When I visited Uncle Abbas and his family, I heard things like: “Islam is conquering Europe, and in Shaallah the rest of the world soon.” I was fed up with that rhetoric and finally voiced my opinion. “Why don’t you first fix Muslim countries before conquering other countries that don’t need fixing?”
I had certainly changed over the last twenty years. I was no longer afraid to speak my mind.
My two daughters and I finally were fed up and wanted to be home in the United States as soon as possible, and we started counting the days. The last three days we spent at Mena House Oberoi, near the pyramids, one of the oldest hotels in Egypt. It had been built to receive European royalty on the occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal. In the hotel we met a lot of American military personnel. We were relieved and happy to see them. They symbolized all that is good in America. I was struck with how many different races were represented among the American military, and yet I saw them all the same, as Americans. I felt instantly that I had more in common with them than with the rest of Egypt, where I was born, raised, and lived until the age of thirty. I prayed for their safety and protection as they served in the Middle East.
I discovered that, contrary to what I learned in college, all cultures are not equal. America’s Islamic enemies and critics—even those who love living in the United States—are nothing more than pirates. That’s what Islamic terrorists are—pirates. Instead of building their own society as a model of what Islam should be, they leave it in ruins and look to conquer hard-working successful lands. To do to Europe and America what they did to Muslim countries? To ruin them the same way they ruined our own culture? They cannot stand to live in a Muslim culture, and they have their eyes set on beautiful and welcoming democracies, not to blend in, but to rob those democracies of their soul and ruin the value system and culture that made them great. Like thieves and pirates, they have their eyes on the greatest prizes: America and Europe. It is up to the West, if they believe in themselves and their culture, to protect it from the barbaric invasion of radical Islam. The jihadists are waiting to sacrifice their lives to win the West. They call America “the Great Satan,” but in their heart of hearts they want to acquire it and claim it for Islam. A bit of Arab marketplace “logic” is at work here: one puts down something as fake, cheap, or of little value in order to bring down the price. In the world of Arab markets where cheating, bargaining, and exaggerating are commonplace, you must play this game in order to buy something. If you take the first price you are a fool. The way Arab wealth is used to conquer the West is very similar. The complicated psychological games are not unlike the group of young men I met who claimed America was a terrible place, and then turned around and asked, “How do we get a visa to the United States?”
We left Egypt on September 10, 2001. In the airport, as my daughters and I handed our passports to the government military official, he gave us the same dirty look we’d been given on the way in, a look of contempt for Egyptian women without head covers leaving to return to the land of the free. I handed him my U.S. passport, which had my American married surname. He very rudely asked, “What is your Egyptian name?” and I gave it to him and happily left to board the airplane.
This time my parting from Egypt was neither difficult nor emotional. I just felt very sorry for the people. Egypt was mired in deep feelings of self-pity combined with anger and radicalism. In the minds of many Egyptians, the outside world is conspiring against them and that is why they are suffering. I could no longer relate to these pathetic excuses. I was happy to go and I didn’t ever want to come back. As I boarded my plane, I said to myself: “Like the Israelites, I have made my exodus out of Egypt for good.” And like the Israelites I did not want to look back.
My daughters and I spent the long hours of the flight talking. We felt there was something very special about individual Egyptians, their kindness and self-deprecating humor. But there was another side of their character that was difficult to deal with whether at the individual, social, or political level. My older daughter and I were eager to be home. While at very different ages, both my seven-year-old daughter and my eighteen-year-old expressed similar feeling of pessimism about Egypt. My pessimism was even deeper and more alarming. I was pessimistic over the prospects of peace in the region, in an area of the world consumed with defying the West and risking a lot to hurt Western and Israeli interests. We talked a great deal about where the Middle East was heading and wondered where is all this anger going? The trip was an eye-opener to the rapidly accelerating anti-America and anti-Israel propaganda and lies in the Middle East media. Perhaps more than anything, CNN had been the last straw for me to tolerate.
I also had other unanswered questions about Western media who rarely reported on Arab anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, and Muslim-against-Muslim atrocities. They had offices all around Middle Eastern capitals and should have been seeing the same things I saw. Wasn’t it their duty to inform and alert the American public? But reports in Western media were often intertwined with messages of blaming America first. Even worse, they were smearing Americans who wanted to alert the American public to jihad in America by calling them bigots and alarmists. Did the American media think that by not reporting on the culture of jihad it would just go away? Or were they just blind? I wondered what was behind all this.
Egypt and Saudi Arabia were ticking time bombs. Egypt, the most populous Arab country on the borders of Israel, was gradually turning into an Islamic fundamentalist state. I feared that peace was gradually evaporating and that the peace treaty that Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin risked their lives to forge was going to disappear if the Muslim Brotherhood achieved its aim of commandeering Egypt. I was sad for Egyptians who, like many Arabs, are prisoners of misinformation and propaganda, never allowed to learn from their history, and encouraged to risk everything again and again. I asked myself, Why aren’t Egyptians just grateful they got the Sinai back? Their value system was not the pursuit of freedom and happiness, but the pursuit of blame, envy, and anger. I wondered if they would ever free themselves from the slavery they are in.
Before landing, my eighteen-year-old daughter said to me, “Mom, thank you for bringing me into the world in the USA.” I was thrilled the trip had such an impact on her. I wished that every American child could have the same experience my daughter just had—the chance to understand how wonderful it is to enjoy the freedoms and privileges of living in America.
We arrived at LAX the night of September 10, 2001. My relief was so great that I wanted to kiss the ground when we landed. I appreciated America even more than the first time I arrived. I was glad to be back in the United States, a country that welcomed me with open arms and treated me equal to the citizens who built it. It was late at night by the time we arrived home, and we went to sleep right away.
The next morning the whole world changed. We all woke up at 6 A.M. Los Angeles time to the horrors of 9/11. When I saw the first tower in flames I knew something was not right. Something in my guts told me this was the anger I left behind. I knew the very instant I saw the second plane hit the twin towers that this was Arab terrorism. To my horror, the country that has given me shelter, protection, and hope was under a monstrous attack from my culture of origin. Jihad had come to America.
Nine
Jihad Comes to America
The unspeakable tragedy of 9/11 has changed America and me forever. In the first year of the new millennium, as the world was turning a new and hopeful page in history, nineteen Muslim men, with the blessings and support of a large Arab Muslim network, committed the most horrific and unprecedented terror attack ever on American soil. The magnitude of this event turned the world into a scary place. And perhaps the scariest part of all was that these terrorists believed they were doing God’s work. They were trained to view life on earth as of no value and that no act, no matter how barbaric, was off-limits if in pursuit of jihad. The news of the devastation in New York brought cheering crowds into the streets in various Arab capitals, hail
ing the terrorists as brave martyrs doing God’s work for Islam.
The horror of 9/11 hit me in many ways. On the one hand, I was mourning the horrific deaths of more than three thousand fellow Americans and the destruction and suffering in New York and at the Pentagon. On the other hand, I was also mourning the fact that Arab culture had stooped to such a level of madness. I knew there were many other Muslim men out there who wished to be in the terrorists’ shoes for the glory and honor awaiting them in heaven.
It was shameful to see Arabs openly cheering in the streets for the nineteen criminals while at the same time denying that Arabs were behind the attacks. With every new terror act in the past two decades, terrorists and the powerful people behind them have become more emboldened and outrageous. They have grown confident that any retaliation from the West would be minimal since the Western world needed their oil. And so they watched the towers fall and celebrated in the street.
The West, caught unprepared and divided, was stunned.
Americans before September 11, 2001, were totally unaware of the jihad declared against them. But the jihadists made no secret of their intentions—it was all over the Al-Jazeera network, on jihadist Web sites, in speeches, and their literature. We knew of their training camps in Afghanistan. But in the West, the very notion that anyone should take the rhetoric seriously was laughable. However, the seriousness of the jihadist’s intentions was no secret to any Arabic-language speaker.
I was not totally surprised to learn that an Egyptian was the head of the 9/11 attacks and that fifteen of his collaborators were Saudis. Ironically, the perpetrators had come from two states—Egypt and Saudi Arabia—that the West considers “moderate.” Mohamed Atta, in fact, came from a well-to-do Egyptian family in Cairo. He was educated and well traveled. I remembered the Egyptian youth I had met in Egypt only a couple of weeks earlier—some came from privileged families just as Atta had. I recalled their anger, confusion, and tendency to blame America and Israel for all the Arab world’s misery.
In the aftermath of the horrific events of 9/11, as the world learned the details, I needed to call friends and family in Egypt to get a feel for Arab public opinion. I needed comfort and wanted to believe that moderate Egyptians were as appalled as I was by the attack on America. I wanted Egyptians to tell me that they were outraged and that this had crossed the line of sanity. I desperately want to hear them say it was time to look within and review what had gone wrong in Muslim culture to produce such barbaric behavior against a nation that had spread a lot of hope and good around the world; a nation that, no matter how many times it was provoked, had never used its full power in the Middle East against any Muslim nation. On the contrary, America has helped the Afghan rebels against the Soviet Union and the Bosnian Muslims against the brutal attacks of the Serbs. I wanted to hear Egyptians tell me that this unthinkable act is not the proper thank-you we give America for the $3 billion a year in aid it gives Egypt.
It never occurred to me as I placed my phone calls to Egypt that there would be any controversy over who had done this. The picture of Mohamed Atta taken as he went through airport security was being shown on TV. Very quickly the world was learning the names and seeing the faces of the nineteen terrorists. This time, without a doubt, Muslims could not place blame on others. Everything was documented.
I first called my mother. She has always had great respect for America. I remember her remarking that when Africans were starving, America was the first to send food, that whenever a catastrophe happened anywhere in the world, Americans were always the first to help. My mother expressed sorrow for the Americans who died. But she was not very interested in talking about the subject and was surprised that in the West they blamed 9/11 on Muslims. But she was eighty-one years old, after all, and I did not want to pressure her to talk.
My sister expressed the same surprise and doubts, saying, “I doubt that Arabs from the caves of Afghanistan did this action.”
Next I talked with a very moderate cousin who told me that many Muslims were celebrating in the streets, and then she remarked that her sister, who wears a burka by choice, was kind of happy this happened to America. “As for me,” my cousin said, “I am perplexed, but don’t you think this is an Israeli conspiracy?” She added that when she told her neighbor that she felt bad for all the victims, her neighbor asked her, “Aren’t you a Muslim?”
The next person I called was a childhood girlfriend. Quite harshly, she told me, “Shame on you for dishonoring Egypt by claiming that an Egyptian did that.” Then she contradicted herself by saying, “You have to stand by Islam whether right or wrong. Let America experience the terrorism that is widespread in the Arab world! Why should only we suffer from terrorism?” She seemed to consider terrorism to be like an inevitable natural disaster rather than a deliberate act by homegrown Arab Muslim terrorists. She then became agitated and virtually screamed at me: “The flesh on your shoulders was bred by Arab wealth,” meaning that I owe everything—my health, my well-being, and especially my allegiance—to my original culture. She continued to lecture me: “You should have more gratitude as a daughter of Egypt. You are a traitor if you blame this on Arabs.”
A very high Egyptian government official I talked with shrugged it all off, saying, “It is time for Americans to suffer like the Palestinians.”
Searching for sanity among my Egyptian friends and family, I placed a call to the man who was like a father to me—a man whom I considered to be educated and wise. Baba Abbas, who was eighty-five years old by then, told me, “I cannot believe that a good Muslim like you, who is the daughter of a great shahid, can be so blind to the fact that 9/11 was an Israeli conspiracy. How could you blame Muslims for that? Your father must be rolling over in his grave.” His son raged that if America tried to hit Afghanistan in retaliation, that it would become America’s next Vietnam. I then called a top journalist at the Al-Ahram newspaper who told me that the attitude on the Arab street was “Let America feel the bombing and terror that Palestinians are living with daily.”
These were all some of the nicest, kindest people you could ever meet. Yet reaction to me ranged from defensive to hostile. Everyone showed some degree of satisfaction over what happened on 9/11. I was immediately shut up and told that 9/11 was orchestrated by Israel! Without exception, they were all angry with me for stating the simple facts: that the attack was committed by Arabs.
I hung up the phone and wept. I felt all alone. I had no one to relate to from Egypt anymore. I was devastated by all their denials and hateful comments, and especially upset at the attempt to shame me by using my father’s memory. Without exception, everyone I called was supposedly a moderate Muslim and most of them were non-practicing. Yet they tacitly supported the radical Muslim line.
I needed to face a new reality. I was now totally disconnected, alienated, and disappointed in Egyptians and the Arab world. Though I hesitate to generalize, from the sample I spoke with, I find that most Egyptians today are blind to reality, and are hateful and arrogant. Even if you hit them over the head with reality, they will continue their denial. I knew that I had run full-force into the Arab protective shield against the outside world. It is a psychological barrier that nothing can penetrate, a barrier behind which a majority of Arabs and Muslims will stand together against the West, denying and defending even the worst atrocities. To them, if reality does not fit into their agenda, then it does not exist. The only reality they respect is Muslims appearing unified in front of the non-Muslim world, united in saving face and protecting the image of Islam and Muslims.
Even the father of the 9/11 terrorist leader, Mohamed Atta, first denied that his son did anything and also claimed that the attack was an Israeli conspiracy. Only in 2005 did he finally admit in public that his son was indeed involved and proclaim that he was proud of what his son, the martyr, did. It took him four years to face the truth in public. Even Egyptians were surprised by his admission.
Since speaking to Egyptians about 9/11 was like talking to a
wall, and there was no way I could have an honest discussion with most of them, I began calling Arab Americans living in the United States. I felt it was important that we Arab Americans denounce 9/11 and make a stand in support of the United States. But none of my fellow Arab Americans with whom I spoke wanted to get involved. Some echoed what their relatives in the Arab world were saying. Some told me, “Did you know that three thousand Jews who worked in the World Trade Center did not show up for work that day?”
A few days after 9/11, I went to an Arabic market and found customers busy buying their ethnic food items and planning their regular parties and gatherings on the weekend as if nothing had happened. There was very little mention of 9/11, and if the discussion did turn to it, it was to express fears of a backlash and only from the viewpoint of self-protection. For example, I heard: “I hope there will be no negative publicity about Islam and Muslims.” I was disappointed that many Arab Americans, even though I know they were grateful to be in this country, chose to stay silent.
Why? Fear is certainly a factor. Most Arabs and Muslims in the United States have come from brutal dictatorships or radical Muslim countries where voicing an opinion can get you killed. Many feel that even living in America cannot protect them from radical Muslims, and so they continue their silence, even in the face of something as horrifying as 9/11. Sadly, they are still prisoners of the tyranny of the old country.
The silence was not confined to the American Muslim community. Even Christian Arabs and Egyptian Copts were silent, mostly because they were trained to never publicly criticize the Muslim majority in the Arab world. For centuries, they have learned to appease those who discriminated against them in the hope of avoiding their wrath or being accused of collaborating with the enemy. Many Arab Christians have become incapable of speaking out against their Islamist oppressors out of the very real fear of reprisals against the “hostage” Christians still living in the Middle East. Most of the Arab Americans I met—both Muslim and Christian—said “wana mali” or “none of my business,” an expression they have lived by all their lives in the Middle East. Implied in that expression is the notion that if I speak out, I will not change anything so why should I? So after 9/11, most Arab Americans shrugged their shoulders and went back to the business of living.
Now They Call Me Infidel Page 21