the U.s. declaration of war against imperial Germany on April 6, 1917,
approximately half a million German immigrants were classified as “enemy
Introduction / 15
aliens.”74 During World War i, the federal government conducted round-ups
of Germans, registered more than 260,000 male and 220,000 female enemy
aliens, and arrested and subsequently detained roughly 6,300 Germans in
internment camps.75
Just over twenty years after the last German internees had been released,
the United states entered World War ii. This time, almost a million immigrants
and American citizens who traced their roots to the Axis powers—Germany,
italy, and Japan—were labeled enemy aliens, fingerprinted, and registered.
Approximately 2,300 Germans and an estimated 200 italians in the United
states were interned in camps during World War ii.76 race prejudice and
war-time hysteria resulted in the incarceration of more than 120,000
Japanese American men, women, and children for the duration of World
War ii.77 more than two-thirds of the Japanese detainees were native-born
American citizens, although this status was meaningless in the face of mass
arrests and forced removal from their homes and communities. Ultimately,
none of the Japanese detainees was incriminated for any involvement in
sabotage or espionage.
in one of many belated apologies issued to Japanese Americans, president
George H. W. Bush promised that the atrocities committed by the federal
government would “never be repeated.”78 yet, in 1986, the reagan-Bush
administration considered using two military compounds in the southern
United states for the possible internment of Arab Americans.79 A few
years prior to that, the Carter administration contemplated the arrest and
incarceration of iranian students at U.s. universities as a result of the hostage
crisis growing out of the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran.80 The
Federal Bureau of investigation launched one of its first national campaigns
to interview and to deport Arab Americans following the munich massacre.81
The crisis began when palestinian militants kidnapped eleven israeli athletes
and coaches during the 1972 Olympic Games in munich. The militants
murdered all eleven hostages, and five of the eight terrorists were killed when
German authorities attempted to rescue the hostages.
since 1999, the U.s. government has entered into a series of contracts
with major corporations to build detention camps at undisclosed locations
within the United states. The government has also contracted with several
companies to manufacture thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped
with shackles, apparently to transport detainees.82 in the aftermath of the
9/11 attacks, calls for the internment and mass deportation of muslims
abounded, and a provision in the UsA pATriOT Act of 2001 (introduced as
the provide Appropriate Tools required to intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
Act of 2001) created a legal framework for establishing detention centers to
incarcerate U.s. citizens and foreign nationals.83 Understandably, promises
of “never again” offer little consolation to middle eastern and muslim
16 / Chapter 1
Americans, who are keenly aware that they are the latest minority group to
be defined as threatening outsiders following a national tragedy. With that
awareness comes heightened levels of anxiety and mistrust.
The purpose of the chapters that follow is threefold. First, drawing
on official statistics and in-depth interviews, i examine the character and
breadth of discrimination that muslim Americans have endured before and
especially after the 9/11 attacks. As this book shows, muslim Americans were
confronted with stereotypes and harassment prior to 9/11. in the aftermath
of the terrorist attacks, muslims experienced a dramatic increase in the
frequency and intensity of these hostile encounters. Behind the Backlash
documents the verbal harassment; violent threats and intimidation; physical
assault; religious profiling; and employment, educational, and housing
discrimination that muslims faced following 9/11. second, i explore the
personal and social impacts of the backlash. The first-hand accounts
provide a glimpse into the personal and collective trauma that can arise
when religious minorities are subjected to extreme prejudice and exclusion.
Third, i discuss the ways that muslim Americans have coped with and
responded to assaults on their faith, families, and personal identities. i draw
on sociological insights to explain the struggles of young muslim adults to
establish community and to define their identities during a time of national
crisis. Ultimately, this book explores how disasters and other crisis events
impact the most marginalized members of our society.
2
Under Attack
During the early morning hours of Tuesday, september 11, 2001, nine-
teen men took control of four commercial airliners en route to los
Angeles and san Francisco from Boston, newark, and Washington,
D.C. The first hijacked aircraft struck the north tower of the World
Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. eyewitnesses flooded new york City’s 9-1-1
call system with reports of the plane crash as the media and amateur
photographers turned their cameras toward the World Trade Center.
Almost immediately after the plane collided with the tower, television
stations began broadcasting images of black smoke pouring out of a
gaping hole in the massive building. news anchors offered conflicting
accounts: some reported that a small, twin-engine commuter plane had
hit the World Trade Center; others indicated that a commercial airliner
had veered off course and had struck the tower. At this point, few report-
ers speculated that the crash had been deliberate.1
As stunned observers stared up at the inferno, emergency response
personnel from new york City and the port Authority of new york and
new Jersey began mobilizing what would become the largest rescue
operation in the nation’s history. Well over a thousand first responders—
firefighters, police officers, and paramedics—were deployed to the
scene of the first crash.2 medical workers set up triage areas around the
perimeter of the World Trade Center as they attempted to aid those who
had been injured when the plane hit the building. police units began
18 / Chapter 2
shutting down subway stations as fire teams evacuated civilians from the
north tower and its surrounding area.
Then, at 9:03 a.m., a second airliner, traveling at more than five hundred
miles per hour, slammed into the side of the south tower. Camera crews from
across the city captured the impact and subsequent explosion on film. The
force of the plane crash rocked the building, and two huge fireballs erupted
from the south tower as several floors became engulfed in flames. Thick
smoke billowed from the tower as ash and debris fell to the ground.
president George W. Bush first addressed the nation at 9:30 a.m. on the
morning of september 11. in his brief remarks, the president confirmed
that a terrorist incident had indeed
taken place: “Today we’ve had a national
tragedy,” Bush said from an elementary school he was visiting in sarasota,
Florida. “Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an
apparent terrorist attack on our country.” Bush then promised “to hunt down
and to find those folks” who committed the atrocities.3 Only minutes after
the president finished his address, the third hijacked airliner hit the pentagon
in Arlington, virginia. At 10:03 a.m., the fourth hijacked plane crashed in a
field in rural pennsylvania.
The violent assaults were designed to be spectacular in their destruction
of symbols of U.s. economic, military, and political power. The first two
hijacked commercial airliners brought down the 110-story twin towers of
the World Trade Center and led to the partial or total collapse of seven other
buildings in the financial district of lower manhattan. The third airliner
heavily damaged part of the pentagon, which serves as the headquarters for
the U.s. Department of Defense. The fourth plane was destined for either the
U.s. Capitol or the White House but was forced down by several passengers
before it could reach its intended target.
These deliberate acts claimed the lives of more people on American soil
than any other hostile attack in the nation’s history.4 The death toll stands
at 2,973, which includes all 246 passengers and crew members on the four
hijacked airplanes; 55 military personnel and 70 civilians at the pentagon;
and 2,602 civilians and first responders in new york City who were in the
towers at the time of the aerial assaults or when the buildings collapsed.5 All
told, citizens from more than ninety nations perished as a consequence of
9/11. The nineteen individuals who hijacked the planes also died on impact,
although their names are typically not included among the official rosters of
the deceased.
in addition to those persons who lost their lives, many more suffered
various wounds to the body and mind as a result of the disaster. soon after
the collapse of the enormous blazing towers, which sent walls of dust and
debris surging down narrow city streets, several thousand people in new
york received medical care for burns, lacerations, broken bones, and other
Under Attack / 19
afflictions.6 in the weeks and months to follow, a considerable number of
people who were close enough to the epicenter to inhale the smoke and
noxious fumes sought treatment for respiratory problems, such as wheezing,
shortness of breath, asthma, and a new syndrome aptly named “World Trade
Center cough.”7
The children and adults who lived, went to school, or worked near the
disaster-affected areas were exposed to an extraordinary array of stressors
(life threats, bereavement, disruption of normal routines, and displacement),
which provoked fear, nightmares, and other forms of worry that persisted
for long periods of time.8 The rescue and recovery workers who labored
at the sites of the attacks—putting out fires, cleaning up debris, and
salvaging human remains—witnessed scenes of unspeakable destruction
and subsequently experienced high rates of depression and anxiety.9 mental
health professionals who consoled the families of the deceased, comforted
those who searched for the missing, and provided support for survivors and
volunteers were vulnerable to various psychological disturbances arising
from their regular confrontation with human tragedy.10
it is clear that the emotional distress that the attacks generated was
not confined to the impact zones but instead rippled outward across the
United states. The pew research Center estimated that roughly 20 percent
of Americans knew someone (or had a friend or relative who knew someone)
who was injured or killed on 9/11. A national survey revealed that the vast
majority of American adults—about 90 percent—exhibited at least one
symptom of post-traumatic stress in the week following the attacks, and
nearly half—44 percent—displayed substantial symptoms of stress.11 A series
of follow-up polls documented ongoing adverse emotional and physical
health reactions among the general population.12 As the months passed and
people attempted to come to terms with the many losses associated with the
disaster, the immediate trauma seemed to settle into a kind of generalized
mass anxiety. in one survey, taken almost a year after the tragedy, nearly
two-thirds of the respondents said that they thought about 9/11 at least
several times a week.13
The 9/11 attacks also caused staggering financial losses. The U.s. Govern-
ment Accountability Office contends that the costs associated with the attacks
were somewhere in the range of $80 to $100 billion (in 2001 dollars).14 This
figure includes, among other things, the “direct costs” resulting from the loss
of human life; the destruction of physical property, including a large section
of the pentagon and fifteen million square feet of prime office space in lower
manhattan; the expense of responding to the disaster during the emergency
period; the cost of removing two million tons of rubble; and the economic toll
of recovery. The “indirect costs” represent losses that are far more difficult to
estimate, such as diminished business profits, the loss of employee income,
and reduced tax revenues. The business travel and tourism industries were
severely affected as well, and in september 2001, domestic and international
air travel fell by 30 percent nationwide. economic activity in manhattan’s
financial district all but ceased after the attacks, and between 75,000 and
100,000 jobs were lost in new york City in the last three months of 2001.15
The coordinated assaults on new york and Washington, D.C., generated
widespread disruption across the United states. less than an hour after the
first airplane struck the north tower of the World Trade Center, the Federal
Aviation Administration ordered a halt to all nonemergency civilian flight
operations, stranding tens of thousands of passengers at airports across the
country. This order represented the first time in American history that air
traffic nationwide had been grounded. shortly thereafter, secret service
agents were deployed to the White House, and the U.s. military was placed
on high alert worldwide. All federal office buildings in Washington, D.C.,
were evacuated, and new york state government offices were closed. Trading
on Wall street was suspended, and every bridge and tunnel leading into
manhattan was shut down. los Angeles international Airport, the destination
of three of the hijacked airplanes, was evacuated and shut down, as was san
Francisco international Airport, the destination of the fourth airliner that
crashed in pennsylvania. schools, businesses, and other organizations across
the nation closed for days, and in some cases for weeks, after the attacks.
in the wake of the tragedy, many people experienced an overwhelming
desire to help. Tens of thousands of emergency response personnel and
private citizens spontaneously converged at the scene of the attacks.16 Con-
cerned i
ndividuals lined up at blood donation stations across the United
states, and volunteers overwhelmed community service agencies with offers
to assist. Open displays of patriotism were evident everywhere, as Americans
bought out every U.s. flag in the nation.17 individuals and organizations
donated nearly $2 billion and an extraordinary amount of food, clothing,
and supplies to the relief efforts.18
All the while, survivors in new york City desperately hunted for the
disappeared. Frantic family members and friends presented photos of
missing loved ones to hospital employees, red Cross staff, strangers on the
street, and anyone else whom they thought might be able to aid them in
their search. Thousands of handmade fliers that asked, “Have you seen this
person?” were posted on lampposts, in restaurants, and all along the walls of
Grand Central and penn stations.19 Countless candlelight vigils, communal
interfaith services, teach-ins on university campuses, and other events were
organized to help people cope with the events. Despite some apprehension,
no panic, no rioting, and no real looting occurred in new york City following
the attacks.20
in many ways, the outpouring of warmth and goodwill closely resembled
Under Attack / 21
the reactions that have long been observed in the aftermath of natural
disasters and other catastrophes. samuel Henry prince, one of the earliest
scholars of disaster, writes of a “city of comrades” coming together after
the deadly 1917 Halifax ship explosion.21 in his report on a major flood,
robert i. Kutak references the “democracy of distress,” which he says led to
a temporary breakdown of race and class divisions among affected citizens.22
Anthony F. C. Wallace23 describes a “stage of euphoria” that brought together
those who survived a catastrophic tornado, and martha Wolfenstein24 calls
the more general phenomenon a “post-disaster utopia.” Allen Barton uses
the concept of the “altruistic community” to explain how human suffering
could generate such supportive behavior among populations devastated by
disaster.25 After reviewing a significant number of case studies of disaster,
Charles e. Fritz concludes that the emergence of a “community of sufferers”
is a nearly universal feature of large-scale crises.26