a car bomb outside the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.; of dozens
of hijacked planes in the sky; and of airplanes being shot down over major
American cities. in the face of this misinformation, the media was unusually
circumspect in issuing potential fatality counts.18 However, several newspaper
and television outlets indicated that tens of thousands of people may have
perished when the huge buildings came crashing down in lower manhattan.
These estimates most likely emerged from the knowledge that as many as
fifty thousand people worked in the Twin Towers on a typical weekday, with
another two hundred thousand passing through as visitors.19
On september 13, 2001, secretary of state Colin powell became the first
Bush administration official to declare that the FBi’s most-wanted man,
bin laden, was indeed the prime suspect in masterminding the attacks on
Repercussions / 113
new york and Washington, D.C. Already linked to the 1993 explosion at
the World Trade Center as well as the bombings of American embassies in
Africa, bin laden had long declared himself an enemy of the United states.
even before powell’s announcement, the media had widely broadcast images
of bin laden. For instance, just hours after the attacks, the Fox news Web
site featured a depiction of a turbaned, bearded, bin laden next to a burning
World Trade Center tower. similar photos of bin laden were ubiquitous
following powell’s press conference.
Three days after the terrorist attacks, the FBi released the names of the
nineteen hijackers aboard the four airliners that crashed on 9/11. it was now
official. A group of men, all of whom the government and the press identified
as Arab muslims (none were U.s. citizens), was responsible for coordinating
and carrying out the most deadly terrorist assaults in the nation’s history.
The revelation confirmed the initial worries of muslim Americans and
contributed to what was already shaping up to be the most severe wave of
anti-islamic backlash in recent experience.
Compounded Fear and Avoidance
The 9/11 attacks heightened fears of international terrorism and altered
many Americans’ sense of security. muslim Americans were no different
in this regard. However, muslim Americans also experienced compounded
fear—that is, additional fears beyond those that the wider disaster-affected
population most commonly expressed. Table 5.1 illustrates this concept.
The list on the left side of the table depicts some of the terror-induced fears
that were reported nationally in the aftermath of 9/11.20 persistent worries
regarding future terrorist attacks, which government antiterrorism initia-
tives and frequent terror alerts reinforced, shaped many of the fears that
Americans experienced, such as the fear of attending events that attract large
crowds of people.21 Other serious concerns, including the fear of economic
collapse and the fear of war, were in response to the immense fallout caused
by the 9/11 attacks. The right side of the table lists the additional fears that
the muslim Americans whom i interviewed expressed after 9/11. research
shows that other targeted communities, such as Arab Americans and south
Asian Americans, struggled with similar fears and consequently experienced
a number of adverse psychological reactions.22 The lists below are not meant
to be exhaustive but instead are intended to demonstrate some of the added
repercussions of 9/11 for muslim Americans.
each of the backlash-related fears that the interviewees reported translated
into other specific anxieties. For example, when participants indicated that
they were scared of hate crimes, they also expressed fear of bodily harm
(against themselves, their loved ones, or members of their community) and
114 / Chapter 5
Table 5.1 Fear in The aFTermaTh oF 9/11
Commonly Expressed Fears among the
Compounded Fear Experienced
General Public
by Muslim Americans
• Future terrorist attacks
• Hate crimes
• Flying
• Hate speech in the media
• Stereotyping and prejudice
subways, or other public transportation
• Discrimination
• Visiting government office buildings
• Religious/ethnic profiling
• Attending public events (e.g., sporting events
• Heightened surveillance, mandatory
and music concerts)
interviews, home and business raids
• Going to malls, movie theaters, or other
• Arrests, detentions, deportations
crowded locations
• Mass internment
• Working in high-rise office buildings
• Future status of Muslims in the United States
• Economic collapse
• War
fear that islamic institutions would be attacked or destroyed. When the
respondents spoke of fears of being stereotyped or discriminated against,
their apprehension was rooted in the related possibility of being verbally
harassed, rejected, excluded, or denied basic opportunities. Government
policies and law enforcement tactics that singled out members of the
muslim community prompted additional fears of public humiliation, police
brutality, unlawful arrest, and myriad other civil-rights concerns. The
cascading nature of the fears that muslim Americans experienced after 9/11
caused emotional turmoil and resulted in the respondents’ altering many of
their day-to-day activities as they attempted to avert hostile reactions. The
emotional and behavioral repercussions of the backlash were inextricably
linked and permeated nearly every aspect of the interviewees’ lives for
months after 9/11.
The majority of the men and women who participated in this study
reported that their primary concern in the immediate aftermath of the
terrorist attacks was that the muslim community would be subjected to a
wave of violent hate crimes. islamic leaders clearly shared these concerns, as
mosques and islamic schools across the nation suspended worship services
and classes for days, and in some cases weeks, following 9/11.23 Hafeez, a
pakistani American man, said that the muslim community was “driven into
a state of fear.” He continued, “immediately, it started from day one. All the
mosques, all the leaders from the mosques, they were saying, ‘We are not
going to have prayer at the mosque. it is just too dangerous; we’re not going
to take this risk.’”
Over the past two decades, civil-rights organizations have documented
a pattern of increased attacks on Arab and islamic institutions during times
of conflict and national crisis. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee (ADC) reported a dramatic spike in arson attacks, property
Repercussions / 115
damage, and bomb threats against Arab and muslim homes, businesses,
community centers, and places of worship after the start of the first Gulf
War.24 At least seven mosques were burned down or seriously vandalized
after the Oklahoma City bombing.25 islamic institutions are
typically visible
and accessible within communities, and events held in these structures
draw large numbers of muslims together at one time. muslim Americans
understand that these factors make mosques and other islamic organizations
easy targets for hate-crime perpetrators, and this knowledge deepened
their post-9/11 anxieties. Abdul, an Afghan refugee who lived in Colorado,
underscored this point: “immediately after, when i would think about
going for my Friday prayers . . . i would think to myself, ‘There are so many
muslims. What if somebody were to bomb this place if they’re really angry?
They’ll kill a lot of muslims, wipe out the entire population.’ it does scare me,
and so i just wanted to stay home, just do my prayers at home rather than
take the risk.”
As the above quote suggests, staying home was a common response
among muslims in the initial aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.26 A muslim
engineer in Colorado described the reaction as follows: “everybody just
basically locked themselves inside their homes. There was fear all around.
not just fear because of the terrorist attacks, but fear because muslims were
being attacked.” manal, an iraqi American undergraduate student in new
york City, discussed this climate of fear: “For a lot of people, there was a lot
of fear. i did go in to school on Thursday [two days after 9/11], and i’ve never
been so scared in my life. After that day, i was not about to go in. it’s your
surrounding climate. When i came in here, i was so terrified, and i was not
going to come back.”
manal, who wore the hijab and thus was easily identifiable as muslim,
received hateful looks in the subway and was verbally harassed on the street
after the terrorist attacks. she was so frightened that she contemplated
dropping out of school for the semester. After manal spent two weeks at
home, her muslim friends eventually convinced her to return to her classes.
The length of time that manal stayed home was not unusual, especially
among the women who wore headscarves. Halima, who immigrated to the
United states from egypt as a teenager and who wore the hijab, was one of
several female respondents who stayed home for more than a week after the
terrorist attacks. The experience was emotionally exhausting, but Halima
believed that her life might be at risk if she left her house: “i knew that a lot
of people were very angry about what had happened. i stayed home for just
over a week. When i was stuck at home, when i actually didn’t physically
go outside, that was the worst. you feel like you’re being caged in. you can’t
even go outside. i literally felt like i had a target on my back, that i could die
at any moment.”
116 / Chapter 5
stories of personal victimization spread rapidly through muslim familial
and friendship networks after 9/11. The information that muslims relayed
to one another intensified fears among the interviewees and shaped many
of their behaviors in the disaster aftermath. some participants who were at
school or at work on the morning of 9/11 had traumatic experiences as they
attempted to make their way home after the attacks. Women were spit on. men
were called vulgar names and threatened. Those who were victimized shared
their experiences and, in many cases, actively discouraged other muslims
from returning to their normal routines. sabiha, who worked as a teller at
a bank in manhattan, described the character of a telephone-call chain that
developed among a wide network of muslims—which grew to include family
members, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, and strangers—after 9/11: “i
got fifty million phone calls. ‘Be careful.’ ‘Don’t go outside.’ everybody was
like, ‘Oh, God!’ We would call each other and ask, ‘Are you okay?’ We had
people being harassed. i was verbally assaulted. i was scared. i got a call from
this woman on the network. i had never spoken to this woman ever. she said,
‘We heard you were harassed.’” This network allowed muslims to openly
convey their fears and to share their problems, but it also created what race-
relations scholars refer to as a “domino effect” of anguish and anger rippling
across the extended group.27
Given their increased sense of vulnerability, muslim Americans were
especially likely to seek out and to read news reports that focused on the
nature and scope of the backlash. in their attempt to understand the risks
that religious and ethnic minorities faced after 9/11, muslims were exposed
to numerous unsettling accounts of profiling, discrimination, and hate-
related incidents. As one man remarked, “you listen to the media, and it
makes you crazy. you think there’s a war against muslims out there.”
How widespread was media reporting on the backlash? One study
found that in the first week after the terrorist attacks, newspapers and other
media serving major cities across the United states published 645 separate
accounts of bias incidents directed toward those perceived to be muslim or
of south Asian or middle eastern descent.28 These stories were picked up
by the Council on American-islamic relations (CAir) and posted on the
organization’s Web site. CAir also sent out frequent alerts to thousands of
individuals who subscribe to its e-mail list. The national media dedicated
a considerable amount of attention to the most vicious crimes, such as the
hate-motivated shootings that occurred just days after 9/11.29 The fact that
the backlash had escalated to murder in different regions of the country sent
additional shockwaves of terror through the muslim American community.
A woman in Colorado described how she reacted to news of hate crimes
in the week following 9/11: “The whole week i was home. i couldn’t go
anywhere, not even to the store. my mind was so closed from watching the
Repercussions / 117
television. After the sikh guy [Balbir singh sodhi, who was shot to death in
Arizona on september 15, 2001] was killed, i felt like if i would step outside,
everything would stop, and everyone would look at me, and someone would
try to kill me too.”
Although some of the post-9/11 media coverage was sympathetic to
the plight of muslim Americans, much of it was not. Highly negative and
inflammatory portraits of islam and calls for retaliation against Arabs and
muslims overseas and in the United states abounded after the attacks. This
type of reporting further reinforced fears and safety concerns among the
interviewees. even before 9/11, Arabs and muslims were frequently vilified
in contemporary American popular culture. After terrorists attacked the
United states, inhibitions against open verbal attacks on Arabs and muslims
in the media were significantly lowered, and the rate of defamation and its
intensity steadily worsened.30
Just two days after 9/11, conservative commentator Ann Coulter penned a
column entitled “This is War.” in the piece, Coulter suggests that the United
states has been infiltrated by a cult of muslim fanatics, promotes racial and
religious profiling, advocates for the assassination of international le
aders,
and champions the invasion of foreign countries and the indiscriminate
bombing of civilians. An excerpt follows:
This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals
directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. Those responsible
include anyone anywhere in the world who smiled in response to the
annihilation of patriots. . . .
The nation has been invaded by a fanatical, murderous cult. And
we welcomed them. We are so good and so pure we would never
engage in discriminatory racial or “religious” profiling.
people who want our country destroyed live here, work for our
airlines, and are submitted to the exact same airport shakedown as
a lumberman from idaho. . . . Airports scrupulously apply the same
laughably ineffective airport harassment to suzy Chapstick as to
muslim hijackers. it is preposterous to assume every passenger is a
potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal
maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert
them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and pun-
ishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German
cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.31
A week later, Coulter published another column endorsing racial profiling
and the deportation of Arab noncitizens. in the article, she argues that
118 / Chapter 5
“Congress could pass a law tomorrow requiring that all aliens from Arabic
[ sic] countries leave. . . . We should require passports to fly domestically.
passports can be forged, but they can also be checked with the home country
in case of any suspicious-looking swarthy males.”32
The increasing prevalence of malicious anti-Arab and anti-muslim
commentary—on talk radio, over the internet, and in the mainstream
media—took a significant physical and emotional toll on muslim Americans.
najah, a first-generation immigrant from Trinidad, remarked, “it ruins my
day. sometimes it ruins my week. i got extremely, extremely depressed.
When i hear the stuff on the news, the portrayal that the media is giving
of muslims, i wish i could have a microphone and tell people that we’re not
like that. it would really, really aggravate me. i was so tired, i was having