A Quiet Revolution (35 page)

In the era of struggle against colonialism and in the early post- colonial period, the veil was emphatically affirmed by the Muslim Broth- erhood and other religiously grounded oppositional movements. It became an emblem of resistance to colonialism and of affirmation of in- digenous values, a meaning that it retained in the initial years of the Is- lamic Resurgence.

Somehow with the rise of Islamism—and quite possibly because activist women and wearers of the hijab became directly involved in gen- erating the meanings of the hijab—the hijab’s meanings began to break loose from their older, historically bounded moorings. It was only after the veil had gone through that cycle of history that it would be un- moored, at least for its wearers, from its old meanings.

Today all of these meanings, old and new, are simultaneously freely in circulation in our societies, depending on which community the wearer or observer belongs to. Certainly for some it is still a powerful sign of the Otherness of Muslims, as the attacks that have occurred on women in hijab in America and elsewhere make clear. And for many it continues to be a sign of the oppression of women. For many of the hijab’s wearers, on the other hand—or at least for many of its wearers who do not live in societies where the veil is required by law—the hijab does not, as their statements typically indicate, have this meaning. For its wearers, in societies where women are free to choose whether to wear it, the hijab can have any of the variety of meanings reviewed in these pages

—and indeed, many, many more. For some women, surely wearing the hajib has the meaning that it very clearly had for Zainab al-Ghazali— that is, of obedience to God’s commands as set forth, as they believe, in

the Quran. And for others it may be an important personal expression of spiritual commitment. Noticeably, though, these are not reasons or explanations that women often offer—for whatever reason—to enquir- ing journalists or researchers.
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Among the responses noted earlier were those indicating the veil’s intended meanings of challenge to the sexism of the rules of dress in the dominant society and the meaning of the affirmation of the rights to equality of minorities in society. Clearly these are meanings that the hijab can come to have only in societies that declare themselves committed to gender equality and equality for minorities. They are not meanings that the hijab could possibly have in Cairo or Karachi or Riyadh or Tehran. These are just some of the elements of meaning of the hijab emerg-

ing in this new cycle of history inaugurated by the rise and global spread of Islamism. There are many more ways that the issue of the hijab may be fruitfully explored: hijab as fashion statement, for instance, and hijab as an element (as all clothing is to some extent) in the construction, presentation, and performance of self and identity, judging by its title, the forthcoming
Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith
by Emma Tarlo promises to explore.
34

Hate crimes and various forms of verbal and physical harassment of Muslims and Arabs and people perceived to be Muslim and Arab, as well as civil rights and discrimination offenses, have continued to rise since
9
/
11
, as they had already begun to do in the late
1990
s.

Analysts see many factors in the post-
9
/
11
years as contributing to

the rising numbers of such incidents, as well as of arson, violence, and physical and verbal attacks. Bakalian and Bozorgmehr note in their study
Backlash 9/11
that the way in which people’s Muslim identity was fore- grounded in media and public discourse as the one salient aspect of their identity had the effect of making that one element “trump” all other “dis- tinguishing characteristics in the minds of the people among whom one lives.” Very likely too, they argued, it would have had the “same effect on one’s self. Other ways of identifying one’s position in the world—occu- pational, national, some other—begin to pale in significance because of the sheer weight of the anti-Muslim hostility.”
35

In addition, “negative portrayals of Arabs and Muslims ... in the

mainstream media had the effect of continuously adding fuel to a raging fire,” say Bakalian and Bozorgmehr, and these came to play, therefore, a “significant role in transmitting the discourse of fear and hatred.” Media reports consequently, they found, were a major source of “anger and frustration” among Muslim and Arab Americans they interviewed. When these populations watch TV “or read the newspaper, they tend to find stereotypical assumptions, false interpretations and overall unfa- vorable representations” of Arabs and Muslims. They were generally “skeptical of journalists, who purport to report the ‘truth.’” One re- spondent said, “If I want to know what is going on in America, I don’t read the American media. I read the British media, I read the European. I read the Israeli media, for God’s sake . . . the American media has be- come a mouthpiece for the government. Walter Cronkite the legend who is the godfather of the electronic media, said it, that it seemed like the American media rolled over and died.”
36

As the journalism professor Victor Navasky noted, post-
9
/
11
jour-

nalism “in most mainstream media, including both reportage and analy- sis reflected a number of ideological assumptions.” Among these was the assumption that “this was a time for rallying around the flag and that those who questioned national policy were giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” Consequently, “any attempt to link the events of September
11
to America’s previous role in the Middle East or elsewhere was unwor- thy of serious coverage or consideration and somehow smacked of apolo- getics.”
37

Other analysts have noted that media presentations often ques- tioned Arab and Muslim Americans’ “loyalty to the United States by questioning their stances on U.S. foreign policy.” Many American Mus- lims now felt that their loyalties to America were automatically regarded as suspect, no matter what they said. American Muslims were also ex- pected, observers reported, to repeatedly condemn and apologize for
9
/
11
. And yet the “countless condemnations” of the attacks issued by mosques and Muslim American organizations typically also “received little media attention.”
38

Among the factors viewed by some as having seriously contributed to the rising incidents of prejudice and discrimination was the U.S. gov- ernment’s own discourse of the “war on terror,” as well as such govern-

ment actions as the profiling and singling out of Muslims at airports. Even more serious were the detentions, deportations, and the practice of “rendition” which occurred, as well as the raids on Muslim homes. These attitudes and actions would be reproduced, some scholars argue, in the public sphere—“in cases of harassment and hate crimes at school, work, on the bus, and in the streets.”
39

Arrests and detentions of Muslims appear to have occurred in waves, beginning immediately after
9
/
11
, when new “anti-terrorist” leg- islation was introduced, including new INS regulations, followed by the Patriot Act, signed into law in October
2001
. These arrests were “shrouded in mystery,” wrote civil rights lawyer David Cole, with the government refusing to provide even the basic information of “how many people it had locked up.” It is thought that around twelve hun- dred people were arrested immediately after
9
/
11
and more were arrested (Cole estimated a total of five thousand people) following Attorney Gen- eral John Ashcroft’s announcement of a “special call-in” registration pro- gram in June
2002
.
40

In June
2003
a “scathing” report was issued by the inspector gen-

eral of the Department of Justice revealing that
738
foreign nationals had been detained, and that of these “not a single one was charged with any terrorist crime and virtually all were cleared of any connection with ter- rorism by the FBI.” The report also noted that people had been arrested for the “flimsiest reasons,” such as an anonymous tip that “too many Muslims worked at a convenience store, or that a Muslim neighbor kept odd hours.”
41

Many of these kinds of incidents were naturally well known to Muslim communities, and in particular to mosque-going Muslims, and they promoted anxiety and apprehension. Adding to the sense of uncer- tainty were reports that were circulating by
2002
of FBI agents enquiring

about “mosque membership lists,” and the counting of mosques. A Zogby Poll conducted in
2002
found that “
66
% of Muslim Americans worry about their future in this country, and
81
% feel that their com- munity is being profiled.”
42

Other incidents following from U.S. government action would also become well known as well as frightening to Muslims, and in particular to Muslims who were mosque-going and therefore regularly hearing

these reports. Among these were the cases of Maher Arar and those of the Muslim homes that were raided by the FBI in Herndon, Virginia.

Arar was a Canadian citizen detained at John F. Kennedy airport in New York on his way back to Canada from a holiday in Tunisia. After holding him in solitary confinement for two weeks, the U.S. deported him not to Canada but to Syria, his country of origin. Here, Arar claimed, he was tortured and eventually released almost a year later. A Canadian Commission of enquiry confirmed Arar’s story, including the claim that he had been tortured. The commission’s work represented, according to the
Washington Post,
one of the first “public investigations into mistakes made as part of the United States’ ‘extraordinary rendi- tion’ program, which secretly spirited suspects to foreign countries for interrogation by often brutal methods.”
43
The commission’s findings cleared Arar of any link to terrorism, and the prime minister of Canada subsequently issued an apology and announced that Arar would receive

$
10
.
5
million in settlement for his ordeal. The U.S. throughout refused to

cooperate with the Canadian Commission.
44

U.S. government arrests and other actions directly affected, above all, Muslim men—although naturally the women and children in their families would be enormously affected. With respect to the FBI raids on homes in Virginia (in connection with the closing down of Muslim American charities on the grounds that they had links with such organ- izations as Hamas and Hezbollah), it was the experience of the women that would be most highlighted in accounts. One woman described men “breaking through her door and pointing a gun at her
19
-year-old daugh- ter as she tried to call
911
.” The two women were handcuffed for three hours as the men searched their house and took computers, passports, and bank information.
45

Karamah, an organization of Muslim women lawyers for human rights based in Washington, D.C., together with the J
ournal of Law and Religion,
organized a panel in January
2003
to look into “Reported Abuses of Muslim Civil Rights in America,” including these cases in Vir- ginia. One of those giving testimony was Meredith McEver, a clinical so- cial worker who had counseled Muslim women who were victims of recent law enforcement raids. McEver explained that “all the women in this group exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder” and

that many “continue to cope with severe trauma and depression.” An- other woman, Mrs. Altomare, an employee of a school that was raided, said her experiences “brought to life the painful disruption caused to the school, her community and her own life by the raid,” noting that the school at which she worked had not subsequently been charged of any crime. The school, however, “was left to cope with the damage to its in- frastructure and decreased student enrollment resulting from the nega- tive publicity.”
46
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Besides government actions and perceived media bias, other fac- tors, analysts note, contributed to the negatively charged atmosphere re- garding Muslims and Arabs. These included the ongoing war in Iraq, as well as revelations involving the torture of suspects at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and the images and stories that became widely known de- picting the abuse and degradation of Muslims. These showed the sham- ing abuse and insults that Muslims and Arabs were subjected to, from physical torture to the destruction of items they held sacred, such as the text of their holy book reportedly thrown down toilets, and conveyed chilling messages as to the dehumanization of Muslims.

Other factors, analysts note, contributing to an atmosphere of per- missiveness regarding expressions of hate toward Muslims included the expanded space that became available after
9
/
11
in American popu- lar culture for “defamatory representation and vilification of Arabs,

Arab culture and Islam.”
47
Although a certain vein of hostility to Mus- lims and Arabs has long formed part of the fabric of European and American culture, as the ADC Report on the
9
/
11
backlash noted (a vein explored, as noted earlier, by Edward Said and others), hostile repre-

sentations increased significantly and generally went uncensored in the wake of
9
/
11
, often emanating from Christian evangelicals and the po- litical Right.

Jerry Falwell, for instance, speaking on CBS’s
60 Minutes
program, said that the Prophet Muhammad was a terrorist, and Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, called Islam “a very wicked, evil religion.” And Ann Coulter, as noted earlier, also made remarks in similar vein. Paul M. Weyrich, a highly influential conservative political figure and cofounder of the Heritage Foundation (today one of the largest and best-funded conservative think tanks), coauthored a pamphlet entitled “Why Islam