students were saying. But she was determined to learn. To pass her exams,
4 / Chapter 1
Aisha would memorize the shapes of letters and words and then would
write the answers based on the images stored in her mind. every afternoon
she would watch Barney, the beloved purple dinosaur, on television. Aisha
learned some of her first words in english by repeating the catchy tunes that
Barney would sing to his predominantly preschool-age viewing audience.
After eating dinner with her family, Aisha would spend what was left of
the evening studying and doing homework in her cramped bedroom. she
would often struggle with writing assignments late into the night, looking
up words in the dictionary until she could string them together in a coherent
sentence.
After about six months, Aisha was able to speak a limited amount of
english, although her heavy accent left her vulnerable to the taunts of her
peers. A few years later, it was impossible to tell that Aisha was not a native
english speaker. After she had mastered the language, Aisha continued with
her rigorous study habits, now turning her efforts toward math and science.
she maintained a 4.0 grade point average throughout high school and
eventually went on to earn several scholarships to attend the local university.
Aisha had always been a believer, and she had relied on her faith to make
it through the most difficult times in her life. As she reached adulthood and
started college, the pull toward islam and the importance of asserting her
muslim identity became even stronger.3 Aisha became more involved in the
local mosque and also led several initiatives on her university campus to
educate the public regarding islam and the plight of Afghan refugees. During
her senior year of college, Aisha began wearing the hijab, or headscarf, as
a symbol of her devotion to her faith. several of her family members had
discouraged her from wearing the headscarf, as they feared she would be
harassed and would not be able to get a job. Aisha defied her family and
insisted on wearing the scarf. she was proud that she could represent islam
and was relieved when she was hired to work as a computer programmer
soon after her graduation in the spring of 2001.
Then, four months later, the 9/11 hijackers carried out the coordinated air
assaults on the World Trade Center and the pentagon. As Aisha watched the
Twin Towers collapse over and over again on television, she was overwhelmed
with sorrow. she had spent the first decade of her life living in the midst of
terrible violence, and she had never imagined that the United states—a place
where she had always felt safe—would become the target of such hateful
destruction. The blow was worsened when she learned that the men who
committed the atrocities claimed to practice the same religion she did and
that Osama bin laden, the leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network responsible
for the attacks, had apparently sought refuge in her native Afghanistan.
Aisha could not help but wonder about her future in the United states.
Her teachers, co-workers, and others in the community had always held
Introduction / 5
her up as a source of inspiration and hope: Aisha was living proof that the
American dream was alive and well. Would she now be viewed by those very
same people as a threat? Would strangers believe that she was a terrorist who
wished to do them harm? Would the doors that had previously been open to
her now be closed indefinitely?
The islamic faith has long been misunderstood, misrepresented, and viewed
with suspicion in the United states and throughout much of the Western
world.4 yet nothing could have prepared muslim Americans for the response
that followed 9/11. Although some members of the public issued calls for tol-
erance and restraint, fearmongers seemed to drown out the voices of reason.
in the aftermath of 9/11, religious leaders, politicians, media pundits, and
self-proclaimed terrorism experts exploited the feelings of an already-terrified
citizenry by offering gross overgeneralizations and blatantly incorrect depic-
tions of muslims as monoliths of extremism and hatred.5
invocation and sermon at president George W. Bush’s 2001 inauguration,
described islam as “a very evil and wicked religion” after the terrorist
attacks.6 Jerry vines, former president of the southern Baptist Convention,
referred to the prophet muhammad (whom muslims revere and believe was
the last messenger of God) as a “demon-possessed pedophile” and added that
“Allah is not Jehovah either. Jehovah’s not going to turn you into a terrorist
that’ll try to bomb people and take the lives of thousands and thousands of
people.”7 in his 2002 book, The Everlasting Hatred, Christian prophetic writer
Hal lindsey warned Americans that “islam represents the single greatest
threat to the continued survival of the planet that the world has ever seen.”8
John Hagee, an evangelical pastor whose weekly sermons are broadcast to
millions of homes, has long been an outspoken critic of the islamic faith. in
a post-9/11 radio interview, he stated that “those who live by the Qur’an have
a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews. . . . [i]t teaches that very
clearly.” yet, for a man who purportedly knows so much about islam, Hagee
repeatedly and incorrectly refers to muslims as “islamics.”
soon after 9/11, saxby Chambliss, a republican congressional repre-
sentative and future senator of Georgia, informed a group of law enforcement
officers that the best antiterrorist measure for his district would be to “turn
loose” the local sheriff and “let him arrest every muslim that crosses the
state line.”9 Chambliss seemed to be simply echoing the calls for racial
and religious profiling that republican representative John Cooksey had
previously expressed, telling a talk radio show host that “someone who comes
in that’s got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around that diaper
on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over.”10
6 / Chapter 1
On separate occasions, television commentators Bill O’reilly and sean
Hannity compared the Qur’an, the islamic holy book, to Adolf Hitler’s Mein
Kampf. 11 Talk radio host michael savage told listeners that to “save the United
states,” lawmakers should institute an “outright ban on muslim immigra-
tion.” savage also recommended making “the construction of mosques illegal
in America.”12
more than twenty books on the “islamic menace” were published in the
one-year period following the 9/11 attacks.13 Two of those books became
best-selling titles among the thousands of books on islam at Amazon.com:
American Jihad: The Terrorists among Us, by steven emerson, and Militant
Islam Reaches America, by Daniel pipes. in his writings on the threat that the
growing muslim population allegedly poses in the United states, newspaper
columnist Cal Thomas advises his readers that “it is past time to stop
worrying about political correctness . . . and [time] to start telling the truth.
America’s enemies are among us. They are here to kill us.”14
never before had muslims been subject to such overt hostility from so
many different corners. not surprisingly, violent outbursts and discriminatory
actions followed: Civil-rights organizations recorded thousands of incidents
of anti-islamic and anti-Arab harassment, hate crimes, and vandalism in the
months following 9/11 (see Chapter 2). in addition to the attacks on muslims
and Arabs, public anger was directed at other religious and ethnic minorities
who were mistakenly identified as “middle eastern.” Federal officers raided
mosques and froze the assets of several major islamic charities that regularly
sent donations overseas. Arab and muslim men were questioned and
arrested. some were deported without their family members’ knowledge of
their whereabouts. Others were detained indefinitely and denied access to
legal counsel. members of religious and ethnic minority communities were
barred from boarding airplanes based solely on their names, appearances, or
countries of origin. muslim children were bullied by their peers, and adults
were fired from their jobs.
it was during the dark days immediately after 9/11 that i decided to
document and to analyze the reactions of muslim Americans to the terrorist
attacks. sociologists have long recognized that crisis events offer important
opportunities for learning about human behavior and group life. in 1969,
robert merton argued that disasters bring out, in bold relief, aspects of social
systems that are not so readily apparent during less stressful periods.15 nearly
a decade earlier, Charles Fritz noted that disasters make normally private
behaviors and interactions visible for public observation by compressing
vital social processes into a brief time span.16 But disasters do more than
simply reveal the inner workings of society. These events may also further
unravel the weakest seams in the larger social fabric, intensifying preexisting
inequalities and prejudices.
Introduction / 7
The 9/11 assaults have become a historical marker, seared into the
consciousness of all Americans. most citizens are likely to remember where
they were and what they were doing when they first learned that the United
states was under attack on the morning of september 11, 2001. muslim
Americans are no different. For them, however, the tragic events represent
a dividing line not only in American history but also in their own collective
religious history.
i spent just over two years, from late september 2001 through the end of
December 2003, gathering the stories of 140 muslim American women and
men. All these individuals were practicing muslims who were active in their
local faith communities. They were relatively young, ranging in age from
eighteen to thirty-five years, and almost all were pursuing undergraduate or
graduate degrees or had recently graduated from college.17 These students
and young professionals had their feet firmly planted in the United states,
although many had traveled abroad or had lived in other countries for
extended stretches of time. most (82 percent) were born in the United states
as the children of recent immigrants or they had migrated at a very young
age.18 The remaining respondents had come to the United states to pursue
educational or work opportunities (11 percent) or had converted to islam as
young adults (7 percent).
Because some spaces associated with islam are segregated by gender,
my position as a female researcher allowed me more access to women than
men. Consequently, women made up the majority of my informants ( n = 93),
although i interviewed a number of men as well ( n = 47). The participants
were predominantly of south Asian ( n = 69) or Arab ( n = 46) descent, and i
also interviewed white ( n = 13), latino ( n = 6), and African American ( n = 6)
muslims.19 All were fluent in english, and more than 70 percent spoke at least
one other language (including Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, pashto, punjabi, Bengali,
Turkish, Cambodian, French, indonesian, and Japanese). i conducted all
the interviews, which lasted between one and four hours, tape recorded
them, and later had them transcribed verbatim. This process produced
thousands of pages of qualitative data. my analysis of the data is based on
numerous close readings of the typewritten transcripts, which i coded using
a qualitative software program.
in the first three months after 9/11, i organized small group interviews
with all those who had agreed to participate in the study. These interviews
allowed me to capture a wide range of perspectives from a relatively large
and ethnically diverse sample of muslims.20 in the subsequent months and
years, i followed up on the focus groups by interviewing participants one
on one. i interviewed many of the people who appear in this book three to
four times over the period of this research. in addition, i kept in touch with
several of the participants via telephone and e-mail and thus was able to
8 / Chapter 1
pursue various themes and issues after the years of systematic data gathering
were completed. longitudinal studies of this sort are rare in the field of
disaster research, where the one-time case-study method predominates.21
yet, as sociologist Brenda phillips has argued, it is exactly this sort of long-
term, intensive immersion in the field that is required to acquire a thorough
understanding of human behavior in postdisaster settings.22
most of the people who participated in this project lived in new york
City at the time of the terrorist attacks. i also drew a smaller sample of
interviewees from Colorado (where i lived in 2001). This other group allowed
me more frequent access to a number of respondents and enabled me to
compare their experiences with those who resided at the physical epicenter
of the disaster.
i launched this study less than three weeks after the 9/11 attacks. i
understood that it was vital that i get into the field quickly to collect valuable
information, which would be lost if it were not captured in the short time
frame following the attacks (disaster researchers refer to this as “perishable
data”).23 This methodological decision was not without consequences,
however. The community that i set out to study was in the midst of the
worst public and political backlash in its collective history. By the time i
began collecting data in new york City on september 29, 2001, a rash of
anti-muslim hate crimes had already been recorded, and hundreds of middle
eastern and muslim men had been detained by federal authorities.
Given the magnitude of the 9/11 catastrophe and the shockwaves that
it sent through the muslim American community, i was concerned about
my ability to access individuals who would agree to be interviewed. i also
recognized that my status as an outsider to the religious faith could present
various methodological barriers.24 Therefore, i worked to foster relationships
with a number of key informants in various islamic student and professional
organizations. i identified these organizations through
internet searches and
based on the suggestions of colleagues and muslim acquaintances. i made
telephone calls and sent letters and e-mails until i made contact with at least
one leader within each organization who was interested in the study. These
key informants were crucial to the success of this project, as they introduced
me to their friends, assisted with scheduling interviews, and vouched for me
as a trustworthy person and researcher.
much to my relief, once i actually began conducting interviews, i found
that the young women and men were eager to tell me their stories. in fact,
of all the people i approached after 9/11, only one individual declined to
participate in the study. some said that they felt it was their “obligation” to
speak out, as they wanted their voices heard at a time when they felt vilified
by the media and much of the public. Others simply appreciated having the
opportunity to share their experiences with someone who was genuinely
Introduction / 9
interested in learning more. The research seemed to have a cathartic effect for
many, as the extended qualitative interview format allowed the participants
to talk freely about various issues relevant to their lives.25 Throughout the
text, i have changed the names and some identifying characteristics of the
participants, to protect their privacy.
These men and women invited me into their homes, classrooms, and
places of work and worship. i accompanied them to political and religious
speeches and peace rallies, sat through college classes, shadowed them at
their jobs, attended muslim students Association (msA) meetings, observed
Friday prayers at mosques, and ate ramadan dinners at islamic centers.
i was invited to and attended several weddings and graduation parties,
which allowed me the opportunity to interact with the friends and family
members of the respondents. When participating in these various events, i
always attempted to follow islamic norms of social interaction (removing
my shoes before entering someone’s house, avoiding touching members of
the opposite sex, wearing modest clothing, observing gender-segregated
seating patterns, and so forth). i adhered to these rules of etiquette out of
cultural and religious respect, and because i believed it would have been