sanae reacted similarly: “After 9/11, muslims were so criticized for it,
we all turned in. We were like, ‘What’s happening? let’s read up.’ After 9/11,
when we were subjected to the questions, like, ‘Tell us, what the hell is jihad?’
then we started reading more. We turned in and came together and started
attending more meetings. We read up more and more and became stronger
muslims.”
muslims in the United states generally kept a low profile for the first
few weeks after 9/11. As the most violent acts of backlash subsided, muslims
expressed a growing desire to become more active. With the passage of time,
muslim involvement in mosques and other islamic institutions actually
surpassed pre-9/11 levels.17 One study found that attendance at new york
City mosques doubled during the twelve-month period following the 9/11
attacks.18 msA leaders on university campuses across the nation documented
a similar rise in student participation in weekly meetings, Friday prayers, and
other special events. As a case in point, the new york University newspaper
reported that the islamic center on its campus went from accommodating
about 20 muslim students to more than 250 muslim students in the three
years following 9/11.19
A personal need for inner solace and a broader search for community
undoubtedly shaped this movement toward religious affiliation. mosques,
msA offices, and islamic centers offered physical spaces where muslims
could practice their faith as well as emotional spaces where they could find
comfort and a sense of belonging. in light of the devastating exclusion that
muslims experienced after 9/11, these institutions also served especially
important functions in terms of mental-health care. According to the Arab
muslim American Federation of new york and the imam’s Council of new
york, the number of muslims seeking mental-health counseling at new york
City mosques quadrupled after september 11. many muslims sought help
to deal with heightened safety concerns, anxiety, emotional problems, and
depression.20
most of the participants in this study said that they prayed daily and
attended worship services on a weekly basis before 9/11. Although their
religious participation increased after the attacks, the most striking change
that i witnessed was among those persons who were not involved in mosques
or other islamic organizations prior to 9/11 (religious studies scholars often
150 / Chapter 6
refer to these individuals as the “unmosqued”). For instance, ilias, who was
born in morocco but was raised in the United states, discussed how he and
his family had altered their religious practices since the terrorist attacks:
i wasn’t really a good practicing muslim before 9/11, but that
changed. i changed. now i am more aware of my religion. . . .
Actually, nobody in my family prayed the required five times a day
before [9/11]. We did occasionally, but mostly we just prayed any
time we wanted. now we started to become more regular in our
prayers, the whole family. my parents, my younger sister, and me,
we all pray together.
ilias also began to regularly attend Friday prayers at his neighborhood
mosque in Brooklyn and joined the msA at his university. likewise, saba,
who was a self-described “marginal muslim” prior to 9/11, explained how
after the attacks she had become significantly more active in the Women in
islam club on her college campus:
i’m much more involved in the muslim community now. initially, i
wasn’t. i’d go to lectures, to islamic club once in a while. But now i’m
the vice president, trying to get involved more, trying to establish
a citywide msA. There are times when you need to get active, and
right now is the best time for muslims. i think that every commu-
nity in the U.s. has had to fight for their rights. look at the women.
The females had to fight for their rights, the African American
community, too. now it’s the muslim community’s turn to fight for
their rights.
in the year following 9/11, more than three-fourths of the respondents
meant to combat misconceptions about islam or muslims. These men and
women wrote statements and newspaper editorials condemning terrorism,
delivered guest lectures at churches and synagogues, offered tours of their
mosques, and sat on interfaith panels aimed at promoting dialogue and
educating non-muslims about islamic beliefs and practices. Amer, who
became a regular mosque attendee after 9/11, highlighted the increased
participation among fellow muslims: “i’d say that after 9/11 was the first
time that so many of us got involved in activities related to islam and to
muslims. We were drawn in. We needed to attend events and share our views
about what was going on, how we felt about all this, and show that we do not
support terrorism.”
Adaptations / 151
Building Relationships
The interviewees turned to prayer as they searched for consolation after 9/11.
However, the most immediate and tangible support that they received came
from other muslims. i found that the respondents began to prioritize their
relationships with their muslim peers and family members for a number of
different reasons.
in the first place, the backlash-related fears that muslims experienced
after 9/11 required an outlet. When surrounded by non-muslims, muslims
often felt “judged,” “defensive,” “misrepresented,” or “misunderstood.” Given
this context, it is not surprising that muslim women and men discovered that
they were able to best express themselves—to share their deepest concerns,
their sorrow, and their frustrations—when they were surrounded by other
muslims. This realization also helps explain why so many of the interviewees
reported that they felt “closer” and “more connected” to their muslim
friends and family members after 9/11. Before the terrorist attacks, Hassan
saw his family “only about once every two months or so.” But after 9/11, he
began driving to his old home, which was nearly two hours away from his
apartment in new york City, every weekend to visit his parents and siblings.
Hassan emphasized that he “needed” to be around people with whom he
could “talk openly” regarding the issues facing the muslim community:
i definitely got closer to my family, although the relationship has
always been close. you cherish your family a lot more and want to be
with them. After 9/11, after all the hate crimes started, i wanted to
be at my family’s house and just talk openly about things that were
going on. it wasn’t just that i wanted to go, but i really needed to go.
i had this urge to go home and just be with my family. The backlash
has been a topic of conversation at every dinner since the attacks.
every time we’re together, we’re talking about what’s going on with
the muslims in the United states. my family and my muslim friends
are the only ones i can really talk to about this, about how i really
&
nbsp; feel about everything.
A number of interviewees described similar changes with their relationships
after 9/11. Alisha, a second-generation syrian American, depicted how the
hostile post-9/11 climate shaped the differences within her own family:
“When you feel like you are under siege, which we felt like we were, we really
came together. so in that sense, my relationship with my family grew much
stronger.” Asma explained that her family had come together, because they
were experiencing the same backlash-related anxieties:
152 / Chapter 6
my family, we’re really, really close. The whole family is really close,
and after 9/11, we got closer. As soon as the World Trade Center was
hit, my mom and dad called me and my sisters. From the begin-
ning, they were giving us the support we needed, because it was very
scary; the backlash was very scary. We would all come together on
the weekends and be like, “How are you doing?” We knew what one
another were going through, our fears, our stress, because we were
all going through the same thing. so within the family, there was
this mutual understanding, like, “if you need help with anything, i
am here.”
Other respondents turned to their muslim friends for support because
of the conflicts that had erupted within their own households. As i describe
in the previous chapter, many of the participants were pressured by their
mothers or fathers to change their appearance and behaviors following the
terrorist attacks. Disagreements over how to best respond to the backlash
led to heightened tensions among family members, and especially between
parents and their sons and daughters. The young adults in this study had
friends of similar ages who were often confronting the same challenges in
their homes. Hanan, who spent the first two weeks after 9/11 arguing with
her father about whether she should continue to wear the hijab, explained why
she had grown closer to her muslim friends: “everyone was so concerned and
so understanding, especially my muslim friends. They were going through
the exact same thing, in public with the backlash and at home with the tense
atmosphere. That made me realize that they’re really there for me.”
Because muslims shared similar fears after 9/11, they were able to actively
respond to each other’s needs. This included providing various forms of
assistance. First, they offered emotional support: “A lot of us were terrified to
go outside. it was horrible. We were calling each other and trying to give each
other moral support. We connected a lot during those first few weeks after
9/11.” second, they shared knowledge and information: “it wasn’t just emotional
support. We also helped one another to learn more about islam so we could
answer all these questions. [muslim] sisters who weren’t knowledgeable about
a particular subject could come to one of the other sisters and ask.” Third,
muslims encouraged one another in the face of opposition to their religious
practices: “most of the people told me to take off my headscarf, to hide my
identity. my muslim friends were the ones who encouraged me.” And, fourth,
they provided physical protection: “The subways were closed for weeks. We
had a [muslim] brother who drove us home each evening. people were pointing
at the car, trying to scare us. But i felt like he would protect us.”
As muslims strived to support one another, they began spending more
time together—on the telephone, over e-mail, at meetings, and in mosques.
Adaptations / 153
muslims spent countless hours talking about what one young woman
referred to as “things that a non-muslim might not understand.” i asked her
to elaborate, and she replied, “Well, for example, most of my muslim friends
stayed home for about a week after the backlash started. When we decided to
go back out with the hijab on, we were so scared. so we were always calling
each other, asking about how we should act or what we should do. it was just
that we were going through the same thing, sharing the same concerns and
worries. That’s what brought us closer.”
The number of educational and community outreach activities that
muslims organized after 9/11 also brought members of the community
together. One man in Colorado described how much more connected he was
to his friends as a result of the work they had been doing: “We’re planning all
these events, working together to try to raise funds for a new islamic center.
now i see my muslim friends a lot more than i used to. Because of that, i feel
a lot closer to them than i did before.”
Another participant, rashida, explained that she had started to actively
cultivate friendships with other muslims. prior to 9/11, she was fine with
more casual “mosque friendships.” But this feeling changed in the aftermath
of the attacks:
i see it more as a priority to establish better friendships with them.
Before i was fine with just having a mosque friendship with them,
like, i see you in the mosque a lot and chitchat with you, and maybe
once in a while we go out for tea. now it’s more a priority to make
them part of my circle of friends. i do have a lot in common with
them. For example, the fact that we put spirituality as the number-
one priority in our life is really important. But i guess it is more than
that. We also seem to connect, to understand each other more now,
after everything we’ve been going through.
Before the terrorist attacks, Hamad acknowledged that he was “more into
the American culture” and noted that his closest friends were predominantly
non-muslim. After 9/11, Hamad began to pull away from some of his old
friends, who “could be a bad influence,” and became better friends with the
men he knew through his mosque:
it was a big change for me. i wanted to get to know my muslim iden-
tity, hang out with muslim friends. A lot of times, people don’t realize
that the people around you make you who you are. if i want to pray
and everyone around me doesn’t need to pray, i likely will not go. if
everyone around me is going to pray, i probably will go with them.
my need to hang out with muslim friends happened. There was a
154 / Chapter 6
shift to wanting to be active with the community. nowadays all of my
community work is towards muslim groups, and it’s because of 9/11.
in a few cases, the post-9/11 climate of fear, and the protective response
that it generated, led individuals to develop entirely new relationships with
muslims. nadira smiled broadly as she recounted how a muslim woman who
was a “complete stranger” had called to check up on her after 9/11. nadira
recalled how they had later become friends:
That’s the day i realized that people love me. muslims you didn’t
know, those kinds of people who called and said, “i heard something
happened. Are you okay? Do you want any help from anybody?”
Things like that really made a difference. . . . i stopped and thought
to myself, this is the type of person that i should be friends with.
someone who cares a
nd understands. it was then that i made the
decision to build the relationship with her.
some participants developed stronger bonds with fellow muslims,
because they felt isolated and even fearful of non-muslims. A mother of two
young boys clarified how this happened: “The news of unexplained arrests
and hateful attacks were reaching all of the muslim homes in the community.
We felt like we would be better protected by those in our own community,
because we didn’t know if others were planning to hurt us.” For others, the
hatefulness connected to the backlash led them to distance themselves from
non-muslims. Janan discussed how her outlook had changed since 9/11:
i hate to say that it has changed more for the bad—the kind of atti-
tudes that i saw, the kind of behavior. . . . The same people who would
have smiled to my face a week before were basically calling all of us
terrorists and saying that we should be killed. it made it more dif-
ficult for me to trust them. i had a lot of non-muslim friends, really
good friends, before 9/11. . . . now, they’re still my friends, but i feel
that there’s a little bit of . . . like, i couldn’t run to them at this time. i
don’t know how to explain it. There’s a little bit of a distance there. it’s
really unfortunate. i don’t know if it’s going to continue. right now
it’s like, the muslims, they are my shelter. They were who i needed at
this time. There were a lot of non-muslims who were saying all kinds
of [negative] things, and it made me question, are they sincere, or do
they really feel these things about us?
like Janan, mina encountered some problems with her non-muslim
friends in the aftermath of 9/11. Although mina was quick to emphasize that
Adaptations / 155
she was still friends with these young women, she also sadly observed that
sometimes they just “don’t understand”:
i was talking with some friends from high school. i had just started
wearing my hijab two months ago, right before i started college, just
after i graduated from high school. my friends, four Hindu friends,
were really good friends of mine. They still are. regardless of their
religion, they’re still good friends to me. They were talking to me
[soon after 9/11], and one of them said, “Why don’t you just take
it off?” They don’t understand the importance of it—why i started