CAir first began tracking anti-muslim abuses in response to the rash of
hate crimes that followed the Oklahoma City bombing. Although the most
striking increase in violent incidents followed the 9/11 attacks, the data show
that anger and acts of discrimination directed against muslim Americans
have continued to escalate. These trends likely signify the lasting imprint of
9/11 as well as new hostilities stoked by the wars in Afghanistan and iraq,
conflicts erupting in the middle east, and the focus on the threat of islamic
fundamentalism in the rhetoric surrounding the global War on Terror.
in addition to enduring ill-treatment at the hands of fellow citizens and
private entities, Arab and muslim Americans became the targets of special
governmental legislation and other law enforcement measures adopted after
9/11.73 These measures, which were ostensibly designed to combat terrorism,
have led to a systematic erosion of civil rights for all Americans but have
been especially devastating to Arab and muslim communities. portions
of the UsA pATriOT Act and other post-9/11 federal legislation empower
law enforcement officials to (1) arbitrarily choose foreign or domestic
organizations suspected of supporting terrorism, and then—using secret
evidence—jail or deport anyone who gives them material support; (2) jail
those who commit even minor criminal offenses deemed “dangers to human
Under Attack / 33
3,000
2,652
2,728
2,467
2,500
1,972
2,000
1,717
1,522
1,500
1,019
Incidents 1,000
525
602
366
500
216
240
284
285
322
80
0
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
1995-96
1996-97
1997-98
1998-99
2000-01
2001-02
1999-2000
1/01 Backlash
9/1
1995 OKC Backlash
Year
Figure 2.2. Anti-Muslim bias incidents, 1995–2008. (Source: Council on American-
Islamic Relations, “The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States: Seeking Full
Inclusion,” Washington, D.C., 2009.)
life” whose intent is to “intimidate society” or “influence government policy”;
(3) detain U.s. citizens and noncitizens suspected of being enemy combatants
without bail and without access to attorneys; (4) try such individuals in secret
before military tribunals; and (5) prepare detention camps to incarcerate U.s.
citizens and foreign nationals for prolonged periods of time.74
After the passage of the UsA pATriOT Act, Attorney General John
Ashcroft announced further measures authorizing FBi agents to spy on
domestic groups without having to show evidence of a crime. Agents were
permitted to covertly monitor public meetings and religious assemblies for
the first time in decades.75 in 2006, the U.s. Congress passed the military
Commissions Act, which allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who
donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of “terrorist organizations”
or who speaks out against the government’s policies. The law also calls for
secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.76
in the weeks immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, local, state,
and federal law enforcement agencies rounded up and imprisoned between
1,200 and 5,000 muslim and Arab men.77 The government refused to reveal
the detainees’ identities, give them access to lawyers, disclose information
regarding the charges against them, or allow them to have contact with
their families.78 According to a report from the U.s. Department of Justice,
the men were subjected to “a pattern of physical and verbal abuse by some
correctional officers” in the detention facilities.79 Under the threat of a
lawsuit, the federal government eventually released the names of some of the
men who had been swept up in the post-9/11 mass arrests. most of the men
were picked up on minor immigration violations, and many were quietly
deported after months or years in detention. none of the men was charged
with any terror-related activity.80
34 / Chapter 2
in the fall of 2001 and spring of 2002, representatives from the FBi and
other law enforcement agencies began visiting mosques, universities, and
homes to conduct “voluntary” interviews with nearly eight thousand middle
eastern and south Asian men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-three
who were legally residing in the United states as students or visitors.81 The
government acknowledged that none of the men selected for interviews
was individually suspected of wrongdoing; instead, the interrogations were
meant only to uncover leads that might prove useful in the antiterrorism
campaign.82 During the interviews, 90 percent of those questioned were asked
about their political and religious beliefs, whether they sympathized with the
9/11 terrorists, whether they had any scientific or weapons training, and
where they had traveled in the past.83 Of the thousands of men interviewed,
none was found to have any connections to terrorist activity.
Also in the wake of 9/11, islamic charities, businesses, and homes were
raided, and assets and private property were seized pending investigation.84
in December 2002, more than seven hundred muslim men were arrested after
they had waited in line for several hours at immigration and naturalization
service offices to register under the newly established national security
entry-exit registration system (nseers).85 After this incident, the
Associated press reported that muslim families from across the United states
were seeking refuge in Canada. Dozens of civil-liberties and human-rights
organizations subsequently called on the Bush administration to eliminate
the mandatory nseers registration program on the grounds that it “appears
to target people based on national origin, race, and religion rather than
intelligence information.”86
The post-9/11 arrests, detentions, and deportations of thousands of
young muslim men resulted in several high-profile cases. These incidents
sent shockwaves of fear through the entire muslim community. For example,
the media offered extensive coverage of the cases of U.s. Army Captain James
yee, portland attorney Brandon mayfield, and University of idaho doctoral
student sami al-Hussayen. These three muslim men were arrested, held
in solitary confinement for weeks, and labeled “terrorists.” All three were
eventually exonerated of all charges brought against them (in the mayfield
case, the FBi even issued a rare formal apology for its egregious investigative
errors regarding a false fingerprint match that allegedly connected mayfield
to the march 11, 2004, madrid, spain, train bombings). Despite the legal
victories for the defendants, the damage to the
ir personal reputations and to
the image of the muslim community was done.
The statistics presented in this chapter offer a general sense of the
contours of the post-9/11 backlash. yet when we merely examine the
numerical estimates of acts of discrimination, hate crimes, and profiling
incidents, they fail, as statistics often do, to describe what these forms of
Under Attack / 35
exclusion and violence meant to the people most affected. These numbers
tell us nothing of what the discrimination looked or felt like on the ground,
nor do they offer even a hint of the isolation and fear that muslim Americans
experienced after the attacks. The numbers shed no light on the ways that the
backlash impacted the daily lives, routines, and relationships of muslims. it is
only through listening to the voices of muslim Americans that we can begin
to comprehend the scope and severity of the backlash as well as to appreciate
the sometimes remarkable ways that muslims adapted to the exclusion. With
that in mind, the subsequent chapters in this book draw on qualitative data
to give voice to the lived experiences of a sample of muslim men and women
whom the post-9/11 backlash directly affected.87
3
Encountering Intolerance
Over the two decades prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, several schol-
ars of islam began to write with an increasing degree of urgency
about the rise of anti-muslim hostility in the United states. This
work focused on negative representations of muslims in the news and
popular culture,1 the post–Cold War construction of the “islamic threat”
by U.s. political leaders,2 the selective targeting of muslim immigrants
by law enforcement officials,3 and the growing number of religious-dis-
crimination lawsuits filed in state and federal courts.4 in 1991, the word
Islamophobia—which refers to a hatred of islam and the resultant fear or
dislike of muslims—first appeared in print in an American periodical.5
it has been included in the Oxford English Dictionary every year since
1997.6 The Council on American-islamic relations (CAir) issued its
initial report on bias crimes committed against muslim people and their
places of work and worship in 1995. CAir has since published a series of
annual reports that chronicle a disturbing upward trend in instances of
discrimination and civil-rights violations. Jane smith, a respected scholar
of islam, argued in 1999, “prejudice against their religion is a reality with
which all American muslims must deal in one way or another.”7
The persons represented in Behind the Backlash were born between
the years 1966 and 1983. Thus, the individuals who participated in this
study grew up during a period when the vilification and victimization
of muslims in the United states was becoming more common. This era
Encountering Intolerance / 37
was also a time of rapid growth among the muslim American community.
From 1990 to 2000, the muslim American population increased by nearly
40 percent, and a significant number of new mosques and islamic schools
were founded in rural and metropolitan areas.8 The face of islam in America
began to change as well. With the post-1965 influx of new arrivals from
south Asia and the middle east, immigrant muslims soon outnumbered
converts among African Americans.9 The rising visibility of islam has
sparked an intense and ongoing debate concerning the role of religion in
American public life and the potential “assimilability”—or ability to adapt to
the dominant culture—of muslims.
This chapter explores the challenges that the interviewees faced prior
to the 9/11 attacks. Understanding this predisaster context is important for
two reasons. First, it explains, at least in part, why the post-9/11 backlash
against muslim Americans was so swift and severe. second, it helps put in
perspective the various strategies that muslims drew on as they attempted
to respond to and recover from the unprecedented outbreak of bias-related
incidents after 9/11. (i take up these points in later chapters.) As the narratives
presented below illustrate, muslim Americans were no strangers to hostile
treatment before 9/11. in fact, the persons i interviewed reported that they
regularly encountered confusion, stereotypes, and harassment as a result of
their minority religious status.
The data included here, which are necessarily retrospective, are based
on interviews that i collected with muslim adults in the two years following
the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Undoubtedly, the time frame in which the data
were gathered shaped the memories that the participants recalled and shared
with me. indeed, 9/11 was a catalytic event that caused the young men and
women to reflect carefully and self-consciously on their prior experiences
with mistreatment, ultimately heightening their awareness of their personal
and social identities as muslim Americans.10 As the participants struggled to
come to terms with the post-9/11 fallout, they actually had a greater capacity
for insight into their present situations and past circumstances. it was through
previously been taken for granted—rose to the surface. The fact that many
of the experiences that the interviewees described were remarkably similar
underscores the pervasiveness of anti-muslim sentiment that was present
long before the assaults on the World Trade Center and pentagon.
Discovering Difference
Adults often imagine children to be completely unaware of status differ-
ences that mark American society. yet social science research has shown that
children as young as two years of age understand that race and gender are
38 / Chapter 3
important characteristics that define individuals and confer certain privileges
(or disadvantages) on entire groups.11 less attention has been devoted to
children’s knowledge or use of religious categorizations in everyday interac-
tion. However, some evidence shows that American children and adolescents
who practice faiths other than Christianity—the dominant religion in U.s.
social life—often find that other youth and adults ignore, invalidate, and even
actively contest these belief systems.12
most of the respondents in this study could not identify specific moments
when they realized that their islamic faith marked them as outside the norm.
instead, they described a more general sense of “difference” from the other
children in their schools and neighborhoods. Although they shared many
things in common with their non-muslim friends, they were aware that their
religion made them stand out from their predominantly Christian peers.
Habeel remembered how, when he was a child, his mother used to call him
inside to complete his daily prayers. This practice made him feel out of the
ordinary, especially when his playmates would question his actions:
i think that i always felt different as a muslim. maybe not my musical
taste or the Tv shows i like to watch, but there’s something different
about us. i never felt quite the same as every other ave
rage American
kid. When we were little, we used to go outside and play with our
friends across the street, and then our mother would call us in to
pray. The kids would ask, “Why are you going in to pray?” That’s
one of the things, just little things that add up. so even though you
don’t feel totally alienated by everyone else, there’s always a bit of a
difference.
in addition to their religious minority status, the majority of the
participants were immigrants or the children of immigrants with roots in the
middle east, south Asia, and many other parts of the world. Their membership
in multiple minority groups—religious, ethnic, immigrant—meant that
their faith, their cultural practices, and their physical characteristics often
stood in contrast to the white, Judeo-Christian norm associated with the
United states. Hafeez, a second-generation immigrant of pakistani descent,
was raised in a predominantly white neighborhood in massachusetts. He
described the period when he first began to realize how his religion and
ethnic background distinguished him from his peers:
i can remember i was pretty young, in maybe second or third grade.
most of my friends were overwhelmingly white, protestant. it was
just the little things that i noticed. my parents would fast [during the
islamic holy month of ramadan] and no one else would. We don’t
Encountering Intolerance / 39
celebrate Christmas. Christmas is so big in America. Oh yeah, and
we’re brown. [ Laughs. ] Do you know what i mean? i guess it was just
that i knew . . . i look different from them, so i am different from
them. i believe different things. i think that is when i figured out
that to be American was to be Christian or Jewish. To be muslim and
brown was to be not American.
even at a young age, Hafeez had begun to associate what it means to be
“American” with specific practices (for example, celebrating Christmas) as
well as with membership in the dominant racial group and most prominent
faith communities in this nation.
like the two men quoted above, many others recognized early on that
numerous practices associated with their religion or culture set them apart
from their peers and most of the adults in their lives. some of the respondents
began fasting (abstaining from eating or drinking anything from dawn until
sunset) during ramadan at the age of seven or eight years. This tradition