9/11 attacks

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September 12, 2011 | 10:23 AM | By

‘Isn’t this the land of the free?’ Growing up in an era of Muslim stereotypes

Last week, Yasmin Nouh joined four other young people on the Patt Morrison Show to talk about growing up Muslim in the decade following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Here she expands on that interview, sharing her perspective in a first-person essay.

Yasmin, whose parents are immigrants from Egypt and Iran, was barely in her teens when she heard the devastating news of what had occurred in New York that morning. She writes about what followed and how, as she experienced it, helped shape who she would become.

Photo by iMuslim/Flickr (Creative Commons)

My eyes, still heavy with sleep, lit up wide open when my father told us the spine-chilling news as he drove us to school in the morning: Two planes turned missile had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. At 13 years old, I barely understood the gravity of the terrorist attacks. When I asked who the hijackers were, he said the United States had identified Osama bin Laden as a likely suspect.

“This is going to be a hard time for Muslims,” my father said.

His words puzzled me. Why would this be a hard time for Muslims?

The magnitude of terror that followed would not hit me at once. My school decided to close for the day. My younger sister came back home as well. She attended a private, Islamic elementary school at the time. The school shut down for the rest of the week, out of fear of a bomb threat.

When we returned home from school, I turned on the television. The terrifying images reverberated on the screen, and in my mind when I would turn my eyes away.

But one particular series of images, displayed on various mainstream news stations, angered me. It showed several women in Palestine celebrating news of the attacks. The women, clad in hijab and abayas, were eating cake and cheering “Death to America.”

They looked just like me, but I did not share their happiness. And afterwards ensued a slew of images, connecting terror with men bearing resemblance to my father, and oppression with women who looked like my mother.

At the time, I wore the hijab, the Islamic headscarf donned by Muslim women. My mother sat me down in the family living room a few days after 9/11, and explained to me that I could remove my headscarf if I felt like I was in danger. A number of family friends’ daughters had done the same, and she told me she would understand.

“God wouldn’t want you to be in danger,” my mother said.

I turned to my father, who was in the same room with us. He held a disapproving look of my mother’s words.

“Isn’t this the land of the free?” he said.

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FILED UNDER: 9/11, 9/11 attacks, Islam, Muslims, September 11
September 9, 2011 | 5:36 PM | By

Five young Muslims who came of age post-9/11 share their experiences

Photo by cruxphotography.com/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A girl at a rally in New York, September 11, 2010

A post this morning involved one young Lebanese American woman’s experience growing up in Los Angeles following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. In a first-person essay, she described the bullying that she and her sister were subjected to, a relatively common occurrence in the confusing months that followed.

But years passed and as the nation healed, young Muslims growing up in the shadow of the attacks continued to feel stigmatized. Among them were young women who wore hijab, the religious headscarves worn by many Muslim women, who endured stares and suspicion.

Earlier this week, KPCC’s Patt Morrison interviewed five young Muslims who were either children or entering early adulthood at the time the hijackers attacked the World Trade Center. They shared their experiences coming of age in post-9/11 America and how it shaped them, for better or worse. An excerpt:

A few days before 9/11, then-high school freshman Nida Chowdhry started wearing the hijab — the Islamic headscarf worn by Muslim women. After the attacks, however, her mother feared wearing hijab might threaten her daughter’s safety. “My mom thought I shouldn’t wear it because she didn’t want any harm to come to me,” Chowdhry said. “I remember seeing girls that had made the same decision as I had, and they wouldn’t make eye contact with me because they chose to stop wearing a headscarf.”

Chowdhry, who studied film and English at UC-Irvine, says she was affected by the media’s misrepresentation of Muslims, Islam and minority ethnic groups like Arabs and Southeast Asians. She questioned her religious identity after the attacks, mostly due to confusion over how Muslims and Islam were portrayed in the media. “I feel like the rhetoric calls on Muslims to say, ‘OK this is what good Islam is and this is what bad Islam is,’” she said. “Are you a good Muslim or a bad Muslim? The rhetoric tries to pit you against yourself sometimes.”

One of the five young people interviewed was KPCC intern Yasmin Nouh, who has written several posts for Multi-American. She wrote most recently about how Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and reflection, is celebrated in an always-on American society.

The audio for the segment can be downloaded here.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice, 2011, 9/11, 9/11 attacks, Islam, Muslims, September 11
July 20, 2011 | 10:46 AM | By

He asked ‘Where are you from?’ Hate crime victim remembers, forgives

It’s a remarkable story: A hate crime victim who was shot in the face and left partly blinded in one eye during a post-9/11 killing spree, now petitioning to spare the life of his attacker.

Rais Bhuiyan, a Muslim who was born in Bangladesh, recalls what happened to him the afternoon of September 21, 2001. “A man with a gun entered the gas station where I was working. He asked me ‘Where are you from?’ The question seemed strange to ask during a robbery.”

The man who shot him is Mark Anthony Stroman, who later admitted to being distraught in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks and shooting people he believed were Arabs. He killed two others during his rampage, Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani immigrant who was Muslim, and Vasudev Patel, an Indian immigrant who was Hindu.

Stroman is scheduled to be executed tomorrow in Texas; Bhuiyan has been trying to spare Stroman’s life. He has been circulating a petition to commute Stroman’s sentence to life in prison via his website, World Without Hate. The New York Times featured interviews with both men earlier this week.

Bhuiyan says in the video: “Human lives are precious, and no one has a right to take another human’s life.”

FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, 9/11 attacks, Mark Stroman, Rais Bhuiyan
May 17, 2011 | 4:50 PM | By

The end of NSEERS, one of the most contentious post-9/11 national security programs

Photo by Timothy Valentine/Flickr (Creative Commons)

The Migration Policy Institute has published a brief history and analysis of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, known as NSEERS, which was terminated in recent weeks by Homeland Security.

Implemented after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it was one of the most controversial national security programs established during that time. The idea was to collect information, fingerprints, and photographs of certain individuals entering and living in the United States, and to monitor their whereabouts. Its primary focus was on men from Muslim-majority countries.

Most contested by its critics was a “special registration” provision that required non-citizens already present in the United States to report to immigration officials for questioning. While this portion of NSEERS was suspended at the end of 2003, the rest of the program remained in effect until its termination was announced at end of April. From the MPI paper:

In its recent announcement terminating the program, DHS cited the redundancy of the current manifestation of NSEERS, stating that, as a result of improved intelligence programs and better methods of tracking immigrant visa overstays, NSEERS was no longer needed to protect national security. And in reference to the program’s turbulent past and controversy over profiling based on nationality and religion, DHS stated that it will now “seek to identify individuals and actions that pose specific threats, rather than focusing on more general designations of groups of individuals, such as country of origin.”

In a striking coincidence, the announcement to terminate the NSEERS program came less than a week before the death of Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader responsible for the 9/11 attacks. It’s unclear as to whether the program would have been terminated in the aftermath of his death, which has increased anxiety about terrorist retaliation against the United States.

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FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, 9/11 attacks, Department of Homeland Security, NSEERS, Osama bin Laden
May 9, 2011 | 11:35 AM | By

American Muslim, or Muslim American?

In the United States, a generation of young Muslims has grown up in the shadow of the September 11, 2001 attacks, among them KPCC intern Yasmin Nouh. Part of the discussion she has been privy to during these years is how Muslims, whose patriotism has been under scrutiny since, should identify themselves: as American Muslims, or as Muslim Americans?

Nouh examines arguments for both ways of self-identifying in this guest post, her second for Multi-American.

Photo by NewMediaNormaRae/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Participants in last year's annual Muslim Day parade in New York, September 26, 2010

Just shy of a decade ago, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks orchestrated by Osama bin Laden opened a chapter in American history that has been fraught with widespread misunderstanding of Islam and Muslims.

Muslims, particularly in the United States and Europe, were asked to condemn extremism and to prove that they were patriotic to their respective countries. Amid the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment, one question became the norm to ask: Are you a Muslim or an American? Which one comes first?

If one chose Muslim first, then he or she was unpatriotic. If one chose American first, then it seemed like one was giving less importance to his or her Muslim identity.

In a recent post on the Muslim Matters website, Muslim convert Iesa Galloway wrote about how he believes that Muslims in the United States should use the phrase “American Muslim” when asked how to identify themselves. His line of reasoning was twofold: First, semantically speaking, American Muslim is correct; to be American is an adjective and to be a Muslim is a noun. Courtesy of English grammar, an adjective comes before a noun, and therefore one is an American Muslim.

Additionally, one’s “American” identity constantly changes and refers to one’s culture and nationalism, therefore it does not have to conflict with religious practice. In other words, he wrote, “accepting that your Muslim identity is ‘first’ is a charade that falls into the traps set by anti-Muslims and Muslim radicals.”

He argued that using the construction “American Muslim” is practical because: 1) what differentiates Muslims in America from Muslims elsewhere is nationality, not the practice of Islam; 2) what differentiates Muslims in America from other Americans is the creed.

The second part of Galloway’s reasoning asserted that the phrase “American Muslim” with no hyphen should be used, “because the hyphen model of identity is primarily used with regards to one’s ethnic or racial lineage. (And) If we racialize our identity, we buy into the hyphenated status as an American and therefore in many ways accept the ‘otherness’ that is pushed on us.”

He argued that this serves those who depict Islam as anti-American or incompatible with Western civilization. Galloway finally asked:

Will using American Muslim over Muslim-American solve all our problems?

No, but it will help. It rejects the foundational attacks that Muslims are not real Americans and that Islam is a threat to America.

An interesting argument ensued in the comments section of the post. Some readers disagreed with Galloway’s argument.

Junaid wrote:

The moment we feel the need that we have to prove to someone that we are as “American” or “Canadian” as they are or that we are citizens, we’ve already lost the debate. The question is invalid, and Muslims should not have to prove our loyalties to anybody. We should dismiss such debates such as this. In my opinion they are more harmful than good, and it draws attention to a matter that should have never been framed from the beginning.

In my opinion, I’m just a “Muslim.” If that stirs up discomfort with some people, they probably lack knowledge as to what being a Muslim means. And so that’s the starting point, explaining Islam and the Muslim identity.

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FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice, 9/11 attacks, Islam, Muslim, Muslim hearing, Osama bin Laden
May 6, 2011 | 8:34 AM | By

‘An unpardonable slander:’ The controversy over the use of ‘Geronimo’ in bin Laden operation

Chief Geronimo photographed in 1898, years after his capture. F.A. Rinehart/Getty Images

Multi-American’s sister blog DCentric has been posting updates on the controversy surrounding the use of the name “Geronimo” as code for the U.S. military raid that killed Osama bin Laden last weekend in Pakistan.

Native Americans have taken offense to the military’s tying together of the notorious terrorist with the 19th century Apache leader and warrior, to the degree that after bin Laden was killed, the team involved in the raid sent out the transmission “Geronimo EKIA,” for “Geronimo, Enemy Killed in Action.”

Yesterday, Geronimo’s great-grandson Harlyn Geronimo submitted testimony to the Senate Commission on Indian Affairs for a hearing on racist stereotypes of Native Americans. He demanded an apology from the Obama administration and a “full explanation of how this disgraceful use of my great grandfather’s name occurred.” DCentric posted more of his testimony, including this excerpt:

Whether it was intended only to name the military operation to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden or to give Osama Bin Laden himself the code name Geronimo, either was an outrageous insult and mistake. And it is clear from the military records released that the name Geronimo was used at times by military personnel involved for both the military operation and for Osama Bin Laden himself.

Obviously to equate Geronimo with Osama Bin Laden is an unpardonable slander of Native America and its most famous leader in history.

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FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice, 9/11 attacks, Geronimo, Osama bin Laden
May 4, 2011 | 11:27 AM | By

Immigration and the bin Laden effect: More on the changes since 9/11

A new stretch of border fence, February 2009. Photo by The Pope/Flickr (Creative Commons)

A post on Monday outlined a few of the direct and indirect ways in which the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks orchestrated by Osama bin Laden changed the nation’s immigration landscape. Legislative reaction to the attacks propelled legal and policy changes that led to tightened borders and beefed up immigration enforcement as national security took center stage. Among these changes was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in early 2003.

In the days since, there have been other takes on immigration and the bin Laden effect. Today in a post in ColorLines, Seth Freed Wessler wrote about DHS’s National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, or NSEERS, a program whose recent end has been applauded by Muslim groups:

Muslims in the U.S. became the most ominous threat, by policy. The Department of Homeland Security created the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), commonly called “Special Registration,” which functioned as a deportation net specifically for Muslims. As Colorlines’ Channing Kennedy wrote in April:

Initiated in September 2002, NSEERS functioned like Arizona’s SB 1070, with working-class Muslims as the target. Its first phase required all non-citizen male residents, ages 16 to 65, from a list of “suspect” nations, to register at INS offices. Thousands of families went out of their way to comply with the law, thinking it would be part of the government-sponsored pathways to citizenship that they were already participating in. Instead, in July 2003, the Washington Post reported it as the deportation of “the largest number of visitors from Middle Eastern and other Muslim countries in U.S. history—more than 13,000 of the nearly 83,000 men older than 16 who complied with the registration program by various deadlines between last September and April.”

Last week, the federal government officially ended the NSEERS program.

Bill Ong Hing, a law professor at the University of San Francisco and one of the editors of the ImmigrationProf Blog, wrote in an opinion piece yesterday in the Huffington Post:

The events of 9/11 and the ensuing call to action from the anti-immigrant lobby resulted in far-reaching legislative and enforcement actions. These enforcement actions had implications not only for suspected terrorists but also for immigrants already in the United States and noncitizens trying to enter as immigrants or with nonimmigrant visas. The Patriot Act passed Congress with near unanimous support, and the president signed it into law a mere six weeks after 9/11. The vast powers embodied in the law provide expanded authority to search, monitor, and detain citizens and noncitizens alike, but its implementation preyed most heavily on noncitizen Arabs, Muslims, and Sikhs.

Post-9/11 immigration and national security policy changes have been written about extensively since not long after the attacks, including in this 2003 report from the Migration Policy Institute that examined the challenge of preserving civil liberties alongside new security measures.

FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, 9/11 attacks, Department of Homeland Security, NSEERS, Osama bin Laden, Patriot Act
May 3, 2011 | 5:39 PM | By

A view from Little Arabia (Video)

KPCC staff videographer Grant Slater caught up with blogger Rashad Al-Dabbagh of the Happy Arab News Service yesterday in Anaheim’s Little Arabia, where Al-Dabbagh was at a restaurant when he first heard news of Osama bin Laden’s death in Pakistan. Now, he said, “with the death of Osama bin Laden, the person who symbolized terror, we should move forward.”

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Politics/Justice, 9/11 attacks, Little Arabia, Osama bin Laden