A Quiet Revolution (33 page)

Instances and reports of hate crimes and bias against Muslim and Arab Americans did rise dramatically immediately after
9
/
11
, going up by
1
,
600
percent.
5
They included more of the kinds of attacks already mentioned—attacks on individuals, on women in hijab, and acts of arson and destruction against mosques and businesses, as well as several

murders, among them the murder of an Egyptian American man of Cop- tic (Christian) background who was evidently assumed to be Muslim.

However, Muslims and people of Muslim background, individuals and organizations, also reported being the recipients of an extraordinary level of support. Sayyid M. Syeed, secretary general of ISNA, said that the “number of support calls and visits to Islamic centers to show soli- darity by far outnumber the nasty phone-calls and attacks.”
6
In a survey

among Muslims conducted by CAIR in August
2002
, about
80
percent

said they had experienced “kindness or support from friends or col- leagues of other faiths”—while
57
percent reported experiencing bias and discrimination.
7
After the Islamic center in San Diego was attacked, for instance, it received “bouquets of flower[s] and cards of support and sympathy from members of other faith groups—especially after reports of Muslim women being afraid to leave home.” And when a store be- longing to a Muslim was vandalized in San Francisco, the neighbors “tried to offer him money” toward its repair. One woman shopping with her two children reported that the manager gave her children little gifts of pencils and paper “to show support.” And people of other faiths showed up at Friday prayers “to express solidarity.”
8

In addition to such expressions of support there was now an enor- mously increased interest in Islam and a desire to learn about it among the broader public. Books on Islam flew off the shelves, and when mosques began to hold open houses to offer information about Islam, inviting whoever wished to attend, such events were typically packed.
9
Those I attended in my own area were certainly crowded. At one such event mosque officials informed the audience that the rabbi of a nearby synagogue, who had opened the synagogue’s parking lot to the mosque for the evening, had consistently been tremendously helpful as had the pastor of the neighborhood church.

As it happens, this particular mosque was the mosque where I had heard, a couple of years earlier, the sermon in praise of Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. At that time, as well as on subse- quent visits, I had sat in the women’s section in the basement—a dim, cramped, beige-carpeted, unaesthetic space, where the sermon and prayers came through to us on loudspeakers. Children played in a small room off the main basement room, occasionally running in to sit with

their mothers or to clamber over them, or else join or play at joining in prayer. The open house was held upstairs in the men’s space, a carpeted hall that was normally no doubt open but which now held rows of chairs. It was crowded; all the seats were taken, and people were sitting and standing along the walls and in the aisles.

The imam and a couple of other male mosque officers were pres- ent. After making some introductory comments, in part with the help of a translator, the task of giving a brief informative talk on Islam and re- sponding to questions was handled by a young Euro-American woman, Andrea Useem. Useem, whom I had met as a non-hijabi student at Har- vard, was a recent convert to Islam who now wore hijab. She was an ex- tremely able and articulate speaker, as well as an amiable presence. The men also occasionally responded, usually with the help of a translator.

People asked questions and offered comments. One moment in particular in the evening’s proceedings has remained with me. This was when a woman, perhaps in her forties, asked some question about Islam and followed this by saying that she wanted to explain why she was here at this open house. She was of Jewish background, she said, and was her- self a nonbeliever who had dedicated her life to work in support of Na- tive Americans. Not only was she a nonbeliever, she continued, she was also deeply critical of monotheisms. All of them, in her eyes, she said, were deeply patriarchal and oppressive toward women, as well as toward people who were not of their own group. She saw Islam as no different in this matter from Judaism and Christianity. However, her views on these points did not diminish (she said) her commitment to supporting Muslims in their right to be in this country and in their right to be treated with justice and without discrimination. This, she explained, was why she had come. She was politely heard, and one of the male mosque offi- cers, as well as Useem, thanked her for her words and for coming.

Even as I listened I found myself thinking that this surely marked an unprecedented moment in the history of Islam—and a moment that could only happen in America and in the immediate aftermath of
9
/
11
. In what other era or place was it even imaginable that an atheist woman

of Jewish background (or a woman of any background, or even an athe- ist man) might come to a mosque to publicly state both her critique of monotheism, including Islam, for their chauvinism and patriarchy, as

well as her support for the Muslim community members and their rights to pursue their lives and practice their faith as freely as other Americans? Such a scene was unimaginable in any Muslim-majority country.

Nor could it have unfolded in this particular way in Europe. The woman’s speech (I will call her Judith—to my regret I did not get her name) was clearly steeped in ideals and assumptions that were quintessentially American: about individual rights, women’s rights, and the rights of mi- norities. Along with these she conveyed, too—in referring to her work with Native Americans—an acute awareness of how flawed and incom- plete was this deeply American project of realizing a society that was in- deed one of equality for all.

That space had been created within a mosque in which such words could be spoken and courteously heard was also a matter that bore the distinct imprint of these particular times and country. The open house, a type of event that so far as I know had no precedent in American

mosques in pre-
9
/
11
times, was designed to inform people about Islam

and to allow non-Muslims to get to know, ask questions of, and enter into conversations with their Muslim neighbors. Mosque authorities and Muslim organizations all across America had evidently decided it would be wise to hold such events. They feared a backlash against Islam and felt obliged to be open and to hear out the views of those who accepted their invitation.

Thus by force of circumstance and in consequence of their sense of precariousness and vulnerability as a minority, the mosque authorities were in effect compelled to listen, giving courteous reception to views that in ordinary times they would not have even permitted to have ut- tered in their mosques—views, moreover, articulated by people who or- dinarily they would not even have allowed to enter into the sanctum of the upper level of the mosque, an area reserved exclusively for Muslim men.

As I was observing this scene I felt that I was present at a new mo- ment in history—in the history of Islam as well as of America. It seemed an augury of the opening up of a new kind of space in which not only or- dinary Muslims but also Muslim authorities were respectfully hearing out the views of those who spoke from completely different worldviews

—among them people who spoke from a deeply American tradition of

justice and indeed (like the Islamists themselves in their origins) from a tradition of activism in pursuit of justice.

In my own experience, Muslim religious authorities, by definition ensconced in power, do not listen. Rather they ignore, silence, or attempt to crush criticism of Islamic views and practices no matter how justified or ethically grounded. But we were now apparently in a new time in America, as new space seemed to be opening up for fruitful and collab- orative exchanges between American Muslim religious authorities—now that Muslims found themselves an embattled minority needing the sup- port of others—and people speaking from other American ethical tra- ditions, religious and nonreligious.

Within days of the
9
/
11
attack, as the media began reporting incidents of attacks on Muslims, including attacks or harassments of Muslim women in hijab, there quickly surfaced reports of groups of non-Muslim women organizing events or actions in support of women in hijab, among them “headscarf days” and escort services for hijabi women.

Many of the reported incidents of harassment or attack took the form of schoolgirls being subject to insults and being spat on and hav- ing their hijabs pulled off as they were called “rag-heads” or told to “go home!”
10
One community worker reported that “after September
11
girls

who wear hijab received lots of harassment on the bus, at school, and on the street. People tried to pull their hijab off, other students also might put their shirts over their heads saying ‘we look like Osama’s daughter, now. We look like you now.’”
11
One schoolgirl who had her headscarf pulled off was also kicked, and another teenager at a Baltimore airport experienced a distinct sense of menace when she was asked to remove her hijab when passing through security. When she asked why she should do so “and tried to explain that it was a religious symbol, she was sur- rounded by military personnel carrying rifles.” She took it off.
12

Not only schoolgirls found themselves subject to harassment and attack. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) re- port, for example, notes that on September
16
,
2001
, a “Muslim woman dressed in traditional clothing was attacked while grocery shopping. An-

other woman began beating her while yelling, ‘America is only for white people.’ The victim was taken to the emergency room.”
13

Sometimes these assaults could be appallingly brutal. On Septem- ber
26
, for example, in Clarkson, Georgia, “three men attacked a woman as she was leaving her apartment building . . . One of them took off her hijab, another put his foot on her neck, while a third kicked her back.” They continued to kick her “while cursing Arabs,” then they “attempted to take off her clothes. She was dragged to a tree, screaming and plead- ing, while one of them held a knife to her two-year-old son.” The at- tackers fled when they noticed cars approaching.
14
On September
30
the
‌

San Diego Union Tribune
reported that “a car driven by a Sikh woman was idling at a red light when two men on a motorcycle pulled up beside her, yanked open her door and shouted ‘This is what you get for what you’ve done to us!’ and ‘I’m going to slash your throat!’ She raised her elbows to protect her neck and hunched over. She was slashed in the head at least twice before the men, hearing a car approach, sped off. She

was treated in the emergency room and released that day.”
15
And on Oc- tober
12
, in San Jose, California, a “pregnant Yemeni woman wearing a hijab and a long dress was beaten by a group of teenagers. She was hos- pitalized and remained in guarded condition until she delivered her

baby.”
16

News of such incidents was reported widely in the media, which also reported that many Muslim women were now afraid to go out even to take their children to school or go shopping. Such incidents were also occurring on college campuses, where women began organizing cam- paigns against such assaults. At the University of Connecticut, Campus Safe, an organization dedicated to fighting relationship violence and sex- ual assault on the campus, set the headscarf campaign in motion. Ann D’Alleva, a professor of art history and women’s studies who was in- volved, said the response to the action had been “very positive.” “I think it’s really important to speak out against any sort of crime,” she explained to a journalist, “because who’s going to be there for me. Any sort of act of hate is an act against me.”
17
D’Alleva made a number of scarves from black cloth that she distributed, writing on each “Them equals Us.”
18

Such actions by women and feminists in support of women in hijab

—from “headscarf days” to offers of escort and shopping services, and the holding of candlelight vigils in support of Muslim women—occurred in many communities across the nation. They were not confined to col-

lege settings, although college communities played a leading role.
19
Jen- nifer Schock, for example, a web designer and student in Washington, D.C., initiated the movement in her area on September
25
. After posting her idea suggesting that non-Muslim women don the hijab for a day in support of Muslim women, Schock was “stunned by the firestorm of controversy it generated.” She was criticized, among other things, she said, “for embracing a tradition that is viewed by many as a symbol of Islam’s oppression of women.” Her intention she said, had simply been to reach out to let Muslim women know that they were not alone. The gesture was at the same time, she thought, a “way to challenge our per- ceptions and foster some kind of dialogue . . . instead all of a sudden, I’m endorsing women’s oppression. It made me realize how emotional this
‌

whole thing is.”
20
Another woman, Ella Singer, a staff member on the campus of Wayne State University who had grown up in the South and who wanted to support Muslim women, also felt conflicted because “she had always refused to wear head scarves because she associated them with the oppression of slavery.” Deciding to wear it nevertheless, and “pulling a scarf over her dreadlocks,” she explained: “I’m wearing it because I un- derstand how it marks you as an object for someone else’s hatred. . . . It’s still the same fight, but the symbol means something different.”
21