9/11

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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
September 9, 2011 | 12:11 PM | By

A half-dozen ways in which 9/11 changed the immigration landscape

Photo by Romel Jacinto/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Post-9/11 security legislation known as the REAL ID Act allowed the government to waive environmental laws and litigation blocking border fence construction near San Diego, which called for filling in a canyon with 1.5 million cubic yards of dirt. Photo by Romel Jacinto/Flickr (Creative COmmons)

Last May, after the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, I published a short list of some of the most important ways in which the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that he masterminded radically altered the immigration landscape.

The legislative, policy and other changes that have occurred since are almost too numerous to list. Last month, the Migration Policy Institute released a report detailing some of the policy highlights, more than a dozen changes ranging from skyrocketing border and interior immigration enforcement costs to changes in the way we travel (for example, U.S. citizens must now present passports when returning by land, even if it’s from a quick day trip to Tijuana).

Beyond immigration policy, there have been legislative changes such as the still-active Patriot Act, along with less direct but powerful shifts in the nation’s immigration climate that have had led to enforcement-friendly policies and increasingly strict immigration measures at the state level. Less quantifiable, but important still, have been attitudinal changes, particularly toward Muslims, which continue to affect immigrants today.

I’ve updated this list detailing some of the key changes, taking in major post-9/11 shifts in immigration policy, legislation and beyond:

1) The end of INS, the beginning of DHS: The discovery that some of the 9/11 hijackers were in the country on visas that shouldn’t have been granted led to the end of the decades-old Immigration and Naturalization Service in early 2003. Until then, the agency had overseen all immigration functions from visas to border security. It was replaced by the much broader Department of Homeland Security.

Three sub-agencies within DHS were given authority over immigration matters: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (overseeing customs and border security, including the U.S. Border Patrol); U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, overseeing functions such as naturalization and the granting of legal residency; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, which is responsible for immigration enforcement in the United States, oversees immigrant detention and deportation, and is responsible for enforcement policies such as Secure Communities and 287(g).

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FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, 2001, 9/11, September 11
August 23, 2011 | 2:21 PM | By

Report: Why immigration reform has gone nowhere since 9/11

Photo by jeromebot/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Marchers in downtown Los Angeles rallying for immigration reforms on May 1, 2006

Why is it that in spite of public opinion poll support for broad immigration reforms and two presidents who have pushed for it recently, such initiatives have fallen short in the last decade?

The Migration Policy Institute examines the fate of immigration reform attempts in the post-9/11 era in a new report authored by Marc Rosenblum, an immigration policy specialist with the Congressional Research Service. From the executive summary:

The election of George W. Bush in 2000 seemed to mark a turning point in US immigration policy. Thirty- five years after the last major changes to the US immigration system, and two decades into an increasingly assertive, but mostly ineffective, immigration enforcement policy, the Republican president seemed to see immigration as offering important benefits to the US economy.

He called for a new and large-scale temporary worker program, saw the growing Hispanic population as important swing voters, and met five times in nine months with Mexico’s newly elected president, Vicente Fox.

But migration negotiations with Mexico collapsed following the terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001. In the post-9/11 period, Congress passed a series of tough measures to tighten border security and facilitate data collection and information sharing on suspected terrorists, and broadened the government’s power to detain and deport immigrants.

Both Presidents Bush and Barack Obama have supported broader immigration reforms. Yet, while Congress took up “comprehensive immigration reform” (CIR) bills (i.e., legislation combining enforcement, legalization, and changes to the visa system) in 2006 and 2007, it did not deliver a bill for the president’s signature. Legislative action in 2009-10 was limited to debate on a legalization proposal focusing on unauthorized youth (the DREAM Act) — a proposal that was defeated on a procedural vote in the Senate.

Why the stalemate? Rosenblum examines the organizational changes that took place in the aftermath of 9/11 leading to a greater focus on enforcement, and what has happened since, with enforcement as “the default immigration policy.” Complicated immigration politics and “short-term political considerations” have also impeded long-term reform plans, he writes.

It’s a good read for anyone trying to understand what has happened to immigration reform efforts in the years since 2001 and even since 2006, when a comprehensive overhaul of the immigration system seemed fairly imminent as immigrants and their supporters rallied around the country.

The entire report can be downloaded here.

FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, 9/11, Immigration reform, Migration Policy Institute