Under Pressure

Up against an ongoing climate of suspicion, the American Muslim community takes control of its story—seven and a half years after 9/11

Imams kickstart an anti-domestic violence movement after a TV producer is charged with beheading his wife. A hospital manager files a civil liberties lawsuit against police harassment. A pair of advocacy groups react angrily and invoke the US Constitution after a government agency reveals that a California mosque is under invasive and covert surveillance.

In the space of one month this year, American Muslims may have grasped the reins of their public lives. “The Muslim community is aware we’re seen as suspects, and in order to remedy that narrative, most Muslims realise that we have to engage and perhaps change,” says humourist and playwright Wajahat Ali. “This as an invitation to step up and deliver our story and our narrative.”

The first Muslims to arrive on American shores were shipped from Africa as part of the slave trade in the early 17th century. From the mid-19th century through World War I, a trickle of Middle Eastern immigrants appeared—Christian Arabs from Lebanon and Syria along with Yemeni and Turkish Muslims. America’s first mosque was founded in 1915 in Biddeford, Maine. By 1950, there were 20. Fifteen years later, the end of immigration quotas drew droves from Palestine, Bangladesh, Iran, India and Somalia, escaping violence, poverty and political oppression. Welcomed, they prospered.

“America before September 11 was on the verge of accepting Islam as one of its own,” Muqtedar Khan, director of Islamic studies at the University of Delaware, writes in his 2002 book, American Muslims. “But after the attacks, it has paused to once again reassess Islam and Muslims.” This reappraisal has done them little favour. Inundated with negative Muslim images linked to war and terrorism, Americans unfamiliar with Islam grew suspicious of the Muslims in their midst. A 2004 Cornell University study found that 44 per cent of Americans supported restricting the civil liberties of American Muslims. Two years later, ABC News revealed that most Americans had a negative view of Islam.

To the uninformed Westerner, the religion can seem backward, or at least terribly old-fashioned. Two perceived traditions have proven particularly hard to reconcile with progressive American values: the unequal status of women and the tendency towards barbarism. A recent incident appeared to embody both.

On February 12, Muzzammil Hassan strolled into a suburban Buffalo, New York, police station and told officers his wife had been killed. The officers rushed to the offices of Bridges TV, the station Hassan and his wife Aasiya founded in 2004 hoping to dispel negative Muslim stereotypes, to find her decapitated body sprawled across a hallway. Muzzammil was charged with the murder a week later. It made headlines across the US. Conservative pundits cried “honour killing” and blamed Islam. It didn’t help that the Lackawanna Six, the only Islamist sleeper cell in the US found to have direct links with Al-Qaeda, was also based near Buffalo.

In this particular case, investigative reporting from Asra Nomani, a prominent American Muslim commentator, revealed the true story. “What I found was at least 20 years’ history of mood disorder and violent tendencies,” says Nomani. Muzzammil had frightened away two previous wives and already become physically abusive with his third. “What I haven’t found at all was that he had some ideological bent that gave him a literal interpretation of the Quran.”

American Muslims zeroed in on their own failure. Imams denounced domestic violence at Friday prayers, online and community support groups sprung up overnight, and a movement was born. “It jolted a community that was sleeping on a pervasive epidemic for too long,” says Ali. “It’s galvanised a moment, now we just have to ensure this momentum leads to some good.”

In New York City, an American-born Muslim of Kashmiri heritage complained he was stopped and searched by police while entering the subway nearly two dozen times over a three-year period. In February, Jangir Sultan felt empowered enough as a citizen to file a racial profiling lawsuit against the New York Police Department. His case, defended by the New York Civil Liberties Union, will go to trial this spring.

Weeks later, the FBI disclosed that it had used a paid informant to keep tabs on a mosque in Orange County, California. Two major Muslim advocacy groups lashed out at the US government for inhibiting freedoms of speech and faith. The Muslim Public Affairs Council said the surveillance programme “undermines the decade-long relationship that American Muslims built with law enforcement.” Their stance was backed by a well-known constitutional scholar. “Nearly eight years after 9/11, there is little evidence of support for Al-Qaeda or terrorism among Muslims in the United States,” said Professor David Cole of Georgetown University. “If the FBI is seen to be infiltrating mosques, it will only breed distrust and make relations with Muslim communities that much more difficult.”

In a land where few acts are more patriotic than transforming an attack into a cathartic movement for change, an ongoing climate of suspicion has prodded American Muslims to assert their voice. Rather than turning toward radicalism, American Muslims responded to these acts of prejudice with protest, self-analysis and reason—realising that if they work within the system, the system can work for them.

Seven and a half years after 9/11, Muslims in America may be making themselves more at home here than anywhere outside the Muslim world. Why here? Why has the US had zero terrorist attacks and very little radicalism since that fateful day? Why are Muslims living in Osama bin Laden’s “far enemy” less radicalised than their brethren in, say, liberal, egalitarian Europe?

First, their lives are good. American Muslim immigrants are younger, better educated and more successful than the average American. Women receive equal education and earn about the same income as men. And Muslims here are happier than Muslims everywhere else but Germany and Saudi Arabia, says a recent Gallup poll. Another key is America’s ‘melting pot’ national myth. As descendents of immigrants from varied places, Americans are more accepting of diversity. Islamic scholar Akbar S Ahmed has just finished a cross-country peering into the American Muslim community (see interview), which revealed fascinating insights on this.

On the other hand, large-scale immigration is new to Europe, and Muslims there are generally poorer and less well-educated than the rest. Marginalised, they often cluster together in isolated housing projects along the urban periphery.

That notwithstanding, less than half of all Americans view Muslims as loyal to their country, according to the Gallup poll. The recent FBI discovery of the first US-trained and radicalised suicide bomber Minneapolis-born Shirwa Ahmed, of Somali heritage, detonated himself in northern Somalia in October 2008, killing 20—may justify such suspicions. They do not, however, justify a creeping prejudice or Islamophobia that is partly a result of media stereotypes and partly a failure of Muslim leadership.

The isolation is deep and troubling. It’s a disengagement that can exacerbate the mistrust and alienate Muslims to the point of radicalisation.

Many, however, feel secure. Islamica and Illume—smart magazines run by young urban Muslims—take on an interesting range of charged political and social issues. Advocacy group Islamic Circle of North America kicked off a promotional campaign called ‘Why Islam’ in New York subway stations last fall, aiming to dispel misconceptions and declare Muslims a people of peace with proud traditions. The campaign arrived in San Francisco this spring.

The rise of US President Barack Hussein Obama, who regularly speaks of engaging Muslims worldwide, has further energised the community. Nearly 90 per cent of Muslims voted for Obama; more than 15 per cent of them were first-time voters.

“Obama offers a chance for dialogue and building a bridge,” says Wajahat Ali, whose play about Muslims in post-9/11 America will run in New York later this year. “My hope is that more Muslims take advantage of this opportunity to express themselves.”

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