by Lori Peek
Although some teachers and school administrators were supportive, as
evidenced by Alisha’s case, others were not. For instance, mysha and her
twin brother, Ghazi, attended high school in Queens. she wore the hijab, he
was dark skinned, and they had recently immigrated to the United states
from egypt. These and other factors made them stand out, and a number
of students and even some of their teachers harassed them. indeed, mysha
described several incidents that occurred soon after they arrived and began
attending the school. staff members did little to intervene on her or her
brother’s behalf, and, in some instances, the adults actually exacerbated the
problem by making rude comments themselves. Ghazi ultimately ended up
getting suspended after he confronted and fought with one of the boys who
had been mercilessly harassing them. mysha told their story:
When i went into class, my brother started to sit down. i saw a muslim
girl covered. i tried to sit down next to her. A guy comes, “This is my
seat.” i stood up. i tried to sit down someplace else, and people came
and sat down. i figured i can’t sit down, because they wanted to have
their seat. so i go to the teacher, who was writing something. i said,
“excuse me, hello. . . .” i don’t remember what i said, but my question
was “Where am i going to sit?” maybe he was not in a good mood,
but he said, “Outside the window.” Can you imagine? i kept my tears
in, but that was really not nice of him. it was really bad. When i used
to go to the lunchroom with my friend, this muslim, we were the
only people who were covered. They used to throw food at us. you
know, when they peel the skin off oranges? They used to throw it at
58 / Chapter 3
us. i tried to tell a teacher about this and about a boy that pulled my
hijab. He was no help. We had a dean’s office. We used to go there
and complain. sometimes they used to come out at lunchtime, and
they noticed that there was a lot of food, and we were the target. Then
i had an encounter with a guy who always wanted to fight with me
and my brother for no reason. my brother, he got into a fight and
ended up getting removed from school for two weeks. it was the
worst memories.
in addition to the verbal and physical confrontations, some of the men’s
and women’s homes and places of worship came under attack. in fact, a
quarter of the participants reported that bigots had targeted personal pro-
perty (houses, cars, and so forth) or their local mosques or islamic centers
before 9/11. The assaults on the mosques, which ranged from threatening
phone calls to vandalism, were obviously meant to send a message to the
entire muslim community. One man who grew up in michigan noted that
people would periodically call the mosque and say hateful things. And, late
one night, someone scattered nails around the mosque parking lot in an
attempt to puncture the tires of the worshippers. Another woman indicated
that the mosque her family attended in Colorado had been “vandalized four
or five times” in the ten-year period prior to the terrorist attacks on new
york and Washington, D.C.
Before the 9/11 attacks, very little scholarship focused on muslim Americans
and their day-to-day encounters with intolerance and mistreatment. The
FBi began tracking anti-islamic hate crimes in 1995, but those figures repre-
sent only the most egregious cases that were actually reported to the police.
islamic advocacy groups released reports that offer more detailed portraits of
the civil-rights violations and discrimination that muslims were subjected to
pre-9/11. However, they, too, concentrate predominantly on the most serious
infringements on muslim people’s lives and civil liberties, rather than on the
more chronic and ongoing problems that muslims in this society have faced
for decades.
The lack of systematic focus on the stereotyping and harassment that
muslim Americans faced before 9/11 has created some challenges in making
sense of the severe wave of backlash violence that they experienced after the
terrorist attacks. With only twenty-eight anti-muslim hate crimes tallied by
the federal government in the year 2000, muslim Americans were barely
on the radar screen in terms of minority groups at risk for discrimination
or physical attack. Drawing on this hate-crime data, regardless of how
incomplete, some commentators expressed shock that muslim Americans,
Encountering Intolerance / 59
whom one journalist labeled as “the least-discriminated-against religious
minority group,” would experience such harsh retribution after 9/11.
The accounts included above, however, demonstrate that muslims
not only were aware of their position as religious outsiders in the United
states but also recognized the numerous, and almost universally negative,
stereotypes that many non-muslims hold about them and their faith. lack of
contact between muslims and non-muslims, distorted educational materials
in our schools, anti-islamic propaganda, and sensationalized media coverage
all ensured the perpetuation of the worst images of islam. The verbal and
physical harassment that the majority of the muslims reported offers some
insight into the ways that misconceptions about a group may translate into
hostile actions.
The harsh backlash that muslim Americans experienced in the aftermath
of 9/11 was not an anomaly. instead, it was a continuation of an already
antagonistic climate. Well before the hijackers piloted the planes into the
Twin Towers, muslims were already living in a context where they and their
faith were viewed as different, strange, foreign, violent, oppressive, and
threatening. By the time muslims saw the enormous Twin Towers come
crashing down, they had already begun to brace for the backlash. in the next
chapter, i draw on the voices of muslim men and women to describe the
fallout that muslims have experienced since that ghastly september day.
4
Backlash
September 11, 2001, began like most other days for maya, a petite
nineteen-year-old muslim American from new york City. she woke
up early to pray and then showered and dressed for school. she
slipped a dark jilbab, a loose-fitting ankle-length dress, over her jeans
and button-up blouse and then covered her long brown hair with her
favorite navy blue scarf. After gathering her books and stuffing them
in her worn-out backpack, she sat down for a quick breakfast with her
mother, father, and younger brother, Kamil.
All the adults were in a rush that morning. maya’s father had a
meeting at his engineering firm. Her mother was trying to hurry Kamil
along with eating his cereal so he would not be late for preschool and she
would not be late for work. maya was scheduled to take her first exam
that Tuesday afternoon in her introduction to psychology course. she
wanted to get to campus early so she could cram in a few more hours of
studying before class.
later, as maya reflected back on the events of that fateful day, she
wished that her family would have t
aken “just a little more time” to be
together that morning. it was the last peaceful meal that they would share
for the next several weeks.
Of course, maya could not have known how the day would unfold, so
she quickly finished her breakfast, hugged her mother and little brother
goodbye, and kissed her father on the cheek on her way out the door.
Backlash / 61
Outside, the sun was shining, and the sky was a magnificent shade of blue.
maya walked five blocks to the subway station, where she caught the train
to the university she attended in the middle of manhattan. everything was
running on time, and by 8:30 a.m. maya was sitting in the campus library
reviewing her notes and readings.
Around 9:30 that morning, maya looked up and noticed that the library
was virtually empty. it struck her as odd that so few people were around, but
she had no reason to be concerned. A few moments later, though, she heard a
student who was sitting two seats away from her talking on a cell phone about
“the terrorists, the terrorists.” maya assumed that the student must have been
referring to an event in some faraway place, until she heard the young woman
whisper into the phone, “mom, i think there’s going to be a war.”
At that point, maya made eye contact with the other student, and she
immediately realized how serious the young woman was. now maya was
worried. she scooped up her books and notes and decided to go find her
friends at the campus muslim students Association (msA). maya reasoned
that someone there could surely explain what was happening. As she stood
up to leave the library, a security guard entered and announced that all
classes were cancelled that day. maya felt like the guard and the other
students were staring at her as she made her way through the aisles, but she
had no idea why.
it was a few minutes before 10:00 a.m. when maya arrived at the women’s
msA office (the muslim men had a separate meeting room just down the
hallway). she had just made it through the doorway when someone blurted
out, “The United states is under attack!” maya’s friends hastily explained that
two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and that a third airliner
had struck the pentagon. Before the news could sink in, the chattering of
the students was drowned out by the sound of people shouting on the street.
They would soon learn that people were yelling because the south tower had
just collapsed.
lower manhattan seemed to have disappeared in a giant cloud of black
smoke and dust. sirens wailed, adding to a general sense of confusion and
chaos. The security guard who was in the library earlier arrived at the msA
office and told the young women that they should “stay put” and not try to
venture outside the building. shortly thereafter, a few of the muslim men
came over to talk to the women about the rumors already swirling regarding
the involvement of islamic extremists in the attacks. The men were especially
concerned that people seeking revenge would target the women, almost all of
whom were wearing headscarves.
maya felt trapped. The trains had stopped running, and no automobiles
were allowed in the area. she did not want to stay at the school, but she was
fearful that she might be assaulted if she left the msA office. even worse,
62 / Chapter 4
maya was overwhelmed by the thought that the terrorists could strike the
city again. she decided to remain on campus until she could reach her family.
For almost four hours, maya repeatedly dialed the numbers for her home
phone, her parent’s cell phones, and her neighbor’s phone. none of them
worked. she just kept receiving busy signals and audio recordings indicating
that no circuits were available.
Around 2:00 p.m., maya’s father, Adil, finally got through on her cell
phone. As soon as he confirmed that maya was still at the university and had
not been hurt in the attacks, he handed the phone to maya’s mother, Jamila,
who was sobbing and could barely speak. she had no idea if maya had made
it to school safely that morning, and she was terrified that something had
happened to her daughter. maya spent several minutes trying to calm her
mother and to reassure her that she was okay. Adil then got back on the
phone and asked maya not to leave the campus by herself. He gave maya
the names of two muslim males (“brothers”) who were friends of the family
and lived in their same neighborhood, which was located several miles from
the university. maya found the two young men and asked if they would be
willing to accompany her home. They readily agreed, and soon the three set
out for what maya would later describe as the longest and most frightening
walk of her life:
That day, people didn’t even wait for investigations to take place; peo-
ple didn’t even wait to hear more on the news. it was just hours after
the attack, and there were people behind my back that spit on me,
people who said, “We are going to kill them all; we are going to kill
them all.” This guy, he came next to me and was staring at me—the
brothers thought he was going to hit me. so one brother came right
next to me in the front, and the other moved by my side. They built
a wall between me and the man, because he was really rude. And he
was chanting, “retaliation, retaliation, we are going to kill them all.”
And the brother said to me, “Don’t say anything, just walk,” and so
we were walking. i wasn’t afraid, but before we crossed the bridge,
a whole group of people just stopped. And so i told the brothers,
“please do not leave me.” They were like, “Don’t worry.” These men,
they surrounded us from the back and they tried to scare us, but there
were police there, so they couldn’t physically attack us. But they did
scare us, and they started saying things, horrible curses.
After several more hours of walking and enduring additional harassment,
maya eventually made it home and was reunited with her family. However,
maya was so scared, and her parents were so concerned for her safety, that
she did not leave her house again for two weeks.
Backlash / 63
Maya’s frightening encounter with the angry mob demonstrates the swift-
ness of the onset of anti-muslim bias-related incidents in the aftermath of
9/11. Following the disaster, the interviewees in this study reported a signifi-
cant increase in the frequency and severity of negative experiences based on
their status as muslim Americans. This increase is not surprising, given the
sharp rise in hate crimes and discrimination that law enforcement agencies
and minority advocacy groups nationwide have documented (see Chapter 2).
What was more striking was the broad array of discriminatory actions
that the men and women described. prior research has shown that racial or
ethnic prejudice can be expressed with varying degrees of intensity, ranging
from avoidance to verbal harassment to discriminatory exclusion to physical
attack.1 When i asked the participants about the differential treatment that
they had personally experienc
ed or had witnessed after 9/11, they similarly
detailed a number of different actions that fell along a continuum from subtle
mistreatment to overt and violent acts of aggression.
The association of islam with the most deadly terrorist attacks in U.s.
history intensified preexisting prejudices against the faith and its followers
and also generated new hostilities that affected the respondents’ day-to-day
lives and life chances. muslims were verbally harassed; stared at; threatened;
profiled on the basis of their religion and ethnicities; and denied equal
access to employment, housing, and educational opportunities following
9/11. in this chapter, i detail these different forms of discrimination,
drawing on the words of muslim men and women who endured the post-
9/11 backlash.
Before proceeding, it is important to note that those persons most
vulnerable to discrimination before and especially after 9/11 were those
who were readily identifiable as muslim. This confirms previous research
that documents that visible membership in a marginalized group is a major
determinant of racially or religiously motivated abuse.2 Key markers of
difference for muslim Americans include religious symbols, cultural and
physical characteristics, and organizational memberships. For example,
women who wear the hijab, men with beards who wear traditional islamic
clothing, and persons with ethnic-sounding names or foreign accents were
conspicuous before 9/11 and even more so in the aftermath of the attacks. in
addition, muslims with dark complexions and dark hair were more frequently
targeted, because they fit the stereotypical image of what followers of islam
“look like.” This conflation of physical characteristics and religious belief is
problematic on multiple levels and obscures the fact that muslims represent
a transnational, multiethnic religious community. nevertheless, in the news
media and popular culture in the United states, brown skin “equals” islam,
which helps explain why dark-skinned people of different ethnicities and
64 / Chapter 4
religious persuasions (such as latinos, Arab Christians, and south Asian
Hindus and sikhs) were victimized after 9/11.3 muslims who were active
in their local mosques or other religious organizations, attended islamic
schools, or worked in muslim-owned businesses were also among the most