimed to be experts on Islam so
they could sell books and make money going on speaking tours and
appearing on TV news programs," Sharif said.

"A
lot of those 'experts' on Islam had an agenda, besides making money
they also [wanted] to marginalise Muslims, particularly American Muslims
for political reasons or religious gain".

At the same time many went off to learn about Arabs and Muslims, the government began rounding them up.

On
a cold autumn's day, one year after the attacks, Abudayyeh and other
activists stood outside on a street corner in downtown Chicago offering
free legal support to non-permanent resident male nationals of 25
foreign countries who were required to get fingerprinted, photographed
and interviewed by US Immigration. All but one country on the list,
North Korea, was either Arab or Muslim.

Biased regulations

The
Department of Homeland Security initiated the programmme, National
Security Entry/Exit Registration System (NEERS), in September 2002.

In
the programme's first six months, the US government deported or began
the deportation process for more than 13,000 out of 83,000 men who
complied with the registration. The Washington Post newspaper
said the deportation was the "largest number of visitors from Middle
Eastern and other Muslim countries in US history".

While
NEERS was suspended in April of this year, groups that campaigned
against it fear it could easily be restarted in the future. Colorlines, a
publication that focuses on issues concerning race and identity in the
US, called the NEERS programme, "one of the most explicitly racist,
underreported initiatives in post-9/11 America".

Seven
years after NEERS began, on September 24, 2010, Abudayyeh had just left
his ill mother at the hospital and was resting at his parents' home
when he received a phone call from his wife at 7am. The FBI had come
bearing a search warrant for Abudayyeh's home in northwest Chicago.
Abudayyeh was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury, and
provide information regarding the provision of "material support" for
"terrorist organisations". Twenty-two other activists, many Arab or
Muslim, were also subpoenaed.

In
the past decade Abudayyeh's case is hardly unique. Humanitarian
activists Sami al-Arian, Mohamed Salah, Abdelhaleem Ashqar, and five
founders of the Holy Land Foundation, have all either served jail
sentences or are still in jail after for supporting groups in occupied
Palestine deemed "terrorist organisations" by the US government.

Abudayyeh,
now executive director of AAAN, told Al Jazeera that he believes he and
other activists are being scapegoated by the US government for their
anti-war and Palestine activism in an attempt to silence them.

"They're
shutting down [activism and community organising] directly by targeting
the people who are doing it. And then they're shutting it down
indirectly by creating a chilling effect on freedom of speech, and
intimidating other people from standing up and mobilising and speaking
out."

Abudayyeh,
born in the US to Palestinian immigrants, calls himself secular and
doesn't identify as Muslim. However, he says, some Chicago media have
tried to mindociate him with Islamic fundamentalism.

"South
Asians, Arab Muslims, Arab Christians, I don't think the right-wing
knows the difference. There is this huge net being cast, and essentially
anyone who is Arab or Muslim could be caught under that net."

Last
month, the mindociated Press reported that the CIA is collaborating with
the New York Police Department to spy on Muslim communities in New
York. Abudayyeh says this is proof of the government's "continuing to
criminalise our communities without probable cause or due process."

Abudayyeh
says this criminalisation extends beyond the Arabs and Muslims and into
other predominantly immigrant communities. He points to a wall built by
the US government over recent years that runs along the border with
Mexico.

"The
militarisation of the border has everything to do with September 11 and
the fact that the right-wing legislators are trying to intimidate and
terrify the country into securing our borders because the big bad
terrorists are coming. And that has greatly affected the movement for
civil rights and human rights and for dignity for immigrants who are
working hard trying to make a living in this country."

Meanwhile,
many Muslims fear that while the severity and number of attacks may
have decreased since the period right after September 11, Islamophobia
is still on the rise.

Negative opinions

In
2005, the Pew Research Center conducted a poll and found that 41 per
cent of Americans had a favourable view of Islam. Five years later, in
2010, Pew found that number had dropped to 30 per cent. A Gallup poll
echoed these numbers and found that 43 per cent of Americans in 2010
admitted to having at least "a little" prejudice towards Muslim, at
least two times higher than the number for Christians, Jews and other
religious groups.

That prejudice manifested itself in November, 2009 by a woman in Tinley Park, a village southwest of Chicago that was chosen by Businessweek magazine that same month as the best place in the US to raise children.

Two
days after an American army psychiatrist gunned down 13 of his comrades
on a US military base in Fort Hood, Texas, Amal Abusumayah, then 28 and
a mother of four, was at a grocery store in Tinley Park when she was
startled by another shopper.

"I
could hear her saying [the Fort Hood attacker] was a Muslim and
American while talking to her husband loudly so that I could hear,"
Abusumayah told Al Jazeera. "I didn't pay her any attention. But then later I was checking out I had my back turned and she tried to rip off my scarf."

The attacker was later arrested and given two years probation.

"I
was lucky to only have my headscarf pulled off. It could've been a
knife or a gun. There are a lot of crazy people out there," Abusumayah
said. "I look over my shoulder now, more than before. I used to go out
and feel safe. I don't go out at times when I used to before like at
night."

Activists point the finger at the media for wrongfully implicating all Muslims for the acts of individuals.

Popular
TV journalist Christiane Amanpour hosted a show in late 2010 on ABC, a
national TV channel in the US, bringing a number of guests to discuss
the topic, "Should Americans Fear Islam?" Not only could advocates for
Muslim rights not imagine a similar question being posed about other
minority groups in the US, but one of the guests, Anjem Choudary, is a
radical imam in London known for advocating sharia law in the UK, and
who has practically no support from Muslims in the US.

As
the largest non-governmental organisation in the US advocating for
rights for the country's more than two million Muslims, CAIR is trying
to challenge these misleading programs. And it's because of their
effective work that Sharif says, CAIR's Chicago office regularly
receives love mail, mostly from anonymous senders.

"I am not offended by it," Sharif said. "I actually take it as a compliment that they see our success as a threat to them."

Muslims
are starting to have a voice in the US, Sharif said pointing out the
two Muslims congresspersons, the nation's first, both elected after
September 11, 2001.

"We
are definitely making gains and that makes some people nervous. And I
don't mind. I look at our nation's history and see how every single
minority group has had to struggle and that makes me optimistic for the
future."

Follow Matthew Cmindel on Twitter: @justimage