I walked away thinking, “Is this the kind of woman I want to entrust my children’s religious education to?” I felt uneasy. I didn’t want my children to undergo any of the radicalism and intolerance that I grew up with. I noticed that most of the men in the mosque had beards, and the women were covered from head to toe.
I then entered the women’s room, a small room near the men’s large hall. All the women were sitting on the floor. (Muslims must show humility before God, and sitting on a chair is considered a sign of disrespect to God.) Many of them were Pakistani, Afghani, and other Arabs who spoke little English. The room was noisy because there were toddlers running around. We could hardly hear the sermon, but I was able to grasp a few words—mostly about Islam in America and how it should grow; how Muslim women in America should be proud to cover up and retain their Islamic identity. Even those women who never covered up in their country of origin, such as Egypt, were encouraged to cover up and proudly show a new Islamic identity here in America. Retaining our identity meant rejecting assimilation into America’s permissive society. Even Muslim college girls were encouraged to cover up on U.S. college campuses. We should be proud of who we are and where we came from, we were told. The sermon carried an undertone of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. There was no message of tolerance, friendship, and assimilation in the country we had chosen as our new home. The message was that of “us against them.” As I continued to listen to the sermon, I wondered, why would anyone move to another country for the purpose of rejecting its culture? I felt very uneasy. The message brought back memories of the intolerance I left behind. It sounded all too familiar.
Ironically, I had left Egypt where no one in my family, not even my deeply religious grandmother, wore a head covering, only to be exhorted to cover up in America! I looked at the women around me and felt very alien. Had I come to America to be segregated, not only in another room but also to separate myself from the rest of America by covering up? Some women around me even covered their faces. This is not why I moved to America.
While these thoughts were churning inside me, I suddenly saw my Egyptian guest with my husband behind him, standing outside the women’s door motioning me to come. I got up and went to see what he wanted. My Egyptian friend sternly said, “Let’s go.”
I went to pick up my children and to my surprise they too were unhappy. My daughter and son pleaded, “We don’t want to come here again.”
In the car, my moderate Muslim friend complained that the message in the mosque was radical and that the preacher was very uneducated.
When I discussed this later with several of my moderate, non-practicing Muslim friends, they advised me to follow their example, worship at home and not go to mosques, because many mosques in America were likely to be as radical as the ones in the remote parts of the most extreme Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. The more I learned, the more I understood that the agenda of these radical American mosques, many of them here thanks to the “generosity” of the Saudi Government, was to keep American Muslims in line, Islamize America, and spread a radical Wahabi sect of Islam that even Egyptians find too extreme.
I then began hearing the “good news” from some Arab American Muslims: that more and more mosques would be built by Saudi Arabia, which was also sending its own preachers, and imams from countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan. These imported radical clerics consider America the Great Satan and believe their mission is to promote jihad and violence against non-Muslims, especially Jews. I asked, “Why don’t Muslims in the United States appoint leaders from within our own community rather than bring in the same intolerant, jihadist preachers we left behind?”
The answer from my Muslim friends was that we do not need some Americanized Muslim religion; we need to bring true Islam to this nation that needs it.
I soon discovered that rabid anti-American feeling is rampant in the majority of U.S. mosques, where Muslims are encouraged to stand out as mujahadeen in America. In these mosques, America’s generosity was met with demands for more generosity and concessions from people who never lived a day under democracy in their countries of origin. The messages of most mosques in America can be summed up by the words of Omar Ahmad, cofounder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who said, as reported by the San Ramon Valley Herald, in 1998: “Those who stay in America should be open to society without melting, keeping Mosques open so anyone can come and learn about Islam. If you choose to live here, you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam…. Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”
Not all Arab Americans would agree with that. In fact, most Arab American Muslims choose to blend with American society, are happy and proud to be Americans, and do not want to be associated with radical clerics. Many regarded radical clerics imported from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as a sadistic joke imposed on American mosques by a wealthy Saudi government. In fact, these angry, close-minded, and uneducated preachers, who in our countries of origin would be a laughingstock among the educated Arab classes, have discovered a new status of respectability in America where their freedom of hate speech is protected. Unfortunately, such preachers in the American Muslim community have a silencing effect on moderate Arab Americans, who find themselves unable to escape hate speech even in a democracy. We American Arabs have tended to remain silent around them, afraid to confront them as we are reminded all over again of the power of hate speech and intimidation. We realize that the same preachers who brainwash our children in the Arab world are attempting to do the same to our American children.
My attempt to have a religious life ended. Again I joined the ranks of the nonpracticing Muslims of the Middle East. I never stepped in a mosque in America again. My spiritual life went back to zero. Two prominent, well-respected Muslim American professors advised me that they do not go to mosques in the United States because “they are breeding grounds for hate and intolerance.” They told me they prayed at home and advised me to do the same. But to me a religion should be more than just praying by myself at home. I needed the fellowship, the community, and the traditions. I needed to be inspired by a religious experience that elevated my soul and made me a better person, a more tolerant and loving person. I wanted to reach out with understanding and respect to other faiths. Unfortunately I could not find what I needed in American mosques because they had been infiltrated by some of the most radical groups in the Middle East.
A few months passed. One day I was walking in a Southern California mall and saw two Muslim women who were totally covered up. One of them called my name. She was an old friend who moved to the United States almost at the same time I did. We were overjoyed to see one another again, and we reconnected and exchanged phone numbers. But I was surprised to see my old acquaintance covered up from head to toe except for her face. She had always worn Western clothes when she was growing up in Egypt. But I did not question or criticize her. I thought to myself, this is a free country and that it is her choice. I will respect it. She had a nice family and I did not mind befriending her again.
I then began seeing a trend of “looking like a Muslim” among many other Muslim Americans. I was surprised to see many young women at UCLA and other universities cover up too. Muslim men started growing beards. That seemed radical even to Americans of Muslim origin from the Middle East, like myself. I realized that the radical mosques, such as the one I attempted to visit, were having an effect on other Muslim immigrants. Even though they were not particularly religious when they left their home countries in the Middle East, paradoxically, they had discovered radical Islam in American mosques.
The friend I had met at the mall invited me to visit her home. My husband and I went, and to our surprise found it very different from the atmosphere of their previous home in Egypt. Her husband had grown a beard. My friend immediately invited
us and the other guests for prayers right there in their home, then she invited me to go with them sometimes to the mosque, and told me I should cover my head like all of her friends did. In the conversations around me that evening, I heard such things as: “Louis Farrakhan is good for the Arab cause.” “Israel is gasping in its last breath.” “Even if it takes us a hundred years we will destroy Israel.” “America needs Islam.” “America should teach Arabic in American schools and Muslim holidays should be national holidays.”
The hostess was proud that her daughters attended an Islamic school and complained that her older daughter was revolting against Islamic attire. At some point, this daughter came in to say hello and was dressed in what might be considered to be revealing clothes. I heard the mother follow after her daughter, asking her to change. I began feeling very uncomfortable, and my husband and I left early.
It had become clear to me that evening that my old acquaintance did not really want my friendship, but wanted to bring more Muslims to the mosque. Even though I accepted her way of life, she did not accept mine. Needless to say, that was the end of the relationship.
I started wondering why a Muslim family who wants to follow Islamic law to the letter and truly despises Western culture would choose to live in the Judeo-Christian culture of the infidels? Obviously they could better guarantee the upbringing of their children as good Muslims in the Middle East than in the West. If Islam were truly the center of their existence, wouldn’t it make sense to live in a Muslim country? Think about it. Why would they risk bringing up their children in a place where after age eighteen they could legally leave home, reject their religion, and even marry an infidel? Why would they subject their children to temptations that could theoretically lead to daughters being beaten—or even killed—for having boyfriends? We have all heard of honor killing of Muslim girls in Europe and America. Given all these temptations and dangers to their families, why would radical Muslims want to live in the land of the infidels?
It did not add up.
The paradox is that many radical Muslims have a condescending view of the West but still love to live under Western freedoms. Why? For one thing, it provides them with freedom of speech. There is no control by anyone, not even the government, over their hate speech and the spreading of their radical agenda—something that even Muslim societies impose restrictions on. (Preachers and religious leaders in the Middle East are employees of the state and often have to adhere to their government’s daily agenda. Those who don’t are put in jail. Yes, even radical Muslims in the Middle East are tortured and abused if they do not do what they are told by the political leadership.) But in the United States and the West they suddenly enjoy new rights and very quickly begin demanding them from the U.S. government. They consider hate speech and even incitement to violence against America as “freedom of speech.” That leaves many Americans bewildered as to how to handle this use of our open society. Muslim radicals are using American democracy to their own advantage and for their own agenda—freedoms they do not have even in the Muslim world to spread their agenda. Remember, many Arab leaders have put the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical organizations in jail when they were out of control. But under the American justice system, if radicals are careful, they can do practically anything—even support terrorism—and be found innocent of any wrongdoing in a court of law. This paradox—Muslims on one hand using our freedoms and on the other hand working to abolish them—seems contradictory. Many Americans cannot understand it.
The Archbishop of Izmir, Giuseppe Germano Bernandini, writing to the Synod of European Bishops, summed up the West’s dilemma with Islam by quoting an authoritative Muslim leader he met in a dialogue meeting between Christians and Muslims: “Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you; thanks to our religious laws we will dominate you.”
Westerners in Muslim society are called invaders, but Muslims in Western society have learned to assert their equal rights in the West’s open systems and use it to their maximum advantage to promote their ideology and agenda. Standing up to this “legal” invasion to change Western culture is still considered wrong by many Westerners who are not yet prepared to address abuses to their system. The Western concept of “when you’re in Rome do as the Romans do” is not a Muslim value. In Muslim culture, if Rome has its door open, that is an invitation to invade and claim it as your own.
The current onslaught against our society is nothing new. Conquering the world for Islam has been going on since the seventh century using pretty much the same tactics. The West, currently struggling with how to preserve its own value system and maintain “political correctness,” has been caught unprepared for such an insidious legal invasion and assault on its culture. This is not new either. In the old world there were two superpowers, namely Egypt and Mesopotamia (which today is Iraq). Before the seventh century, Egypt was Christian and did not speak Arabic. The same for Mesopotamia, which had substantial Christian and Jewish populations as well as various other tribal groups and religions. During an era of political confusion and military weakness, the two regional powers were overwhelmed by Arab tribes who swept in from the desert and by force changed their religion to Islam and their language to Arabic. The Egyptian Christian Copts were those who resisted and those who were rich enough to pay the higher taxes imposed on dhimmis (an underclass) and remain Christian. In a bold revision of history, which is accepted to this day, the cultural and military superiority of these two great centers of civilization—Egypt and Mesopotamia—were later claimed to be “Arab and Muslim.” The people who today live in Egypt and Iraq, because they have never been taught their own history, are totally unaware that their original heritage is neither Muslim nor Arab.
The raiding Arab armies continued their conquest, claiming all of the Middle East for Islam (including parts of Europe, such as Turkey and Spain) and wiping out advanced civilizations who would never see their glory days again, and whose collective populations would eventually not even remember their original religious or cultural roots.
There is a second reason that many radical Muslims prefer Western freedoms to Islamic tyranny, though they would never admit it: Besides using freedom of speech to spread Islam as they please, they also enjoy the West’s economic opportunity. But more than just enjoying it, they covet it and feel it legitimately “belongs” to the Islamic world. To understand this, you will have to follow some twists of logic that may be difficult for Westerners to grasp: Many Muslims think that if Islam conquers the West, they can claim the material wealth of the West for Islam without having to work hard for it, produce it, or invent it. As a matter of fact, a booklet produced by a Muslim organization in California claims that America was actually discovered by Arabs before Christopher Columbus, and that Arabs mixed with the Indians, which gives them claims to America! Some even go as far as to say that the word “California” means the land of “Califa,” which in Arabic means “Caliphate” (Islamic state). The old tactics from the seventh century are being used all over again by claiming any superpower is somehow the property of Islam and Muslim culture.
Many Muslims and Arabs are eager to say that the Muslim world is collectively a superpower and can beat America. They are quick to put America and the Judeo-Christian cultural achievements down and claim most of the world’s achievements as originally Arab. When they see the high number of Jewish and Christian recipients of Nobel Prizes and the minuscule numbers of Muslim recipients, they feel extremely jealous and often say Arabs invented this or that first. I even heard a Muslim leader once proudly claim in front of Muslim youth that America was not the true power behind the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it was the Muslim mujahadeen in Afghanistan. America according to them did not win the Cold War but the Muslim fighters in the caves of Afghanistan did. Westerners hear these foolish claims and dismiss them as laughable, but to me it is not funny, because the Muslims who believe these claims feel that the West is taking away their glory. Glory attributed to Islam is very important to Muslims
and Arabs.
Furthermore, around many Muslims I have heard the absurd argument, “Europeans and Americans are the real Muslims because they live as Muslims but don’t know it.” I was told by a devout Muslim when he met an American Christian neighbor of mine, “Your neighbor has a great character; he is a true Muslim.” My first cousin, who lives in Egypt and visits Europe regularly, always returns home with great admiration for the European culture and anger toward Egyptian society. She admires the Europeans for their honesty, decency, and reliability. She is amazed at their acceptance and welcoming of immigrants. Because of what she sees as their high moral code, she has told me several times that the Europeans are the “true Muslims” and that we Egyptians are not. I wanted to yell, “No, they are Christians, let us not claim their culture to ourselves.” This is a form of piracy and falsifying reality. My cousin, who is observant and wears a head cover, is disappointed with Egyptian society because she feels Egyptians are not behaving as good Muslims should.
How could Muslims, with a straight face, claim American or European success for themselves? That kind of thinking sources from being taught that all good around the world is Muslim and evil is non-Muslim. By this thinking, how can good exist without being Muslim? So they truly believe that the “good” Westerners are actually Muslim, but they just “don’t know it.” Muslims, therefore, have an obligation to come to America (and the West) and tell them the “good news” that they are true Muslims. As convoluted as this thinking may seem, it is the mind-set of Islamic fundamentalists who wish to convert the West to their “true religion,” rule them, and change their constitutions to Koranic law and their language to Arabic.
Now They Call Me Infidel Page 16