by Lori Peek
the months following the 9/11 attacks. Because he knew these people were in
no way involved with terrorism, he expressed doubts regarding the methods
and motives of the FBi:
94 / Chapter 4
i know several people who were questioned after 9/11. it’s sad. The
fact that the FBi is questioning people who are your friends means
that they have no idea what they’re doing. Because your friends
are completely innocent, and you know that. so if they’re coming
to question your friends, you kind of wonder if they have their act
together. But also, it really concerns people. even if you haven’t done
anything, it can make your life difficult. i’m concerned about that.
i’m more careful about what i say and where i say it.
in reflecting on the profiling initiatives that targeted the muslim and
Arab communities, one woman said, “i think the most negative thing that
came out of 9/11 was the laws being passed. it’s not only about people, about
singling you out—it’s about the government actually passing laws to single
you out. it’s very scary.”
The tapping of telephones and monitoring of e-mail correspondence was
yet another civil-rights concern that the respondents identified. parents and
other family members had asked some of the participants to avoid speaking
on the telephone about 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and iraq, islam, and
any number of other “suspicious” topics. several of the interviewees were
personally convinced that their phones were indeed tapped and that the
federal government was spying on them. Abdul, who had come to the United
states as a refugee from Afghanistan as a very young child, discussed what
happened to him:
i was talking to my cousin. He lives in California. He told me that FBi
agents would come through Afghans’ homes. They’d come to their
houses and say, “Why did you talk to pakistan three times last month?”
Because they were talking to their family. They came to one of his
uncles on his mother’s side and asked questions for about forty-five
minutes. He was saying this on the phone. All of a sudden we heard
something in the phone. The phone was tapped. He said, “if anyone’s
on the other side listening to this conversation, i just want them to
know that we’re not for terrorism; we’re just talking about our fami-
lies.” We were talking, and we heard people from the other side talking,
and he said that so they would not come and ask him questions.
Another man, marwan, nodded as Abdul spoke and then said, “i’m
sure our phones are tapped. i’m sure we’re being watched. you’ve got to be
careful about what you say. There’s always that possibility that they could do
anything they want at any time, which i really do believe.”
The possibility exists that marwan was indeed “being watched” after
9/11. several provisions in the UsA pATriOT Act introduced controversial
Backlash / 95
tactics that expanded the ability of the government to conduct secret
searches of private property, seizures of assets, and surveillance of electronic
communications with reduced standards of cause and levels of judicial
review.44 years after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration acknowledged
that intelligence agencies conducted warrantless eavesdropping on Americans
with the help of several large telecom companies. Although these revelations
came as a shock to some citizens, the news of government spying simply
confirmed what muslim Americans already knew.
Violent Confrontations
The 9/11 atrocities provoked a nationwide surge of retaliatory attacks against
muslim and Arab people and their property. ADC and CAir received a com-
bined total of more than 2,400 reports of violent incidents in the wake of the
terrorist attacks, and the FBi tallied 481 hate crimes in the last three months
of 2001 (see Chapter 2 for a more thorough description of post-9/11 hate-
crime statistics). some of these incidents caused tens of thousands of dollars
worth of damage to mosques, Arab- and muslim-owned businesses, and
homes. Others involved grievous bodily harm that resulted in hospitalization
and permanent physical damage to the victims.45
Ten of the people whom i interviewed, three men and seven women,
were physically assaulted after 9/11. These individuals reported being spit
on, shoved in the subway, and having things thrown at them while walking
down the street. some of the women had their headscarves yanked or pulled
off. Although less than 10 percent of the participants reported that they
had been personally physically assaulted, all the interviewees had learned
about violent attacks and other anti-islamic crimes through family, friends,
media coverage, or e-mail messages. This knowledge sent shockwaves of fear
through the muslim American community.
nine of the ten interviewees who were physically victimized did not
report the incident to law enforcement authorities. These individuals offered
different reasons for why they did not go to the police, including their
beliefs that the incidents were not serious enough to warrant investigation,
uncertainty about whether the perpetrator(s) would or could be punished for
the assaults, and unease with going to the authorities due to fears of hostile
repercussions. Only one of the respondents, shaheen, went to the police
after an incident that involved her and her mother. if it had not been for the
encouragement of a neighbor and a security guard, shaheen may not have
reported the confrontation either. she said:
What happened to me personally with my mother was we went for a
walk. We both wear the scarf. There was this punk little kid, maybe
96 / Chapter 4
fourteen or fifteen [years old], mouthing off. my mother went to talk
to him and said, “you need to go home.” He spit right in front of us,
on our shoes. it was horrible. i said, “you know, i feel sorry for you,
because your mother didn’t teach you any manners.” That irritated
him, and he started yelling, threatening us. A friend of ours had also
been harassed by the same boy. she called the apartment security.
They came and talked to us, and my mother told them what had hap-
pened. He said, “Go to the police station and file a report.” We went
there and filed a report. The police officers were very supportive.
They said, “next time this happens, call 9-1-1, and he will be arrest-
ed.” He was just a kid. We don’t mean any harm to him, but they need
to be reprimanded for what they’re doing. They’ve probably been
influenced by adults around them who have the same opinions. The
police officers took us in their car, and we showed them the location.
They drove us up and down in the neighborhood to see if the kid was
still anywhere around. They were like, “it’s okay, you don’t need to
be afraid. if anything happens, just come to the precinct.” They were
very supportive.
some of the interviewees talked about friends or family members who
had been physically assaulted in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks. muslims
would ofte
n share these stories with one another, and the backlash was a
central topic of conversation and concern among peer groups and families
for many months after 9/11. A young woman from new Jersey explained
what happened to her best friend, who had immigrated to the United states
several years before the 9/11 attacks:
i remember my best friend came home. she was waiting for the bus
to come and drop off her daughter. On the opposite side of the street,
there was another bus. He [the bus driver] stopped the bus, came
across the street, spit in her face, and told her to go back to her coun-
try. she told her husband she wants to go back home [to syria]. now
she’s going back in three weeks. it’s hard for her. . . . But she can’t
stay here. she says, “i can’t stay in a country where they don’t want
me. He came and spit in my face and said they don’t want me here.
i can’t do it.”
in Colorado, two men described a physical altercation that happened
between their friend and two police officers. The incident, which occurred in
early november 2001, ended in the arrest and detention of the young muslim
man:
Backlash / 97
mArWAn: One of our [friends] got stopped by a policeman [in
Denver] just because he had a turban on. They pulled it over his
head and beat him up so he wouldn’t know who did it. He’s in jail
right now.
BAKir: He was driving home one night. He had a turban on his head.
Cops pulled him over and said something like, “Do you know
how to fly a plane?” They proceeded to beat him up.
mArWAn: He didn’t hold back on his verbal insults towards the
police officers who were beating him up, so they put him in jail on
some charge. He’s been in jail for a month now. They’re holding
him for another month.
many law enforcement officers responded to the post-9/11 backlash in
a swift and professional manner, as illustrated by shaheen’s story detailed
above. yet, in some instances, prejudice on the part of police officers
led to anti-muslim verbal and physical assaults. The potential for police
misconduct generated an added layer of fear among muslim Americans,
as they recognized that officers had the power to arrest, to detain, and to
physically harm members of their community.
in addition to these more personal incidents, respondents often spoke
of physical attacks that they had learned about through the media or
e-mails. These included stories of murders, shootings, stabbings, rapes,
and mob beatings. sometimes these accounts had been substantiated; for
example, several retaliatory murders were committed after 9/11, and the FBi
prosecuted a number of these cases. regardless of whether the information
came from a “reliable” source, the stories of violent assaults were pervasive,
especially in the weeks and months immediately following 9/11.
muslims came to understand the seriousness of the post-9/11 backlash
through personal experiences, the accounts of friends and family members,
and the media. Because these stories were so common and were shared
so frequently, many of the men and women i spoke with believed that
federal hate-crime statistics grossly underrepresented the actual number
of anti-islamic assaults perpetrated after 9/11. Jafar emphasized this point:
“everyone has been closing their eyes and ears to people who have been
attacked after 9/11 because they’re muslims. in the news they say, ‘There have
been 150 cases; the FBi is investigating 40 of them.’ Come on. Just by myself,
i know more than 40 people who have been harassed, discriminated against.
There are thousands of these cases.”
in addition to targeting individuals directly, property may be damaged
or destroyed to frighten and to intimidate members of minority groups.
some of the participants in this study attended mosques or lived in homes
98 / Chapter 4
that vandals struck after 9/11. Others had personal property that was ruined,
although many attempted to avert this form of backlash by removing islamic
or Arabic symbols from their homes and cars.
mosques and islamic schools have become common targets for bias-
motivated property crimes, largely because of their visibility and accessibility
within communities. in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, a sniper shot out a
stained-glass window in the dome of the islamic center of Greater Toledo;
vandals lobbed bricks through seven windows at the islamic center in
norfolk, virginia; and someone painted obscene graffiti on a mosque
in louisville, Kentucky. Dozens of similar incidents were reported from
Tacoma to Tallahassee.46 laila, who was originally from Georgia, recounted
what happened to the only mosque in her hometown: “Our local mosque
was vandalized. someone came in and spray-painted ‘UsA’ and a couple of
expletives. The whole community was scared. Our mosque has been doing a
lot of interfaith work. By afternoon, there was a local rabbi who organized all
the religious leaders to come in to clean the signs that were vandalized.”
The interfaith community in this Georgia town came together to
respond quickly and proactively to the attack on the mosque. What is less
clear is whether this act of solidarity was enough to counterbalance the fear
and isolation caused by the vandalism.
One of the interviewees from a midsize city in Colorado reported that a
vandal scrawled swastikas on the door of the islamic center in his community.
A woman, originally from michigan, described what happened to the
mosque in her city. As she talked, there was a strong sense of resignation in
her voice: “We’ve had a couple instances where somebody calls the mosque
with threatening things, or somebody leaves tacks out, or nails out, hoping
to puncture some tires. i suppose it’s no more than what any ethnic group
has to go through.”
natasha, who was a graduate student in journalism in the fall of 2001,
was assigned by her professor to write reaction stories following 9/11. Two
days after the attacks, she traveled to Brooklyn to visit an islamic school
that had been targeted. she described the scene: “They had that day, during
the attacks, or shortly after, someone had thrown pork chops at their school,
bloody pork chops and rocks.” natasha noted that the vandals obviously had
enough knowledge to understand that pork is forbidden in islam. yet the
perpetrators used this information to harm an entire community of muslim
youth and their families.
Beyond directing hatred at islamic institutions, bigots also damaged the
personal property of the muslim respondents and their friends or family. One
interviewee believed that her car windows were “smashed out” because she
had an Arabic symbol on the dashboard. Another participant said someone
had thrown rocks at his car, and he assumed the person did it because he
Backlash / 99
“looked muslim.” A third respondent said that her Afghan muslim neighbor
had her door kicked in and graffiti painted on her home.
At times it was difficult for those who had been victimized to know
; with any certainty whether the crime was the result of bad luck or bias. For
example, two weeks after 9/11, roshan was visiting a friend at the hospital.
When he returned to his car, he found that the tires had been slashed. When
he told his parents about the incident, he said that his father “was upset
because he thought it was because i had a slight beard growing.” After this
incident, roshan’s parents insisted that he shave his facial hair so that he
would be less recognizable as a muslim. Thus, even though no evidence
proved conclusively that roshan’s tires were slashed because of his muslim
identity, he still suffered the consequences.
A number of men and women who were students offered examples of
anti-islamic and anti-Arab vandalism that had occurred on their university
campuses in the days and weeks after 9/11. At one of the universities in
Colorado, vandals scrawled, “Go home, Arabs,” “Bomb Afghanistan,” and “Go
home, sand n-ggers” on the pillars of the library. The graffiti on the outside of
the building was removed the morning that it was discovered. inside the same
library, in one of the stairwells, someone had spray painted, “stop muslim
World Takeover.” This graffiti was not painted over for several months.
sanae, an undergraduate student at a university in manhattan, said that
when muslim students would put up fliers for their islamic Association,
other students would “pull them down, write negative stuff on them, or just
throw them in the trash.” Another student, Habeel, spoke of what happened
at his university:
We couldn’t unite with others, because when we came back to school
the day afterwards, we had boards in the hallway with condolences
[for the victims of the 9/11 attacks]. But then somebody took it a step
further and said, “let’s nuke the middle east. Kill all the muslims.”
it became violated. They started writing things like, “Get them all.
Throw them out of the country. Kill all the muslims. Deport the
muslims.”
University officials eventually took the condolence boards down, but only
after members of the msA and Arab club complained about the derogatory
comments scrawled across the board.
Witnessing Discrimination
The cases described above, almost without exception, involved men and