about Arabs, muslims, and middle east politics but attempted to provide their
students with credible scholarly sources on these subjects. in some instances,
professors created classroom environments where muslim students felt that
their faith was inaccurately portrayed or even discredited altogether.
several students reported that their professors misrepresented the concept
of jihad, a word that has appeared frequently since 9/11 in the Western media
and is most often translated as “holy war.” However, the word “jihad” actually
has many different meanings and may be used in various contexts. Accord-
ing to religious studies scholar Frederick Denny, “jihad” means “exertion” or
“struggle for a better way of life.” in its spiritual sense, it is an inner striving
to rid the self from debased ideas, inclinations, and actions and to exercise
constancy and perseverance in achieving a higher moral standard. Jihad can
involve, if necessary, armed struggle against the enemies of islam, but only in
self-defense.30
rania, a second-generation indian American, was distressed by the way
her professor described muslims and depicted jihad: “in one of his lectures
after 9/11, my history professor added a section on islam and terrorism. As
he was lecturing, he puts up these pictures and says, ‘These are muslims.
They believe in something called jihad, and the women carry bombs in the
clothes that they wear; that’s why they wear this attire.’ i felt terrible about
this, sitting in this class as the only muslim woman covered.” rania decided
to drop the class rather than to challenge her professor.
Basem, who was working on a master’s degree in Colorado, had a
similar experience with a professor who portrayed jihad as a form of violent
holy war. Basem spoke to the professor after class and explained that jihad
has multiple meanings and that many muslims view jihad as a personal
inner struggle to adhere to their islamic faith. Basem asserted that various
misperceptions about muslims and islam emerge from questionable sources
that students and faculty read in our nation’s universities: “most of the
books we are reading, they are not written by muslim people. They don’t
know anything about islam. They write wrong stuff about jihad. They don’t
know anything. The students need to know that we are not terrorists, and
this is not jihad.”
non-muslim students were the source of many of the hostile comments
that the participants reported post-9/11. even in classes where the professors
attempted to approach the subject of violent extremism from a more global
Backlash / 89
and historically informed perspective, some of the students seemed capable
of viewing terrorism only in relation to islam:
in one class, we’re learning about terrorism right now. We were going
to learn about it later on, but she [the professor] moved it up so we can
learn about it right now and follow things. you can tell the professor’s
trying to explain that terrorism is everywhere and provoked by many
different factors, not just islam, but it is clear from the students’ reac-
tions that they don’t really understand that terrorism is everywhere
and it’s not just muslims.
in other cases, students were overtly hostile toward islam and the muslim
students in the classroom:
This guy in my class, he blurts out, “muslim parents teach their chil-
dren to become terrorists.” Another guy piles on and says, “yeah, we
should kill all the muslim children now, because when they grow up,
they’re going to be terrorists. They’re brainwashing the kids.” The sad
thing is it is clear that i am muslim. i am sitting in there, and they
know this is my faith, but they say it anyway.
last week we had our student-teaching seminar. it was on a different
topic, but the professor shifted it to making groups to discuss what
happened on 9/11. There was one woman in my group who was talk-
ing about how muslims and Arabs should be shipped back to where
they came from. i’m listening to her, and she’s looking at me. i said,
“Where are you going to send me? i’m from this country.” And she’s
take ignorance out of your mind, step out of it.” she didn’t want to
hear it. she just got up and walked away.
Tahira, who was pursuing a doctoral degree in english and was employed
as a graduate teaching assistant, encountered problems with one of the students
enrol ed in her class in the spring of 2002. The student, whom Tahira described
as a “very liberal, progressive, feminist woman,” complained to the professor
about Tahira’s religious attire and refused to interact with her in the classroom:
“This student, she went up to the professor and said, ‘i don’t feel comfortable
having this woman for my TA, because she’s oppressed. look at what she’s
wearing.’ she went to the professor twice and said that. i went up to her and said,
‘look, i chose to do this [wear the hijab] when i was nineteen years old. i am not
oppressed. no one is forcing me to do this.’ But she real y didn’t accept it.”
90 / Chapter 4
Although Tahira attempted to dispel the negative stereotype of her status
as a muslim woman, the student was unwilling to listen. The professor for
the course eventually offered to talk with the student, but Tahira asked the
professor to “just leave it alone.”
Because several of the 9/11 hijackers entered the United states on
student visas, the attacks brought new scrutiny to immigration regulations
and to international students and foreign-born professors on college and
university campuses. in 2003, the Department of Homeland security
implemented a vast electronic tracking system in an effort to monitor
the activities of nearly a million foreign scholars in the United states.
The student and exchange visitor information system (sevis) requires
that institutions of higher learning send the federal government the
names, addresses, course schedules, and majors of foreign students, as
well as information on any disciplinary actions against them.31 Under this
program, if a student changed apartments or majors without informing
the government, or if the student’s grade-point average dropped below a
certain level, he or she could be immediately deported. Also after 9/11,
federal authorities began enlisting campus police officers in the domestic
War on Terror, in part to gain better access to communities of middle
eastern students.32 About two hundred colleges and universities eventually
acknowledged that they had turned over personal information about
foreign students and faculty members to the FBi, most of the time without
a subpoena or a court order.33
The security changes and delays that tightened visa regulations caused
apparently deterred young people from predominantly Arab and muslim
countries from studying in the United states following 9/11. some students
were so intimidated in the aftermath of the terror attacks that they returned
home in the middle of the school year. By t
he fall of 2002, the number of
middle eastern students attending American universities had fallen by 10
percent. in addition, numerous educational institutions reported significant
declines in new student enrollment from muslim-majority countries, such
as saudi Arabia, pakistan, the United Arab emirates, and indonesia.34 Arab
companies and organizations run by elites with a strong preference for
American higher education sponsored fewer than half the average number of
scholarships for students to study in the United states in the year after 9/11.35
The sharp drop-off in foreign-student enrollment was a concern to many
observers. Foreign students contribute an estimated $15 billion to the U.s.
economy each year, and the nation has benefited significantly from the skills
of foreign-born doctors, scientists, teachers, and others who have stayed
after completing their degrees. After 9/11, these contributions were largely
overshadowed in a climate marked by suspicion and fear.
Backlash / 91
Religious and Ethnic Profiling
After 9/11, the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal
government implemented a number of antiterrorism policies and programs
These initiatives—warrantless surveillance and wiretapping, secret searches
and seizures, detentions and deportations, special security checks, “volun-
tary” FBi interviews, raids on homes and businesses, and special registration
programs—singled out entire groups on the basis of their religion, countries
of birth, or ethnicities in response to the actions of a small number of people
who shared their ascribed characteristics.36 These policies have most directly
affected immigrants and visitors from Arab and muslim countries. However,
Arabs and muslims who are citizens have also been subject to blanket suspi-
cion and racial profiling.
A growing body of empirical research demonstrates that when law
enforcement officers rely on broad, generalized categories, such as race
or religion, they are distracted from using more refined and effective
investigative techniques, such as behavioral cues and suspect- or crime-
specific descriptions.37 put more simply: racial profiling is an ineffective law
enforcement strategy. it casts too wide of a net that depends on police officers
drawing on stereotypes in determining whom to target, which often results
in missed opportunities to apprehend criminals who do not fit the prescribed
profile. moreover, profiling may alienate already marginalized groups and
can evoke feelings of resentment and distrust among community members
toward the police.
in February 2001, seven months before the 9/11 attacks, president
Bush gave a speech in which he unequivocally stated that racial profiling
is “wrong, and we will end it in America.” He continued, “racial profiling
in law enforcement is not merely wrong but also ineffective. race-based
assumptions in law enforcement perpetuate negative racial stereotypes that
are harmful to our rich and diverse democracy and materially impair our
efforts to maintain a fair and just society.”38 in June of the same year, the end
racial profiling Act of 2001 was introduced with bipartisan support in the
U.s. senate. polls showed that the vast majority of Americans—more than
80 percent—disapproved of the practice of racial profiling and believed that
it was inappropriate for law enforcement to single out minorities for special
interrogation or searches.39 The dubious practice of racial profiling seemed
to be on its way out in the United states.
But everything changed after nineteen Arab muslim men perpetrated the
most deadly terror attacks in American history. A shocked and fearful nation
expressed newfound levels of support for ethnic and religious profiling. A
92 / Chapter 4
poll conducted days after 9/11 revealed that nearly 60 percent of Americans
were in favor of profiling when directed at Arabs and muslims, including
those who are U.s. citizens. Almost half favored special identification cards
for such people, and 32 percent backed “special surveillance” for them.40 more
than three years after 9/11, 44 percent of Americans said they believed that
some curtailment of civil liberties was necessary for muslim Americans, 26
percent said they thought that U.s. law enforcement agencies should closely
monitor mosques, and 29 percent agreed that undercover law enforcement
agents should infiltrate muslim civic and volunteer organizations.41
During a U.s. Civil rights Commission hearing in 2002, president Bush’s
appointee, peter Kirsanow, raised the possibility of prolonged detentions for
Arab Americans in the event of future terrorist attacks. in response to reports
of widespread civil-rights violations against Arabs and muslims, Kirsanow
stated, “if there’s another terrorist attack, and if it’s from a certain ethnic
community or certain ethnicities that the terrorists are from, you can forget
about civil rights in this country.” He went on to suggest that U.s. internment
camps may return, like those used for Japanese and Japanese Americans
during World War ii. When pressed to clarify his remarks, Kirsanow simply
responded, “not too many people will be crying in their beer if there are
more detentions, more stops, more profiling.”42
After the 9/11 hijackers turned commercial airliners into weapons of
mass destruction, airports became one of the most common settings in
which those perceived to be middle eastern or muslim were targeted. several
of the persons i interviewed, including men and women, reported that they
were subjected to lengthy security checks when they attempted to fly. even
though these checks were inconvenient, and sometimes humiliating, most
of the participants said they understood why they were being scrutinized.
Others seemed resigned to the fact that their travel would be delayed. Jamil,
a pakistani American man, described his experience flying from new york
to louisiana to see his family soon after the terrorist attacks:
i was going on an airplane. When i was going up with my boarding
pass, there were two people taking boarding passes. Then there was
a guy behind them waiting for me. He searched and did everything.
you always want to feel angry, but he’s just doing his job. somebody’s
telling him to do it. you can never actually get to the core of the issue,
like who’s responsible. so you just let it go. it happened to my brother,
too. He just let it go. What can you do?
Another young pakistani American male explained the length of time it
typically takes him to get through airport security: “i understand how people
Backlash / 93
feel about this, about being targeted. it takes me seven hours, literally, this
is no joke, to get from the ground to a plane. On my passport, my name is
identical to that of a wanted terrorist. i know the frustration that goes along
with being muslim.”
After the passage of the Aviation and Transportation security Act in
2002, the federal government assumed direct responsibi
lity for airport
security. As complaints of discriminatory passenger removal and abusive
treatment on the part of airport security personnel mounted, the Federal
Aviation Administration implemented the Computer Assisted passenger
screening (CAps) system, which purportedly standardized the criteria for
deciding which passengers to scrutinize closely.43 Knowledge of these new
criteria did little to assuage the concerns of Arab and muslim Americans.
The Arab American institute Foundation commissioned a may 2002 poll
that found that 78 percent of Arab Americans believed that profiling of Arabs
and muslims had increased after 9/11. After taking a flight from Denver to
san Francisco, one interviewee in this study said, “i can tell you, i have never
had to go through so many checkpoints. Being pulled out of a screening line
and forced to go through three ‘random’ searches on one trip.”
participants were also subjected to additional security checks in other
public settings and at special events that drew large crowds of people. As with
other forms of discrimination, the visibility of the individual played a major
part in whether law enforcement or security personnel scrutinized him or
her. This topic came up when i interviewed a second-generation pakistani
American woman, rashida, and her friend Katie, a white convert to islam.
rashida did not cover her hair and wore typical American clothing. Katie, on
the other hand, wore the hijab and more traditional islamic dress. rashida
described two instances in which security checked Katie’s bags, and she
was certain it was because of Katie’s attire: “When i’m with Katie, i notice
things like . . . [m]e and her were out last week, and we went into a building
downtown. We both had bags with us, but they only checked her bags. They
called her back to look into her bags. To me, they were like, ‘Oh, you’re fine;
go ahead.’ it’s because she wears the head cover. even at the mets game, they
checked Katie’s bag and not my bag.”
Almost every muslim i spoke to knew someone—a family member, an
acquaintance, a friend of a friend—whom law enforcement authorities had
questioned after 9/11. interviews with FBi agents and other officers were
frightening, stressful, and demeaning and made muslims feel like suspects.
salih was friends with several people who were subject to FBi interviews in