by Lori Peek
collision, it was apparent that what had transpired in the financial district
of lower manhattan was no accident. Khadija, who lived and worked in
Brooklyn, saw the commercial airliner hit the south tower on live television.
she immediately realized that a terrorist attack was underway:
That morning, i was watching Tv with my mom while we were eat-
ing breakfast. i saw the first building burning and i said, “Oh, this is
a big accident!” i really thought it was just an accident. While i was
looking at the Tv, the second plane hit. i turned to my mom and
said, “Oh God, this is a terrorist act.” i just sat there in front of the
Tv. it was like i couldn’t move. i’m like, “no, no. This can’t be hap-
pening.”
Repercussions / 107
Although Khadija knew that an act of terrorism had just occurred, she
had an incredibly difficult time coming to terms with the frightening reality
that new york City was under assault. noreen, who lived in the middle of
manhattan, noted that the sense of disbelief didn’t wear off for days: “i was
absolutely in shock at first. it didn’t sink in. The calamity of it didn’t sink in.
i’d wake up each morning and i’d have to think, ‘Did it really happen? is the
World Trade Center really not there? Did so many people really die?’ it was
just this overwhelming sadness, trying to understand why this happened.”
rawan, whose family immigrated to the United states from saudi Arabia,
was at school in Brooklyn on 9/11. Her older brother, who had recently
graduated from college, had a job interview at the World Trade Center that
morning. Because the phone lines were jammed after the attacks, rawan was
unable to reach him to find out if he was okay. she was terrified that she had
lost her only sibling when the Twin Towers collapsed. Weeks later, when she
told me her story, she still appeared traumatized:
At first, i didn’t even understand. Okay, there was an accident at the
World Trade Center. A couple of planes crashed. Then i remembered
that my brother had a job interview that morning at the World Trade
Center. i knew he was supposed to be there at about 10:30. i thought
to myself, “What if he was a little early?” i went to the phone. The
line at the phone was so long. i kept hearing people talking about
it. i started crying. A couple of people said, “We’ll take you home.
everything will be okay.” They had cell phones. i tried calling him
with their cell phones. i couldn’t get through, all the lines were
busy. Finally i got home, and he answered the door. i was so happy.
i looked at his face, and it was so pale. He kept saying, “Thank God
i wasn’t there.” it was unbelievable. even now when i think about it,
anybody could have been in that building. i cannot really explain
how sad and scared i felt that day.
Anger was another common emotional response reported by the inter-
viewees. shada, a lebanese American woman, shared how she responded to
the terrorist attacks: “How did i feel after this? Angry. Angry at the people
who did this. look at what they did. For the first few days, i was trying to
just sit in front of the Tv. i didn’t know what to do. looking at the families
of the victims, it hurts.”
The confusion, the paralyzing uncertainty, and the overwhelming
emotions that muslim Americans felt mirrored the sentiments that many
non-muslims across the nation expressed. However, the tragic events resulted
in additional negative consequences for the muslim American community,
108 / Chapter 5
consequences not experienced among the general population. These added
impacts set muslim Americans on a divergent response trajectory and
ultimately led to their exclusion from the community of sufferers.
Bracing for the Backlash
As muslim Americans struggled to come to terms with the shocking reality
of the attacks, they simultaneously began to worry that members of their
community would be held responsible for what had happened. malika, an
egyptian American investment banker, knew that if she immediately assumed
that muslims or Arabs were somehow involved in the explosions at the World
Trade Center, then surely others were thinking the same thing:
That morning, one of the offices at work had a radio going. That’s
when we found out that another plane had hit. Then you start hear-
ing “terrorism.” i was like, oh, no, please do not let it be terrorism;
please do not let it be the muslims again. i am sorry to say it, but
that’s the first thing that ran through my head . . . muslim terror-
ists, Arab terrorists. if it ran through my head, then it was running
through everybody else’s head, too.
it is not shocking that malika, as well as many other muslims and non-
muslims alike, would guess that Arabs or muslims were responsible for the
assaults on new york City and Washington, D.C. muslim Americans are
painfully aware of the negative views that many people hold of their faith.
Journalists were writing about “muslim terrorists” and “Arab terrorists” long
before 9/11. “radical islam” attracted widespread media attention when the
1979 islamic revolution occurred in iran, and American fears were further
heightened with the seizure of the U.s. embassy in Tehran in november
of that year. Bombings, hijackings, armed conflicts, and other political
crises that took place in the middle east in the 1980s and 1990s provided
continuous fodder for an increasingly islamophobic and anti-Arab Western
press.9 Thus, by the fall of 2001, the association of violence with the middle
east, muslims, and Arabs was firmly entrenched in the public imagination.
yet, contrary to the images cemented in the minds of so many, the
middle east is not the most terror-prone place in the world. This status was
especially true before the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing “War on Terror,” which
inflamed tensions and sparked increasing bloodshed throughout the region.10
According to U.s. state Department data on international terrorist attacks
perpetrated between the years 1995 and 2000, latin America experienced the
most incidents, with 729 recorded acts of violence. For this same time period,
Western europe was second with 608 attacks, and Asia was third with a total
Repercussions / 109
of 267 attacks. The middle east ranked fourth with 199 incidents, followed
by Africa with 160 attacks and eurasia with 151. north America had the
lowest concentration of terrorist attacks, with only 15 incidents from 1995 to
2000.11 in the year 2000, 86 percent of all anti-U.s. attacks occurred in latin
America. The rest of the recorded anti-U.s. attacks were in Asia (4.5 percent),
Western europe (3.5 percent), Africa (3 percent), eurasia (2 percent), and the
middle east (1 percent).12 These figures include attacks against U.s. facilities
and attacks where American citizens were killed or injured. regardless of the
story these numbers tell, selective reporting on violence in the middle east
has contributed to a distorted and harmful perception of muslims and Arabs
living in the United states and abroad.
9/11 terrorist attacks became clear, muslim Americans began bracing for
the backlash. even before a number of Arab muslim men were officially
identified as the perpetrators, muslims recognized that they were likely
going to become the targets of a shocked and angry public that had witnessed
an unimaginable catastrophe unfold in real time.13 During a focus-group
session, several participants discussed their initial reactions to 9/11. For
these women, the terror of learning of the physical destruction and loss
of life coincided with their recognition that the entire muslim American
community would be blamed.
sADAF: The first thing i thought was there are a lot of people who
may be dead. This is so horrible. right after that, it was we’re
going to get blamed. [ Everyone nods in agreement. ] We’ve always
been blamed, so this time obviously we’re going to be blamed
too.
iFFAT: This was such a big thing, the Twin Towers. it was the biggest
thing we had seen on American soil.
AnnA: We have this feel for it. We are American. i was born here. The
Twin Towers meant a lot to me. They represented new york.
sArA: i was just as surprised and saddened as anyone else. i was angry
at the fact that people could do such a thing, angry that so many
people were killed, and i was hurt and frustrated that people were
blaming us. you feel so bad about what happened, but you’re
pinpointed as the evil one.
Wali, who immigrated to the United states from morocco when he was
five years old, indicated that he and his family were fearful that muslims
would be identified as the perpetrators and that a serious backlash would
ensue. Wali’s mother and sisters, in particular, were frightened that the
backlash would be so violent that they would be trapped inside their home.
110 / Chapter 5
Therefore, on the day of the attacks, they sent Wali to the grocery store to
buy vital supplies. He said, “i’m the oldest son, so after 9/11, i had to take care
of everything. it was really hard. right off, we were scared that the public
was going to turn against us, that there was going to be this backlash like
we had never seen. We had to stockpile everything, a week of food and other
supplies. We had our supply of food for a week.”
The sentiments expressed above and the precautionary measures that
many muslim families took do not represent a paranoid response. Quite the
opposite: Knowledge of the bigotry that muslims and Arabs have endured in
the aftermath of other crises shaped, at least to a certain extent, apprehension
on the part of muslims. Another interviewee, Amani, remembered hoping
that an American anarchist group would claim responsibility for the assaults
on the World Trade Center and pentagon. she felt this was the only way that
muslims and Arabs would not be victimized: “When i heard there was an
attack, when i turned on the television and saw the plane hit the building,
the first thing i said was ‘i hope it’s not a muslim.’ i just remember, i had this
mental thing going. i kept thinking, ‘i hope this is an American anarchist
group. i hope this is an American anarchist group.’”
i asked Amani why she was thinking that. she replied: “A lot of it was
that i was remembering the Oklahoma City bombings. i was hoping there
wouldn’t be that violence toward Arabs and muslims before anyone knew
who had done it. And i was hoping it hadn’t been a muslim group, because
i knew it would come back on the community, and lots more people would
be hurt.”
Amani, a second-generation pakistani American who was raised in
Colorado, was only thirteen years old when Timothy mcveigh and his
accomplice, Terry nichols, destroyed the Alfred p. murrah Federal Building,
killing 168 people and injuring more than 800 others. Despite the fact that
mcveigh and nichols—both white, Christian men—were soon identified as
the prime suspects, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing led to a rash of hate
crimes against Arabs, muslims, and mosques across the nation (see Chapter
2). Amani and many others recalled the dread that they and their families felt
during that time. They knew that the backlash would likely be much worse
if muslims were, in fact, found to be responsible for destroying the World
Trade Center and attacking the pentagon.
On the morning of 9/11, it was not yet clear who had carried out the
hijackings. nevertheless, speculation quickly began building in the media
that Arab or islamic extremists were behind the deadly attacks. soon after
the Twin Towers collapsed, Agence France-presse reported that a group
with the word “palestinian” in their name had claimed responsibility.
video footage of a group of palestinian children cheering in the streets,
Repercussions / 111
reportedly after they had learned of the terrorist attacks, accompanied this
news.14 The Taliban in Afghanistan were also identified as possible suspects,
although they condemned the suicide mission and emphatically denied any
involvement.15 several high-ranking military officers asserted that the only
group in the world that had the ability and resources to carry out such a
sophisticated attack was Osama bin laden’s terror network, al Qaeda.16 On
september 12, 2001, bin laden met with Arab reporters to deny that he was
behind the aerial assaults, although he offered praise for the hijackers.17
rumors were also spreading on the ground about the source of the
attacks. several respondents—all of whom lived, worked, or went to school
in one of the five boroughs of new york City—described encounters they had
on the morning of 9/11. in most cases, the speculation focused on muslims or
Arabs as the likely perpetrators. roughly an hour after the initial explosions
in lower manhattan, Bushra, a native of Bangladesh, had an uncomfortable
exchange with a subway toll-booth attendant who asserted that palestinian
militants had piloted the planes into the Twin Towers:
That day i went down to the train. i get down there, and there’s no
service. i asked the toll guy, “What time is it going to start again?”
He was like, “maybe tomorrow.” i was like, “What?” people were try-
ing to get into the trains, just trying to get home. Then the guy says,
“Don’t blame me; blame the palestinians.” At that time, i didn’t even
know why he was saying that. it was only an hour after it happened. i
said, “Do you even know for sure that they did this?” He said, “yeah,
it’s all over the news.”
nabiha, who wore the hijab, began receiving accusatory stares almost
immediately after the planes hit the north and south towers: “An hour after
it happened, just the way i was dressed, automatically everybody was staring.
That fact that automatically people registered in their minds . . . muslims,
bombing, terrorism. That means it’s really ingrained, and that’s very scary.”
Habeel, a Bangladeshi American whose dark complexion marked him
as an ethnic outsider, recalled how a bus driver accused his “people”
of
instigating the attacks:
i heard it from the bus operator. The first thing he told me was “your
people have done this thing.” i was like, “What?” i didn’t even know
anything at that point. i could see the clouds of dust. He said, “They
took the planes and hit the World Trade Center and the pentagon.
your people did that. The president is going to attack.” i thought he
was just making fun of me. Then i went home and saw the Tv.
112 / Chapter 5
Andrea lived in Denver, which is two time zones behind the east Coast,
on september 11. Therefore, by the time she found out about the events that
had transpired that morning, suspicion had already been cast on muslims in
general and on bin laden in particular. As a result, her sadness of learning of
the lives lost coincided with her recognition that a backlash against muslims
was likely inevitable:
That morning, my mom told me there was some kind of bombing or
some kind of attack. she said people were automatically saying, “it’s
the muslims; it is probably the muslims; it is probably bin laden.”
And i was like, “Oh great.” i knew, because every single time one of
these things happens, the muslim community, we react almost the
same way every single time. We just hold our heads in this dread,
because we know what is going to happen, because it has happened
over and over and over in Western society, all around the world. The
second a bomb goes off anywhere, “Oh it must be muslim funda-
mentalists.” so that is what we were mostly fearing, and i just knew
it was going to be bad. later on that day, i saw the clips of what hap-
pened and heard everybody talking about it, and it just put me to
tears, just tears. On the one hand, i am crying for all the thousands
and thousands of people who died. At first, they were saying there
were probably thirty thousand people who died in the attacks. you
just can’t even imagine those types of numbers, and so it is like, i am
crying just out of shock and grief from that. At the same time, i am
crying because i just knew exactly what was going to happen to the
muslim community.
Andrea’s quote serves as a reminder of the dreadful uncertainty that
accompanied the 9/11 attacks. That day, reports were made, all of which
were later determined false, of a third airliner heading for manhattan; of