|
American Muslims seven years after 9/11
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
ccun.org, September 22, 2008
Seven years after 9/11, Muslims in America remained at the receiving
end with assault on their civil rights and their faith in the name
of war on terror. Muslims are the prime targets of the post 9/11
reconfiguration of American laws, policies, and priorities.
Defending civil rights remains the single most important challenge
before the seven million-strong American Muslim community as the
consequences of the 9/11 tragic terrorist attacks continue to unfold
seven years after the ghastly tragedy. The government initiatives
have reshaped public attitudes about racial profiling and created a
harsh backlash against the Muslim community. At the same time
Muslims and Islam remain a popular past time for the US media and
some prominent religious and political leaders who never miss any
opportunity to attack Muslims and their faith in the name of
extremism. Unfortunately, in the post-9/11 America, Islamophobia is
not only more widespread but more mainstream and respectable.
Boston Globe columnist Derrick Z. Jacksons article titled Holding
Muslims at Arms Length best reflect how fear mongering and
Islamophobia is being used in the 2008 presidential election. He
points out that in his year-and-a-half-long run for president, Obama
has visited churches and synagogues, but no mosque. Jackson answers
to Obamas meaningful reluctance to visit a mosque when he quotes a
Newsweek poll of May which concludes that only 58 percent of
Americans think Obama is a Christian.
Tellingly, in July, The New Yorker magazine publishes a cover
cartoon depicting Barak Obama, wearing traditional Muslim dress,
while his wife, Michelle, is dressed in combat trousers and carrying
a machine-gun. This cover legitimizes the rumors regarding Obama. It
is not a satire but promotes fear, stereotypes and racism.
American Muslim community was dismayed at the Islamophobic rhetoric
at the Republican Party Convention that ended in St. Paul, Minnesota
on September 4, 2008. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and
former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in their speeches made
bigoted remarks that equated Islam with terrorism.
"For four days in Denver, the Democrats were afraid to use the words
'Islamic terrorism,'" Guiliani said. "I imagine they believe it is
politically incorrect to say it. I think they believe it will insult
someone. Please, tell me, who are they insulting, if they say
'Islamic terrorism?' They are insulting terrorists."
"Is a Supreme Court liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo
terrorists with constitution rights?" Romney said. "John McCain hit
the nail on the head: radical violent Islam is evil, and he will
defeat it!"
The Republican Party leaders Islamophobic remarks are not surprising
since Sen. McCain and his supporters have in the past used rhetoric
that only serves to marginalize Muslims. In his speeches, McCain
often refers to radical Islam, Islamic terrorism" or Islamic
extremism," rhetoric that has been questioned by the National
Counterterrorism Center and the Department of Homeland Security.
Islamophobic comments in the election campaign are damaging to the
Muslim American community. They are symptomatic of a culture that
continues to treat Muslims as suspects and not as equal citizens in
this country.
Thanks to rising Islamophobia, a Pew poll finds forty-five percent
of those polled saying Islam was more likely than other religions to
encourage violence among its believers. The survey also found that
public attitudes toward Muslims have grown more negative in recent
years, with 35% of respondents expressing an unfavorable view.
It will not be too much to say that anti-Islam and anti-Muslim
feelings were fueled by such government programs as a mock attack on
a fake mosque in Illinois. In May last, over 120 officials from
almost 30 government agencies participated in the drill in Irving,
Illinois, targeting a community facility that had been re-named the
"Irving Mosque" for the purposes of the exercise. In the exercise,
officers from the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System (ILEAS)
stormed the "mosque" using an armored car. One "hostage" was hooked
up to an explosive device and the "suspects" in the "mosque"
released nerve gas.
What message that exercise conveys to the American masses who are
already conditioned by the anti-Islam and anti-Muslim rhetoric by
some radio hosts, electronic and print media as well as some
political and Christian Right leaders in the post-9/11 America?
Surely, it reinforces the anti-Islam and anti-Muslim image among the
masses. Tellingly, a March 2008 Gallup survey, finds that a
substantial number of Americans have a negative perception of
Muslims. The poll shows that only 17 percent have positive
perception while 23 have negative. 48 percents were found neutral
which are surely not positive.
Racial profiling
Profiling has been institutionalized in the post-9/11 America. State
and federal agencies, under the guise of fighting terrorism, have
expanded the use of this degrading, discriminatory and dangerous
practice.
American Muslim community was alarmed by the proposed Justice
Department policy change that would allow the FBI to investigate
Americans without evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a
terrorist profile that could single out Muslims and Arabs. Under the
new guidelines, which are expected to be implemented later this
year, the FBI would be permitted to consider race and ethnicity when
opening an investigation, according to an Associated Press report.
Agents would also be allowed to ask open-ended questions about the
activities of American Muslims and Arab-Americans, and could
initiate an investigation if a person's employment or background is
labeled as "suspect" by government analysts looking at public
records and other information.
The Justice Department profiling proposals followed a November 2007
Los Angeles Police Department program to Map (read profile) Muslim
communities in southern California. There are estimated 500,000
Muslims living in the greater Los Angeles area, including Orange and
Riverside Counties, which make its concentration of Muslims the
second largest in the United States, after New York City. The
profiling plan was abandoned after an uproar by Muslim and civil
rights groups.
Not surprisingly, in March, a United Nations report said that the US
law enforcement is guilty of discrimination in its use of racial
profiling to target Arabs and Muslims since the attacks of Sept 11,
2001. The UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
is deeply concerned about the increase in racial profiling against
Arabs, Muslims and South Asians in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the
report said. The report urged the US administration to review the
definition of racial discrimination used in the federal and state
legislation and in court practice.
A COINTELPRO operation
Muslims are virtually facing a new FBI counter intelligence program
similar to the COINTELPRO operation against the African Americans
during the 1960s. Harassment through the legal system was one of the
methods employed by the FBI at the height of the COINTELPRO
operation and the same method is being employed now with high
profile trials of Muslim leaders.
Dr. Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian political activist and former
professor of the University of South Florida, released on bail in
Virginia on September 2 after more than five years in federal
custody, faces criminal contempt charges despite a plea agreement
that he would not have to testify in any other case. In 2005, a
Florida jury rejected federal charges that Al-Arian operated a cell
for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian later pleaded guilty to
a lesser charge and was scheduled for release and deportation in
April this year. However, he was subpoenaed and jailed for refusing
to testify against others. To borrow Dr. Al-Arians lead Counsel,
Professor Jonathen Turley, Having lost the case in Florida, the
Justice Department has openly sought to extend his confinement by
daisy-chaining grand juries. His trial to criminal contempt begins
in December.
In a similar high profile trial, in November 2007, Dr. Abdelhaleem
Ashqar, a Palestinian-American former professor at Washington's
Howard University, was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for
refusing to testify in 2003 before a grand jury investigating the
Palestinian militant movement Hamas. Dr. Ashqar was convicted of
criminal contempt and obstruction of justice. Tellingly, in February
2007 a jury had acquitted Dr. Ashqar of all terror-related charges.
In another high profile case, the trial against the Holy Land
Foundation for Relief and Development what - once the nation's
largest Islamic charity - ended in a mistrial on October 22, 2007 as
federal prosecutors in Dallas, Texas, were unable to gain a
conviction on charges that the group's leaders had funneled 12
million dollars to the Hamas militants. After two months testimony
and 19 days of deliberations jurors returned no convictions against
any of the five former leaders of the Holy Land. Mohammad El-Mezain,
the Holy Land's original chairman and endowments director was
acquitted on most of the counts by a unanimous jury. HLF retrial
will begin later this month.
Such high profile trials were draining the resources of the Muslim
community while giving bad publicity. In short, seven years after
9/11 Muslims in America remain under siege. Profiled, harassed,
reviled, attacked, peeped at by the CIA and the FBI, interrogated
and permanently controlled at airports, the whole community is
virtually excluded of American society. Muslim have experienced a
large volume of negative reprisals from sectors of the American
public in the form of violent hate crimes, defamatory speech,
attacks on hijab-wearing Muslim women and discrimination and
harassment at work place.
In the post-9/11 America they find themselves on the defensive and
struggling to convince at times skeptical fellow citizens that they
can be both Muslims and loyal U.S. citizens.
Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine
American Muslim Perspective:
www.amperspective.com email:
asghazali@gmail.com
|
