had a beard and insisted on visiting the mosque for his daily prayers made
Faraaz’s father worry that the entire family would be scrutinized. Faraaz
explained the situation:
it was kind of crazy. Amin got here on monday [september 10], and
september 11 happened on Tuesday. He was like, “What do i do
now?” He has a beard. lately, with ramadan and the last ten days,
which are the holiest days of ramadan, he’s been going back and
forth to the mosque for prayers. He’s let his beard grow a little. it’s
something he says he does every ramadan—he gets a little bit more
into it than normal. so my dad’s freaking out about that, about him
going back and forth to the mosque, somebody seeing that, tracing
that back to us. so he’s really worried about that. There’s been a lot of
tension as a result of my cousin’s presence in our house.
Converts to islam faced a distinct set of challenges after the 9/11 attacks.
These individuals—like many persons who adopt a different religion—had
struggled to explain their conversion to their family members before 9/11.
After the terrorist assaults on the World Trade Center and the pentagon,
converts experienced even more opposition in their households, which led
to many hurtful exchanges. eric, a white man originally from minnesota,
described his mother as “very loving” but “never accepting” of his decision
to convert to islam. eric recalled the painful questions that his mother asked
him following 9/11:
Repercussions / 137
my mom, she’s just like a normal American mother. she’s not muslim.
After all this, she actually asked me if i believed in flying a plane into
a building. i don’t think she really thought that i would do something
like that, but the fact that she asked me, that was really . . . i am not
sure i can even express how painful that was. i think she was kind of
scared. she was scared about me being beat up because i’m muslim,
but i think she also was scared that i was some kind of fanatic. We
had a lot of disagreements for weeks after the attacks; then we just
stopped talking about anything related to 9/11.
Tim, also a white convert to islam, experienced similar issues with his
family after 9/11. Although he described his family as “liberal and open-
minded,” Tim acknowledged that the terrorist attacks deeply unnerved him
and his relatives:
When you convert, it’s like your family tries to accept it, because
they love you, even if they don’t fully understand it. But then they
see these muslims who supposedly represent islam doing these hor-
rible actions like this. . . . it is just really hard for them to see you
and know that you are a part of the faith that is being put on trial for
these attacks. When you aren’t muslim, i understand that it is really
hard to differentiate between the good and the bad. When they show
Osama bin laden on the news every night, saying crazy stuff, my
family has a really hard time knowing what i believe. my grandfather
has asked me some questions. He’s said some pretty mean things to
me, but i understand it’s hard for them.
The home certainly offered some protection from the hostility and
suspicion that pressed in on muslim Americans from all sides after 9/11.
Ultimately, however, the home did not function as the haven that muslims
so desperately needed. instead, the effects of the backlash disrupted even the
most private spaces and intimate relationships, intensifying old conflicts and
adding new stresses to the lives of muslim Americans.
Aftershocks
For most Americans, the feelings of crisis surrounding 9/11 eventually began
to recede.39 For muslim Americans, the fallout caused by the terrorist attacks
has been painful and enduring. Although the most violent backlash against
muslims, Arabs, and those who were mistakenly perceived to be muslim
or Arab subsided in the months following 9/11, covert and overt forms of
138 / Chapter 5
discrimination; anti-muslim and anti-Arab defamation in the media; and
nesses have continued to cast a cloud of suspicion over the entire community.
Hafeez, who lived in new york City on 9/11, described the context as follows:
“We were all attacked once on American soil. We all felt the pain and the loss
and the fear. But islam is under continuous attack. For us, this disaster has
had no end.”
This sense of being under “continuous attack” was pervasive among the
muslim community in the aftermath of 9/11. On the five-year anniversary of
the terrorist strikes, salma, a second-generation American of indian descent,
reflected on the long-term consequences of 9/11 for muslim Americans:
it’s never been as bad as it was the couple of weeks after the actual
event on our soil. That was the worst and most frightening time for
all muslim Americans. But now, every time something happens that’s
on the news—the wars, suicide bombings, whatever is going on in
the middle east—it comes back a little bit. We still get aftershocks.
muslims still feel it when something happens. Those events are what
remind us of our place in American society.
The unprecedented severity of the backlash that followed the 9/11 attacks
and the persistent rise in anti-islamic incidents linked to political turmoil in
the middle east shaped the lingering atmosphere of fear within the muslim
community. CAir and ADC documented surges in hate crimes following
the U.s.-led invasions of Afghanistan and iraq.40 vandals set fire to an iraqi-
owned automotive garage and scrawled the words “We Hate” across the
front of the building just days after the United states began military strikes
in Afghanistan in October 2001.41 in the subsequent weeks, mosques from
California to Connecticut were seriously damaged, and muslim- and Arab-
owned businesses and homes were attacked. A similar pattern followed the
start of the persian Gulf War in march 2003. muslim women were physically
assaulted, rocks were thrown through the windows of islamic centers, and
vile graffiti was painted on msA offices on several college campuses.42
Bias crimes jumped again following the beheading atrocities that terrorists
committed in the middle east, the 2004 madrid bombings, the 2005 london
bombings, and other instances of mass violence that produced a direct sense
of outrage among many Americans.43
The aforementioned events, as well as many others, provoked recurrent
waves of anxiety that spread across the muslim American community. As
one participant commented, “now, every time a bomb goes off anywhere in
the world, it’s the muslims who need to duck and cover. . . . One way or the
other, it will come back on us, and there is always that chance that someone
Repercussions / 139
we love could be hurt.” miriam, a native new yorker, noted that she had tried
to stop thinking so much about the 9/11 attacks and other global events, as
all the worrying was “taking too big of an emotional toll” and was making
her feel
“a little bit crazy.” yet she explained that the “sense of fear comes
back from time to time.” When i asked miriam to elaborate, she offered the
following example:
A month or so ago [in march 2002], there was the woman suicide
bomber in israel. They were showing her picture all over the news.
That day, i got really worried, because i saw men on the train read-
ing the Daily News, and the front page said, “she-Devil,” in really big
letters. i thought, “Oh no, here we go again.” it is just that every time
something happens that is connected to muslims, i start getting that
anxious feeling again.
some of the participants in this study wondered whether things would
ever “return to normal” for the muslim community or if their lives,
relationships, and futures in America would forever be altered for the worse.
Ahmad, a second-generation American of palestinian descent, worried not
only about his future but also about the prospects for his children:
Our main concern here is what is our future? That’s what it comes
down to. you get these new history books [that will say]: “muslims
attack America.” What’s going to happen when kids in school read
them? your people attacked my culture. How do you raise children in
such an environment? it all comes into effect in the long run. you’ve
really got to look into the future perspective rather than what’s just
now, about what’s going to happen a month, a year, ten years, a few
generations from now. What is this country going to fall back on?
6
Adaptations
The post-9/11 backlash clearly set muslim Americans on an emotional
and behavioral response trajectory that deviated significantly from
the reactions observed among the wider U.s. population. muslims
experienced heightened fears stemming from the backlash, and the
interviewees in this study were subsequently left feeling isolated and
depressed. The stress of responding to the backlash spilled over into the
participants’ homes and generated conflict within their families. muslim
men and women altered their daily routines for weeks (and, in some
cases, for months) after 9/11 as they attempted to avoid hostile confronta-
tions with non-muslims. Because muslim Americans stayed away from
locations and activities that they viewed as unsafe for members of their
faith, they were denied the opportunity to participate fully in rituals of
national solidarity and were unable to collectively mourn the losses that
the terrorist attacks caused.
The violent and discriminatory backlash deeply wounded muslim
Americans. They also recognized, however, that many of the protective
strategies that they relied upon in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist
attacks—locking themselves inside their homes, keeping low profiles
when forced to return to school or to work, avoiding mosques and other
islamic institutions, concealing certain aspects of their identities—were
simply not emotionally, financially, or physically sustainable. Amana, a
Adaptations / 141
native new yorker, captured the pain and the gradual shift in perspective
that many muslims experienced after 9/11:
muslims couldn’t even come out of their houses. i stayed home for
six days after the towers came down. i had a constant headache.
i couldn’t focus. i barely ate anything. everyone, every muslim i
knew, was depressed and scared. We were all filled with so much
uncertainty. But then, after a while, my dad was like, “We can’t live
like this. We can’t be hiding all the time.” i guess we understood that
everything changed for the worse for muslims, but we also knew that
we had to go out and educate and inform others.
Based on religious affiliation alone, the entire islamic community had
become associated with the perpetrators of the terrorist assaults. muslims
were subsequently discriminated against by other Americans, maligned by
the media, selectively targeted by law enforcement officials, and portrayed as
the ultimate enemy by some outspoken political and religious leaders.
This chapter focuses on how muslim Americans have adapted to this new
and often frightening post-9/11 reality. As the data presented below illustrate,
muslims attempted to defend themselves and their religion through forging
a stronger sense of group solidarity; they turned to their faith and to other
muslims for comfort and support after they were shut out from the national
community of sufferers; and, rather than downplaying their islamic identity,
muslims began to more prominently display symbols of their faith in an
effort to actively combat negative stereotypes.
Solidarity and Strength
After 9/11, one of the themes that the interviewees conveyed was that their
isolation from the larger U.s. community led to an increased sense of soli-
darity among muslims. As one participant declared, “it always happens that
when you attack some group, they are going to try to reaffirm who they are. if
you cast them out, they’re going to come together to try to prevent themselves
from being attacked. The more people attack muslims, the more we’re going
to come together.”
This reaction is not unique. Decades of social science research have
established that groups that feel ostracized or threatened are likely
to experience a wave of collective solidarity.1 The perception among
marginalized group members that they are all being targeted based on one
specific identity—racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural, for instance—lies at
the core of this response.2 in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, fears were
142 / Chapter 6
widespread within the muslim American community that all muslims were
at significant risk for being publicly harassed, discriminated against, or
profiled by government authorities.
Of course, the millions of muslims living in the United states represent
a broad range of people from different places with varied perspectives and
values. muslim Americans are the most ethnically diverse religious group
in the United states. The population includes newly arrived immigrants,
later-generation descendants of immigrants, and converts to the faith.
muslims’ political beliefs range from ultraconservative to ultraliberal.
And the community consists of devout, practicing believers at one end of
the continuum and secular, nonpracticing muslims at the other end. yet
following the terrorist attacks, the countless ways of situating muslims in the
complex American social landscape paled in significance when compared to
the master status of “being muslim.”3
One young woman summed up the exclusion that muslims experienced
after 9/11 as follows: “muslims weren’t treated as Americans. We were hardly
Americans at that time. We were just muslims, just enemies, definitely
outsiders.” pervez, a pakistani American from Colorado, claimed that the
backlash impacted every muslim, at least to some extent: “in one way or
another, the backlash had an effect on all of our daily lives, whether it’s the
negative images of islam they are
showing on the Tv or whatever. As a muslim,
you can’t sit back and say it doesn’t have an effect on you. now, whether you
like it or not, if you’re a muslim in America, you’re targeted somewhat.”
The unprecedented severity of the backlash and the harsh rhetoric
directed against islam and muslims made many of the participants feel like
social outcasts. rais, a native new yorker, explained that muslims developed a
heightened sense of collective identification not by choice but rather in direct
response to this extreme marginalization: “muslims haven’t come together
by our own will. We’ve been alienated. people have been concentrating on the
muslim part and totally disregarding the American part. They’ve alienated
us from society, made us feel like we’re not welcome. That’s what brought us
together. That’s the only cohesion.”
malik, who was raised in saudi Arabia and moved to the United states for
college, asserted that it was “only natural” that this sense of alienation would
draw muslims together: “you can see that it’s only natural that something
like this would foster group cohesion. you’re being identified in a particular
way. When that is the case, in order to feel stronger, you’ll identify with that
group. you want to get closer to that group. it’s a natural urge.” As this quote
suggests, many muslims experienced a powerful impulse to join together in
the weeks and months after 9/11. These individuals believed that the only
way the community could “stand strong” was for muslims to collectively
organize and to establish a united front.
Adaptations / 143
in her book Islam in America, which was published two years before
the 9/11 attacks, author Jane smith wondered “what, if anything, unifies all
muslims in America.”4 smith noted that “immigrants have squabbled over
differences in culture and custom,” while a “distinct division” developed
between the pakistani, indian, Arab, and African American muslim
communities in the United states.5 in the early 1990s, earle Waugh, a
professor of religious studies, chronicled the many factors that distinguish
indigenous and immigrant muslims in the north American context. He
concluded that muslims “may have as much separating them from each other
as divides them from the host societies of Canada and the United states.”6