The sharp lines that separated muslims before 9/11 began to blur
considerably after the terrorist attacks. muslims of different ethnicities,
nationalities, and social-class backgrounds established new alliances and
identified with one another more closely and purposefully than ever before.7
This coalition building occurred in part because the U.s. government used
islam as a major classification category for policy initiatives that involved
such activities as singling out muslims for special scrutiny and investigating
islamic charities. in addition, many citizens treated muslims as a more or
less homogenous group.8 Badia, who was from Colorado, argued that the
media’s portrayal of muslims as an undifferentiated mass of threatening
outsiders also helped forge a stronger overarching group consciousness
among followers of the faith:
i think that the way that things were handled after 9/11 made the vast
majority of muslims identify more strongly with their religious com-
munity, because it was muslims that were being hated. The media
reported on everything as “muslim terrorists” and “islamic terror-
ists.” it was always the word “muslim” being thrown everywhere,
with absolutely no regard for how different we all are. Because the
media grouped us all together under the religious aspect, then islam
was what we were identifying with and trying to defend.
Kamila, who was close friends with Badia, listened intently and then said:
i agree. The media failed to make the point that a few crazy individu-
als cannot represent over a billion people. reporters started reciting
verses from the Qur’an, taking them out of context and misrepresent-
ing islam. Then some of the politicians were making negative com-
ments about the prophet muhammad, peace be upon him. All of this
woke up the muslims. The one thing we have in common was under
attack. We started identifying more with islam, because we shared
the goal of protecting our religion.
144 / Chapter 6
Christopher, a white convert to islam, described the post-9/11 social
solidarity as an “us-ness” among muslims. From his point of view, the
common desire among muslims to help one another resulted in members
of the community putting aside past differences and suspending, even if
only temporarily, conflicts over other matters: “i definitely felt like there
was an ‘us-ness’ among muslims. There’s a lot of history and politics among
muslims. But when 9/11 happened, a lot of people felt like we have to help
each other. muslims became closer, because we were sharing the same
concerns and worries. We wanted to be there to support one another, and the
only way we could do that is if we were all united.”
Farook, a second-generation pakistani American, associated the
heightened solidarity among muslims with the need to “defend something.”
He said, “After 9/11, there really was a coming together, because we knew we
had to defend something. We knew we were in this together. The community
has gotten a lot closer together, more tight-knit.” When i asked Farook what
muslims needed to defend, he paused and then replied, “Our faith, our
community, ourselves. When you are threatened, i guess it feels like you have
to come together to protect pretty much everything.”
muslims experienced individual and collective vulnerability after 9/11.
One survey of 946 muslim Americans found that a majority of the respondents
(57 percent) had personally experienced bias or discrimination in the year
following the terrorist attacks.9 An even higher number (87 percent) said that
they knew of a fellow muslim who had been discriminated against.10 When
a minority group is subjected to such pervasive mistreatment, members of
the community will often search for, or attempt to create, stronger collective
bonds to protect one another. shada, a second-generation moroccan
American, articulated this point: “i think what brought us together was the
need to stand up for the group instead of just letting individuals get treated
this way. We want to have a unified group so that people don’t feel like they
can just be rude to an individual muslim.”
many participants also believed that unity was the key to having a voice
in American public and political spheres. munirah, who came to the United
states from Kuwait as a young child, said, “One of the most important things
is just ensuring that we as muslims are unified and that we have a voice. A
lot of problems in the past have come from the lack of unity amongst the
muslim community. now we have an opportunity to work collectively, to be
more active in politics, and to come together to inform people about who we
are, what our religion is all about.”
Bakir, a soft-spoken lebanese American man, added, “i think one of the
positive outcomes from [9/11], the only positive thing i’ve seen so far, is that
we have this opening, this chance to educate people and remove ignorance.
But it is only going to work if muslims keep working together.”11
Adaptations / 145
Keeping the Faith
in the wake of 9/11, a great deal of public discourse emerged concerning the
effects of the terrorist attacks on Americans’ attitudes and beliefs. Journalists
depicted the United states as a “nation transformed” and declared its citizens
“forever changed.” in response to these claims, yvonne Haddad, a distin-
guished scholar of islam and the Arab world, asserted that “whether or not
such hyperbole is completely justified, there can be little doubt of the rever-
berations of the event in all spheres of American life in general and the lives
of muslims and Arabs living in the United states in particular.”12
The dramatic fallout that the attacks caused forced the men and women
in this study to carefully assess what it means to be a muslim in post-9/11
America. Zoya, who worked in a building located just a few blocks from
Ground Zero, was regularly reminded of the terrible losses that occurred
on september 11, 2001. Although her close proximity to the epicenter of the
tragedy was unusual, the concerns that she expressed were common among
muslims:
i work in lower manhattan, where you could smell it every day. every
time you go down there, every time you see what happened, you can’t
forget. every day you’re constantly reminded that islamic people,
supposedly in the name of God, crashed airplanes and killed people.
This made me ask a lot of questions about myself and my religion. i
just don’t understand how something that has been so meaningful in
my life could be used in such a terrible way.
The overwhelming magnitude of the terrorist attacks increased the
interviewees’ need for a spiritual anchor, just as the trauma of the events did for
millions of other Americans of different faiths.13 Although most participants
self-identified as practicing muslims before 9/11, these individuals reported
that they became even more reliant on God as they struggled to make sense
of such senseless acts. This struggle led the majority of the respondents to
pray more frequently and to focus more intently on their religious traditions.
Kaori, a muslim convert originally from Japan, remarked, “i think prayers
are much more serious than before. We are supposed to pray seriously every
time. Usually we pray five times [a day], but we want to do more and more.
When you have free time, maybe you do one more. it’s like more sincere.”
Kaori’s friend sadiya agreed: “We’re definitely more focused now.”
some of the interviewees emphasized that they had been praying not
only to cope with the sadness and uncertainty caused by the attacks but also
to handle their fears of hostile repercussions against muslims at home and
abroad. sabeen, a second-generation syrian American, indicated that she
146 / Chapter 6
had prayed specifically for the protection of muslims after 9/11: “When this
happened, it was so scary that i was praying for my people who were muslim,
because i knew they were going to be the target.” eric, who converted to
islam as a teenager, offered a similar perspective: “i developed a deeper
passion for islamic knowledge. you know how they’re talking about people
running back to religion, how all the churches are full. i was never running
from my religion, but i have been praying more, more into the faith. i think
we felt more religious and more galvanized as muslims, because we had to
protect ourselves.”
Whether muslim Americans as a whole ultimately became more “religious”
after 9/11 is an empirical question that has yet to be fully addressed.14 What
is clear, however, is that members of the community became a good deal
more self-conscious as a result of the anger and abuse that muslims endured.
Hafeez, a second-generation pakistani American, underscored this point:
“every muslim i’ve met became a lot more conscious of their religion after
9/11. i don’t know if that’s meaningful for the sake of islam, since it didn’t
always correlate to the sense of being more practicing or devout; 9/11 made us
all more aware of our faith, but did that make us truly closer to God? i really
cannot say.”
For many muslims, the increased focus on their religion translated into a
strong desire to embrace that aspect of self. Take noreen for example. When
i asked her how 9/11 had affected her daily life, she responded: “Just the need
to assert my religious identity. For me, religion was always at the front part of
my life. But now that islam is on the forefront of everything, it seems there’s
the need to use that as my defining characteristic, a greater need to do that,
now more than ever.” Jeena shared noreen’s sense of obligation to defend her
religion:
i think my religious identity became stronger. i became more like,
“Don’t say anything against islam.” Giving an analogy, especially
being female, in college or high school, if i saw someone being picked
on, i would become her friend. seeing islam go through that, being
so different from what it was portrayed to be by the media or just by
assumption, i became more strong in needing to speak out against
that and change that. This is not what it is. This is islam. This is
reality.
muslims moved into an unwelcome and harsh spotlight after terrorists
used islam to justify the attacks on new york City and Washington, D.C.
Headlines screamed, “Why do they hate us?” newspapers and magazines
printed an unending stream of images of nameless, gun-toting, bearded
muslim men and of faceless, burqa-clad women. Despite the fact that
Adaptations / 147
every major muslim organization in the United states, without exception,
condemned the terrorist attacks, talk radio hosts continued to angrily ask,
“Why haven’t muslims spoken out against terrorism?”
Just over a week after the 9/11 attacks, president George W. Bush delivered
a much-anticipated speech to a joint session of the U.s. Congress in which he
solemnly declared, “every nation in every region now has a decision to make:
either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”15 Other politicians
and media pundits picked up on this dictum as they challenged muslims
and Arabs living in the United states to “demonstrate their allegiance,” to
“show their loyalty,” and to “decide which side they are on.” This overtly
hostile rhetoric played out in very real ways in the everyday lives of muslim
Americans, as men and women of the islamic faith felt compelled to choose
between their American and muslim identities. natasha, a second-generation
egyptian American, talked about this issue:
i think 9/11 made me feel forced to choose between identities. it was
big. you’ve got to choose one or the other, and they’re [still] not going
to accept you at all. At first people weren’t going to accept us. i was
like, if they’re not going to accept me as an American, meaning that
i’m going to have to choose one or the other, then i’m going to have
to choose islam. if they’re not going to accept me as an American,
if they’re going to tell me i don’t deserve to be here, when i am an
American, if they’re going to try to make me feel that way, then, hey,
i’m going to be a muslim. no one’s going to ever tell me, “you can’t be
a muslim. you’re not a muslim. Go back to some other planet where
there isn’t islam.” i felt like i had to choose then. i don’t think i felt
like i had to choose before then. But after [9/11] it was like, well, fine.
if i have to choose, i choose to be muslim.
remarkable change in identification in the post-9/11 period. she indicated
that she used to self-identify as an unhyphenated “American,” but once the
backlash started, she began thinking of herself as “muslim only”:
if you asked me about how i define myself before 9/11, i would have
said i was an American, plain and simple. now i would tell you i am
a muslim only. i am an American, and that is definitely a large part
of who i am, but it is hard to identify yourself as something when you
don’t feel accepted or respected. i guess when people hate you for a
certain part of yourself, you end up making that part who you are.
people hate me because i am muslim; therefore, i am muslim and
that is all.
148 / Chapter 6
many people in the United states were unaware of the islamic faith
and of the muslims living in their midst before 9/11 (in 1993, when the Los
Angeles Times asked Americans about their impression of islam, more than
half of those surveyed said that they did not know enough to even have an
opinion).16 After the attacks, ordinary Americans were scared and confused,
and they had many questions that they wanted—indeed, needed—to have
answered.
muslims consequently received a barrage of inquiries from friends,
strangers, teachers, co-workers, and journalists. some of these individuals
wanted to understand relatively straightforward facts about the faith (Do
muslims believe in God? Who is muhammad? Why do muslims pray
five times a day?), while others
demanded responses to more complicated
questions (Does the Qur’an condone violence? What is jihad? Why are so
many countries in the middle east undemocratic? How are women viewed
in islam?).
To reply to the numerous questions that they received, muslims began
to carefully read the Qur’an and other religious and historical documents.
Across the nation, mosques established formal study groups for their
congregants, and muslim students Association (msA) offices sponsored
educational lectures for their members. some muslims set up their own
informal study sessions. For example, i interviewed six women in new york
City who met every Thursday evening for nearly a year after 9/11. Arsheen,
who was one of the regular attendees, explained why she and her peers had
come together in this way:
We’re muslims, but some of us don’t have enough knowledge. it’s like
if all of the sudden you asked Christians to know every passage in the
Bible. We were all really stressed and wondering how we were sup-
posed to talk to people about islam. Of course, people are going to ask
us questions; it’s understandable. We knew we needed to be prepared
so we can provide them with the correct information.
As they searched for answers, many of those whom i spoke to said that
they were becoming “better muslims” and drawing even closer to their faith.
Thus, the 9/11 tragedy and the backlash that followed inadvertently caused
many muslims to learn more about islam. Over time, these investments
strengthened their religious identities. Hassan, who was born in the United
states and had lived in several different Arab nations while growing up,
described how he had become more religious since the attacks:
For me, since 9/11, i do feel more obligated to know my religion
more, for the reasons that i gave before: to better communicate who
Adaptations / 149
muslims are, to understand for myself what are the problems within
the community, to be able to evaluate the muslim identity, and to be
able to say, “These are the flaws and these are the strengths, and we
should fix the flaws and build the strengths further.” i have become
more religious, and it’s a daily struggle. i wanted to become more
religious. i feel comfortable with who i am when i’m more religious.