The perceived need to keep a low profile also meant that many mus-
lims stayed away from important memorial sites associated with 9/11.
spontaneous makeshift memorials sprang up in locations across the United
states after the attacks. most were temporary shrines where people left
candles, flowers, and other meaningful memorabilia, such as firefighter
hats and American flags. Official memorials were eventually established in
manhattan; Arlington; and lower makefield Township, pennsylvania. each
day, thousands of people from around the world visit Ground Zero, but many
muslims came to view this site as “off limits” for people of their faith. in fact,
two years after the attacks, most of the respondents living in new york told
me that they had not yet visited Ground Zero. One man explained that it was
fear that kept muslims, as well as some other religious and ethnic minority
group members, away from the memorial: “i haven’t gone down there yet.
i’ve wanted to go to Ground Zero, and a lot of my friends have wanted to
go there, even some of my indian friends. But we haven’t, because we’re still
scared.” Those few who had visited Ground Zero uniformly reported that
they felt “strange,” “peculiar,” and “out of place,” and thus they decided not
to return.
many of the interviewees, just like other Americans, were compelled
to help after 9/11. yet the fear that they experienced deterred most of the
participants from joining the emergency response. muslims had much
to contribute to the relief efforts, however, which sadly went mostly
unrecognized. For example, more than 70 percent of the persons in this study
spoke an additional language besides english. several of the participants
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who lived in new york City said that they wanted to volunteer at the victim
Assistance Center near Ground Zero, where the demand for foreign-language
translators was significant. But they ultimately chose not to go, because they
felt “self-conscious” or “threatened.” Of the individuals in this study, only
one woman reported that she volunteered at Ground Zero; seven others
donated blood at their local American red Cross shelters. randa, a graduate
student in new york whose educational background and language skills
qualified her to help at the World Trade Center site, described her longing
to be involved in the disaster response. she did not end up volunteering,
though, because she was concerned for her own physical safety:
When everything happened with the World Trade Center, my first
instinct was to try to do something to help. i wanted to join those
people who were volunteering downtown and do stuff. my under-
graduate degree was in engineering, and they needed engineers there
to help with excavation at the site. They also needed people who
could translate. To me, that was the American community coming
together and trying to do what they can. But i didn’t feel like i could,
for my own safety. i wear a headscarf. i wanted to be a part of that
community, but i’m not really.
Perceived Exclusion
in the second place, muslim Americans believed that their religious identity
alone would disqualify them from membership in the community of suffer-
ers. Amani, a second-generation pakistani American, emphasized the desire
among muslims to unite with other Americans: “We felt ourselves in general
to be a part of the grieving and the need to pull together and unite and be
strong.” At the same time, Amani recognized that muslims would be vulner-
able to harm due to their religious affiliation:
We were aware that people of our faith were responsible [for the ter-
rorist attacks], and therefore our brothers and sisters were going to
be hurt—if not personally hurt, then others within the community
could be. in many places, uniting and standing together was uniting
if you [were] white. Christian. American. it wasn’t the unity of the
melting pot. it was the unity of mainstream America. And i think
that was something a lot of us felt in many ways.
The collective solidarity that Amani described was delineated along the
lines of race, religion, and citizenship. From her perspective, entry into the
126 / Chapter 5
community of sufferers was restricted to those dominant group members
associated with “mainstream America.” Hassan, a second-generation
egyptian American, expressed a similar view:
muslims were victims of what happened. We had loved ones stuck in
the World Trade Center. We couldn’t get in contact with our loved
ones, and we were scared and upset as well. And on top of that, we felt
accused. so we were doubly traumatized. When they say, “America
unites,” they did not mean us. They did not mean muslims. At every
moment when they said, “America must unite,” i know that they did
not mean us.
muslims obviously recognized that those who perpetrated the 9/11
attacks had done so in the name of islam. it was this knowledge—and the
associated feelings of defensiveness, guilt, self-blame, and even shame—that
contributed to their perceived exclusion. The perceived exclusion, in turn,
had powerful emotional effects for the respondents. rather than mourning
the losses that had occurred, muslims moved into what one man described
as “defensive mode.” This mindset left many of the interviewees without an
adequate opportunity to grieve. Basma, who was a second-grade teacher in
Brooklyn, described her feelings after 9/11: “i didn’t have time to grieve. it
hit me ten days after. i was watching a telethon. i started crying. i felt so bad.
i felt so bad when the buildings came down, but then they said, ‘it’s Osama
bin laden.’ i was like, ‘Oh my God.’ i went from grief to feeling like i had to
have guards around me, and i have to have all the answers.”
Arwa, who was from Colorado, felt the same way: “After i realized what
happened, i felt so scared. There must have been thousands of people there
[at the World Trade Center]. i felt so sad. But at the same time, i wasn’t given
time to grieve. i had to get my act together and be on the defensive. i had to
be strong and hard.”
maen, who had lived in new york City his entire life, emphasized how
sad, defensive, and excluded he felt after the terrorists attacked the Twin
Towers: “i’m so sad about it, but you can’t really show that you’re sad, because
you have to be more defensive. We can’t express how we were just as sad as
anyone else. i don’t think i felt included as one of them who were affected
by it. i felt i had to defend myself and defend my religion, more than being a
new yorker who was affected by it.”
A few of the interviewees reported that they were racked with guilt after
learning that the hijackers were muslim. leila, whose family moved to the
United states from pakistan when she was a teenager, talked at length about
how guilty she felt and how scared she was of upsetting others. Because she
wore the headscarf, she was aware that she was a walking representation
Repercussions / 127
of islam. This situation made her want to avoid the fire station in her
neighborhood, which was the site of a makeshift memorial for one of the
firefighters who perished when the World Trade Center collapsed. she said:
i had a lot of guilt inside of me. some muslims who have done these
horrible things are now representing you. Then, with my headscarf,
i’m representing muslims. so in a way, i would feel guilty. . . . in my
neighborhood, there’s a fire station, and every time i would pass by it,
there was a picture of one of the firefighters who passed away. it was
so sad. All i wanted to do was go inside and hug every firefighter and
tell them, “you guys are wow, amazing. i’m supporting and praying
for you.” But then i was like, if i do that . . . every time they see me, i
probably remind them of 9/11. every time. even every time i pass by,
i’m like, “Oh God, i hope i don’t remind them.” But i know i do with
my headscarf. sometimes i feel ashamed. i really do.
pervez, who worked as a computer technician in Denver, also experienced
guilt after 9/11. Unlike leila, however, he quickly dismissed his emotions
as an irrational response to events that were clearly out of his control.
nevertheless, he, too, missed out on opportunities to collectively grieve and
to support other survivors:
i will be honest with you. i did feel guilty for a few days. Then i start-
ed thinking about it. Why am i feeling guilty? if these hijackers really
were muslims, they could not have been good muslims. muslims are
not supposed to do this. i thought to myself, “Why are you feeling
guilty? i’m like everybody here.” Finally, i got out of that state of
mind, but this still affected all of us significantly. i stayed away from
the [memorial] services downtown. i stayed away from those who
were crying and did not try to comfort anyone. i just figured that no
one would want to share their grief with me, and i should not share
my grief with them.
Because pervez perceived that others would not want to “share their
grief” with him, a muslim man, he withheld his own feelings of sorrow from
others.
Active Exclusion
in the third place, the respondents were treated in ways after 9/11 that led to
their active exclusion from the community of sufferers. Almost every person
in this study was subjected to some form of anti-muslim bias after the terror-
128 / Chapter 5
ist attacks. The experience of being harassed or discriminated against, com-
bined with the knowledge that the larger muslim American community was
under siege, made the men and women feel especially unwanted. in addition
to more direct instances of hostility, muslims also encountered subtle forms
of exclusion that left them cut off from the collective grieving process.
immediately following the 9/11 attacks, muslim Americans could see
how other survivors were joining together and sharing their stories of loss.
yet when the participants were in the presence of non-muslims, they were
not, in their words, “allowed” to communicate about the events of 9/11
as “normal” people but rather had to provide an “islamic perspective” on
seemingly everything. indeed, the respondents had to answer a barrage of
questions about topics ranging from their religious beliefs and practices
to their personal views on violence. regardless of whether the questions
were asked out of anger or genuine curiosity, the end result was the same:
muslim Americans were forced to respond to 9/11 as outsiders rather than as
mutually affected survivors. yasmin, a native of Great Britain who came to
the United states as an adolescent, described the inability to engage in what
she deemed “regular conversations” in the weeks following 9/11:
One thing that hurts is the lack of regular conversations with people.
A lot of other people i could see were having conversations with each
other about what happened and how it happened and where they
were. i’ll have a conversation like that with my muslim friends that
know me, but with other people that i don’t necessarily know that
well, the only conversation we’ll have is something about muslims.
We can’t have a normal conversation about “yeah, this is where i was
when it happened. . . .” it’s always about “How do you feel about this?
How do you feel about that?” Because we have to look at it differently.
We can’t just sit there and go, “Oh my God, this happened, it’s so
sad.” instead, all of a sudden, we’re called to duty. muslims are crazy
lunatics, so we have to go do something about it. no, no, we’re not. i
just want to sit here and mourn what happened.
marta, a puerto rican convert to islam, also noted that the way people
talked to her made her feel as if the danger and suffering that muslims
experienced after 9/11 went unacknowledged: “it is as if people think that
muslims are immune from getting hurt by this. We’re not. We’re just as
much a target as anyone else. Those terrorists didn’t say, ‘Wait, there might
be muslims. let’s make them aware that we’re going to bomb the U.s.’ They
said, ‘We don’t care.’ i’m just as much a target as anybody else. But people
don’t talk to me like that. i’m not an exception to the suffering.”
Repercussions / 129
Hadeel was in the middle of manhattan on the morning of the attacks.
happened, i felt like it was the end of the world, because the U.s. is supposed
to be this great big superpower. i was all by myself, and i was scared.
everybody in the street was bonding, like, ‘Oh, my God, look what happened
to us.’ We were totally excluded from bonding. This happened to the country
where we live, too, but no one acted like that to us.”
The exclusion from “normal” or “ordinary” interactions was clearly
hurtful to the muslims who participated in this study. The additional overt
mistreatment that so many of them were subjected to made them feel even
more like outsiders. Amer emphasized that being stared at was enough to
make him feel rejected from the entire American community. For him, grief
was reduced to an individual rather than a collective experience: “i definitely
didn’t feel like i was part of the American community. One or two stares,
but that was enough. i figure, i’m not like you, that’s it. The grief i felt, it was
more like my own individual thing.”
Jameela, a stay-at-home mother of two young children, also received
hostile looks after 9/11. even more troublesome, however, were the accusatory
comments that she received. These encounters made Jameela believe that
others could not understand, and were unwilling to acknowledge, the pain
that she experienced:
The first time i went to the store after 9/11, i could tell that people
were looking at me differently. it made me feel like i don’t belong
here. When people would make comments to me, it was the worst.
The fact that this woman yelled at me, “Do you like living here?”
Then people would say to me, “Go ba
ck to your country.” i’ve been
living here my whole life. This is my home. i’m just as mad, sad, and
upset about what happened as anyone else. Just because i’m muslim
doesn’t mean i’m happy about it. yet somehow people look at me as if
i’m a part of what happened.
muslims clearly experienced a series of barriers to joining the community
of sufferers in the aftermath of 9/11. physical isolation and perceived
exclusion shaped the ability and willingness of muslims to engage with other
non-muslims after the attacks. in addition, the individual acts of hostility
that muslims were subjected to—the persistent questions regarding their
national loyalty and their faith, the angry stares, the verbal harassment—had
a powerful cumulative effect in lowering the probability that they would
participate in rituals of solidarity and collective grief after the terrorist
attacks.
130 / Chapter 5
Home as Haven?
in their book Living with Racism, Joe Feagin and melvin sikes argue that “to
black families, the home represents one of the few anchors available to them
in an often hostile white-dominated world.” They continue, “Home is for
African Americans the one place that is theirs to control and that can give
them refuge from racial maltreatment in the outside world.”34 elsewhere,
other social scientists have described the home as a “protected site,” a “sacred
space,” and a “haven” for racial minorities and women.35 A home is clearly
more than just a physical dwelling that people inhabit. For marginalized
groups, in particular, the home is also a place where family members can
retreat from outsiders; put their guards down; and find comfort, support,
love, and acceptance.
Following the events of 9/11, the home became an especially important
anchor for muslim Americans. The perceived danger and the actual hostility
that muslims faced at work, at school, in the street, and in myriad other
locations left the respondents longing for home. As one man explained,
“most muslims were so afraid [after 9/11] because of the insults we faced all
the time, we didn’t even want to go outside. We just wanted to be at home
with our families.” Another interviewee described his home as “the only safe
space” where he could relax and not worry about being mistreated. A third