The Face Behind the Veil

by Donna Gehrke-White

  39

  SARWAT: SPREADING THE WORD

  SARWAT HUSAIN thought they were teenagers. She ignored their catcalls as she proceeded to drive home from a conference wearing her newly acquired hijab. “Each time I stopped at a light, they would pull up next to me and call me all sorts of names,” says Sarwat, a businesswoman and community activist.

  She ignored them, but they continued to follow her home, coming into her driveway, screaming names at her. At this point, Sarwat had had enough. She was going to give them a stern motherly lecture about how they had taken their prank too far. She marched over to their car, but then abruptly stopped.

  “They were very scary-looking big men, about three of them in the car. I turned around very fast to get in the house. They started shooting at me. I thought it was a real gun. I managed to get in the house and I turned all the lights off. My husband was in his office doing some work. I did not tell him anything, thinking he might go out and they would take a shot at him, too. I waited for about half an hour and it was all quiet. I looked to make sure it was safe before I went outside to get my stuff from the car. But as soon as I opened the door of the car, they appeared again. And again they started shooting. I barely missed one shot. I ran back in the house, called nine-one-one, told my husband what was happening.”

  Police came and discovered the men had been shooting a gun, albeit one that shot paint balls.

  “They shot at my car and it was covered with paint,” Sarwat says. “Our lawn was full of paint. Police made the report and said it was hate related.”

  The officers never found the perpetrators but that hasn’t stopped Sarwat from wearing a scarf. Before 9/11, she had never worn the hijab in public. But after the terrorist attacks, in an atmosphere of rising anti-Muslim sentiment, many of her veiled friends were harassed. Sarwat says she decided to wear one in solidarity. She thought it would help educate Americans to see a career woman wearing a hijab, that it might help change the stereotype of Muslim women being, as she put it, “backward, dominated, and uneducated.”

  What she wasn’t prepared for was how she would be educated. She learned what it is like to be stared at and to be sneered at in malls and other public places. And that, one night in her car, she would get the scare of her life. Today, though, Sarwat keeps it all in perspective.

  “That incident made me even stronger, Alhumdolillah [by the Grace of God],” she says. “Now I am used to covering my hair and I feel most comfortable. It makes me feel very secure.” In addition, she doesn’t have to spend time explaining who she is: The scarf identifies her as a Muslimah.

  But she is not from where most people think: the Middle East. Nor is she an Arab. She grew up in Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, an urban center Sarwat describes as “very cosmopolitan.”

  Her family was close but her father traveled a lot and was not home very much. Sarwat’s mother was left in charge.

  “My mother and my older sisters kept a very close eye on me, as well as my brother who is eleven months younger than me,” Sarwat remembers. “We were brought up strictly in the Muslim way. As a child I was very inquisitive by nature, so when it came to practicing religion I was always asking questions with lots of whys, whats and why nots. For example, I asked why we have to pray five times daily in a certain way? Why can’t we pray in our own space at our own times? To tell you the truth, many times I felt I was forced into following a religion, that I did things because everybody else was doing it. Only after coming to the States, when I was left alone to choose, without being forced to even by my husband, I began studying Islam in depth, as well as Christianity and Judaism.”

  Today she is proud to say she is not only a born Muslim but a Muslim by choice.

  She had wanted to study in the United States but her parents didn’t want her to go to a strange country by herself. Sarwat kept insisting. They kept refusing. Finally, they gave her an ultimatum: She could go—but only if she had a husband to protect her.

  “Without thinking twice,” she says, “I agreed to get married.”

  In Pakistan, arranged marriages are a purely cultural tradition and have been part of the country’s heritage for hundreds of years. Sarwat’s future husband had come back to Pakistan on vacation to get married. He had been working and studying for a doctorate in the United States.

  “Our parents were introduced by a mutual friend,” Sarwat says. “We had not met each other before we were married.”

  In arranged marriages in Pakistan, she adds, it becomes the parents’ responsibility to find the right mate for their children. So they consider many aspects of the prospective couple, their education, maturity level, and temperament, even their personal likes and dislikes.

  “Since the marriages are not based on infatuation, looks or money, the divorce rate is very low in that part of the world,” Sarwat says. “It turned out that my husband and I were a good match. I call myself a hyperactive person, and my husband is very calm and mature. He has always been there to listen to me and he has encouraged me to do what I wanted to do.”

  After they married in Pakistan, they moved to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where her husband was an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin. He was also finishing his Ph.D. at the University of North Texas in Denton.

  “Eau Claire was, in those days, white middle-class society where you would not even see an African American or Latin American anywhere in the city,” Sarwat remembers. “When we first arrived there were a couple of Muslim students at the university. After a few years some Muslim doctors moved in. We were only about seven or eight families for the next eighteen years. There was no masjid [mosque] but we met regularly, first in our homes and later at one of the technical colleges. The Muslim families started a small Sunday school for our kids.”

  By then, Sarwat and her husband had a son and daughter. She was busy taking care of their children and going to school. Although she missed Pakistan and her family, many at the university were kind and “always tried their best to make me feel at home. Some of them sort of adopted me.”

  Sarwat found raising children in the United States a challenge. She remembers the first day at her daughter’s school in Eau Claire, when she went to pick her up. “The bell rang and all the kids started running out of their classrooms, screaming and yelling, without any respect to their teachers or to their principal, who were standing there in the hallway.” Such behavior shocked Sarwat. She was used to a more structured dismissal. Pakistani school children would quietly line up and say good-bye to all the teachers as they left. It was considered respectful. So she decided her children would be better off not going to American public schools. Instead, she enrolled them in Catholic schools, where, Sarwat says, morals and values were taught similar to those in Islamic-based schools. She and her husband also taught their faith to their children at home. On Sundays, they took them to Muslim school in nearby Minneapolis.

  “The Twin Cities were about a hundred miles from Eau Claire, but no matter what, we were on the road every weekend. We wanted our children to have a chance to meet other Muslim kids and to be able to learn religion in a school environment.”

  During those years, it was “very lonesome” for Sarwat at Christmas time, with so few Muslim families in Eau Claire. All the streets seemed deserted and most of the people stayed home after they had gone to church. Sarwat and her family often used the Christmas break as a time to travel. But before they left, they always gave a Christmas party for the faculty and others.

  Despite a busy schedule, Sarwat saw to it the party was held every year. She wanted to share in the American Christmas tradition, and it wasn’t hard: Sarwat describes herself as a “born activist,” who needed to have a lot of balls to juggle.

  “Probably I am a restless person, who has to have something to do. In addition to working, I’ve always had hobbies—reading, writing, speaking, cooking, sewing, painting, sculpture, decorating, music, and entertaining. Twenty-four hours in the day are never enough. I need more work th
an there is time to do it in!”

  After finishing college in Wisconsin, she juggled work with taking care of her children. She became a nutritional consultant to nine area nursing homes. “This was the first time I was exposed to the institutionalized elderly. In our culture respect for your elders is inherent. In Islam your parents are your responsibility and it is a form of worship to take good care of them. For me to see all these beautiful but helpless elderly being warehoused, either because their children could not or would not keep them, was unimaginable to me. While working for those places I felt the need to create group homes where I could at least give them a more homelike environment. I told my husband about my plan and he backed me up a hundred percent. In those days no such group homes or alternate care facilities existed for the elderly. We opened three, one after another. Although I ran those facilities for many years, I had one question in my mind that always made me feel very uneasy: How could children leave their own parents in institutions?”

  Nevertheless, she found working with American seniors “very rewarding—I felt I was making a difference.”

  In 1989 Sarwat’s in-laws moved from Pakistan to Texas. As their other three children were already in the Lone Star State, they wanted their entire family to be reunited in Texas. It was a hard decision for Sarwat and her husband, as they had been in Wisconsin for years. Her husband was offered a teaching position at Sul Ross State University in Uvalde, Texas. He was to be a professor and chairman of the Business Department.

  Sarwat found Uvalde “nice” but too small. After living there for two years, they moved to San Antonio, where they eventually bought a child development center.

  “I was happy running the center while my husband was doing consulting for small businesses.” Sarwat’s life and career remained stable—until 9/11.

  “That moment just turned me around,” Sarwat remembers. “My first feeling was, How dare anybody do something like this in our country! I felt a very strong sense of responsibility, an urge to do something more than what I was already doing as an American and as a Muslim to build bridges, to show how alike we all are.”

  She also wanted to dispel stereotypes about Muslim women. Even before 9/11, she had written occasional op-ed pieces for the local newspaper and talked about Islam at churches, schools, universities, and other organizations. After 9/11 she decided this was not enough.

  “I wanted to provide an alternative to the day-in, day-out bashing of Islam and Muslims in the U.S. media. It may have boosted ratings, but it also hurt Americans who happen to be Muslims and divided our beautiful country.”

  Meanwhile, she adds, the number of hate crimes against Muslims kept increasing, locally and across the nation, no matter how she stepped up her writing or public appearances. She decided to try something new: She started publishing her own newspaper, Al-Ittihaad Monthly, which means “Unity.” In the beginning it circulated only in San Antonio, but within two months it was distributed throughout Texas.

  “We have a huge non-Muslim readership. I think my newspaper is popular because Muslims need to have their own voice and many non-Muslims are hungry to find out more about Islam and Muslims. The timing for the paper was just right.”

  In Texas, she points out, there are other Muslim newspapers, but they all are rather specialized. “There are Arab newspapers for Arabs, Pakistani newspapers for Pakistani readers, or small newspapers intended for local areas.” Sarwat wanted to publish a newspaper for everyone. It is free. “We try to cover the cost through advertisements as much as possible. First it was tabloid size, but now it is full size.”

  The paper has been in operation more than two years and went nationwide in September 2004, thanks to subscriptions and distribution by mosques and other Islamic organizations.

  “My vision for Al-Ittihaad is to rebuild the broken bridges among American Muslims and non-Muslims. When I started the paper, I mainly dealt with religious topics. But then I felt the need to report the other side of the stories that were being aired from the perspective of American media or the government. We write about Islamic events or issues that you would not see anywhere else, such as Muslims’ involvement in politics, civil rights, and human rights. We cover stories about Muslim children, discrimination, and detentions of innocent Muslims taking place all over the country. We publish anything that needs to be said that isn’t being voiced elsewhere. It has become my life’s mission!”

  Sarwat also has worked with others to start a San Antonio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group in the United States, and she has become its chairwoman. She also works with Hispanics and other groups to make sure immigrants are treated fairly. Of course, she is continuing to help educate non-Muslim Americans about the Islamic faith.

  Sarwat feels deeply that she is now part of both cultures, proud to be a Muslim and an American. Her loyalties and responsibilities are to both, she says. “America is my home and whatever I can do to serve this ‘land of the free and home of the brave,’ I will do.”

  40

  LAILA’S HEAVY CASELOAD: AN M.D. WITH A CAUSE

  RIGHT NOW, DR. LAILA AL-MARAYATI, a board-certified obstetrician/gynecologist, is worried about one of her patients, a young woman in Los Angeles who has developed complications while pregnant. Hers is a high-risk pregnancy, but she has no support system. Her boyfriend is overseas in the U.S. military and he can’t obtain leave to help her because they are not married.

  These are the things that drive Laila crazy—rules that keep people from getting the help they need. But it is not only the American healthcare system that this forty-two-year-old doctor is concerned about. Laila, an international human rights activist and former presidential appointee, worries that the United States is increasingly limiting the rights of Arab Americans and others who have been unfairly tarnished on account of their faith or where they’re from.

  Laila is American-born. Her mother is an American who married a Palestinian doctor who became a naturalized citizen. Even though Laila is not a first-generation Palestinian immigrant, she says she faces obstacles that other Americans do not. When traveling, she is not free to go anywhere she wants. In 2004, Israel refused to allow her to enter at the Jordanian border to visit family members living in the Gaza Strip. She had made the trip with her sister specifically to see a sick uncle, a Palestinian now living in Jordan. For Americans it is normally not a problem to go between Israel and Jordan. Many American tourists want to visit both countries, if only to see the ancient religious and historical sites there.

  But the Israelis at the border crossing wouldn’t let her in. “They would not tell us why. They sent us back to Jordan. It was a big shock—I couldn’t even see my family. The Israeli border patrol officer was yelling at us. He was so angry and mean.”

  She is not sure when she will venture back again. She wants to see her family but on the other hand, doesn’t want to go all that way only to be turned back at the Israeli airport, as have other Palestinian Americans in recent years.

  “My relatives are in the Gaza Strip, rather than in the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip is much harder to go to.”

  Although her father’s family in Gaza goes back generations, they have lost a lot of property over the years. “Since the end of the Six Day War in 1967,” Laila explains, “it’s been increasingly difficult.”

  Most Americans aren’t aware of such complications, she says. Nor are they aware that if she speaks publicly in defense of her ancestry or on behalf of other Palestinians or Muslims, she will likely be branded an “extremist” and “anti-Israel.” She says she is neither. “Some of the things that have been said about me are ugly, really ugly. It is something I don’t understand.”

  When in 1999 President Clinton named Laila to the State Department’s United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, she was immediately attacked. The Zionist Organization of America, for example, issued a press release that called her a “Muslim extremist with ties to
Israel-haters.” The group did not quote Laila as saying anything anti-Semitic or anything anti-Israel. What was used against her were remarks she made in 1997, from a speech delivered as a Muslim member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad. In that address, she wanted to introduce a “sense of balance” so that all religious persecution could be looked at. The Zionist Organization also took her to task for claiming that Israelis had denied Palestinian Muslims and Christians access to their places of worship, which the Zionist Organization denounced as “lies.” Nevertheless, despite the outcry, President Clinton did not back down and Laila went on to serve two years on the Commission. (The Zionist Organization cooled its rhetoric against Laila but in 2001 urged the Bush administration to replace her with someone “who is not filled with wild hatred of America’s ally, Israel.”)

  Laila’s Iraqi-born husband, Salam Al-Marayati, has not been as lucky. A former engineer, he is now executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles. When in 1999 then U.S. Congressman Dick Gephardt appointed Salam—who at that time was serving on the Los Angeles’ human relations commission and who played a role in national interfaith efforts—as a member of the National Commission on Terrorism, an outcry arose from certain Jewish American groups, including the Zionist Organization. Gephardt quickly dropped Salam, citing as his excuse the long time it would take him to obtain security clearance as an Iraqi national. (Salam left Baghdad as a preschooler.) Gephardt’s back-sliding outraged even some Jewish leaders, one of whom, a Los Angeles rabbi, calling it an act of “appalling ignorance.”