by Lori Peek
to uninformed, and at times wholly inaccurate, depictions of the islamic
faith and its followers.54 Third, editors and news commentators have found
a dearth of experts on islam and muslims who can communicate effectively
to larger audiences. national islamic organizations have been overwhelmed
by requests for media interviews and thus have had a difficult time keeping
up with the ever-increasing demand for a “muslim perspective” on various
events.55
174 / Chapter 7
muslim Americans are even more underrepresented on the national
political stage. During the 1990s, islamic organizations in the United states
began the painstaking process of mobilizing muslim American voters. Their
progress was slow and uneven, and prejudice from outsiders and conflicts
from within the muslim community over political priorities in domestic
and international contexts often impeded it. As a result of their limited
integration, the muslim community has been described as a “nonfactor” in
terms of the political power structure in the United states.56
After 9/11, which led to the passage of sweeping antiterrorism legislation,
muslims recognized the vulnerability associated with their insufficiently
developed political clout. Without adequate political representation, muslims
found themselves dependent on the good will of others for the protection of
their fundamental constitutional and human rights.57 muslims also felt
betrayed by a president that they helped elect. (in the year 2000, national
muslim groups endorsed Bush for president. Given the close vote count in
Florida that year, muslim Americans, among other groups, took credit for
putting Bush in the White House.58 This endorsement was a choice that
muslims clearly came to regret, as evidenced by the “massive migration away
from the republican party by muslim voters.”59 According to two separate
polls Zogby international conducted, more than half of registered Arab and
pakistani muslim voters cast their ballots for the republican Bush/Cheney
ticket in the 2000 presidential election. in 2004, only 7 percent of all muslims
said they voted for Bush/Cheney, while 76 percent voted for the Democratic
Kerry/edwards ticket.60)
The muslim American community has experienced a significant
transformation in terms of its political activism since 9/11. CAir, the
muslim public Affairs Council, and several other national organizations
have coordinated political rallies, held press conferences, established letter-
writing campaigns to elected officials, and filed lawsuits on behalf of their
constituents. As a result of these and many other efforts, muslims have made
some important inroads into the American political system. most notably, in
2006, the state of minnesota elected the nation’s first muslim congressional
representative, Keith ellison. in 2008, indiana voters selected Andre Carson,
the nation’s second muslim congressional representative, to serve in the
U.s. House of representatives. even though gains have clearly been made,
muslim Americans recognize that they still have a long road ahead in their
pursuit of equal political representation in a nation that remains deeply
skeptical of their faith.
in summary, this research suggests that six interrelated factors contributed
to the post-9/11 backlash against muslim Americans (see Figure 7.1). Two of
those factors—the intentional and malicious nature of the catastrophe and
the magnitude of the losses endured—speak to the character of the events
Conclusion / 175
Intentional Acts of Mass
Violence
Pre-9/11 Anti-Muslim
Social and Political
Context
Magnitude of Losses
Endured
Muslims as Dangerous
Relative Powerlessness
and Threatening
Identifiability of the
of Muslims
Outsiders
Muslim Population
Post-9/11 Backlash
Figure 7.1. Post-9/11 backlash: Contributing factors.
of 9/11. The third factor—the pre-9/11 anti-muslim social and political
context—emphasizes the role that a highly negative cultural atmosphere
can play in shaping postdisaster reactions toward minority groups. The
final three factors—the heightened sense of threat associated with islam,
the identifiability of muslims, and the relative powerlessness of the muslim
American community—all help explain why the backlash escalated so
quickly and endured for such a long period of time. Any one of these
factors alone is not likely to induce collective blame and backlash. it is
the cumulative force of these factors that generates hostile reactions in the
aftermath of catastrophe.
more could be said, of course, about the dynamics that shaped the
response to 9/11. For now, i hope that this discussion can help us think
more systematically about the social forces that contributed to the post-9/11
mistreatment of muslim Americans. in turn, we may be better equipped to
anticipate and to respond to backlash violence in the wake of future crises.
Exclusion and Invalidated Col ective Grief
in the aftermath of 9/11, powerful voices joined together to tell the story of
the terrorist attacks. Although the verses differed, the refrain almost always
went something like this: “On the morning of september 11, 2001, Americans
were shocked into collective solidarity. The airliners, turned into cruise mis-
siles that crashed into the World Trade Center in new york City; into the
pentagon in Washington, D.C.; and into a field in pennsylvania, brought to
176 / Chapter 7
life a collective sense of humanity, vulnerability, and national connectedness.
Through the televised repetition of images of physical devastation, human
misery, and heroic acts by civil servants and civilians, Americans were drawn
together in shared grief and pride.”61
The quote above exemplifies what sociologist monisha Das Gupta refers
to as “the dominant interpretation” of 9/11.62 This particular narrative,
which privileges social solidarity and civic renewal above all else, is not
untrue (at least in the sense that it does indeed capture how many Americans
experienced 9/11), but the narrative is incomplete. The accounts of the
muslim American women and men represented in Behind the Backlash
challenge the singular image of a “nation united.” Their stories also remind
us that although some Americans were “drawn together in shared grief and
pride,” others were discriminated against and denied membership in the
community of sufferers.
Author rebecca solnit writes eloquently of the “series of emotional
bonds” that 9/11 survivors formed as they attempted to make sense of the
calamity, and she vividly describes the “concentric circles of support” that
ringed the disaster site and rippled outward across the nation.63 muslims
found themselves on the outermost edges of those concentric rings, looking
inward, longing to be a part of the temporary community that arose after
the towers fell. One young muslim woman, whom we heard from earlier,
captured the feeling perfectly: “i wanted to join those people who were
volunteering downtown. . . . To me, that was the American community
coming together and trying to do what they can. But i didn’t feel like i
could, for my own safety. i wear a headscarf. i wanted to be a part of that
community, but i’m not really.”
in the wake of disaster, most people experience a newfound sense of
urgency, purpose, and solidarity. indeed, the earliest disaster researchers
were so struck by the high levels of empathy and mutual helpfulness that
they observed following catastrophic acts of nature, they used such terms
as “altruistic community” and “therapeutic social system” to depict the
heightened sense of camaraderie.64 These communities of compassion
and care play an important role after disaster: They can lead to improved
psychological functioning among traumatized victims and may even impel
the entire disaster-stricken population toward a state of recovery.
research conducted in the short- and longer-term aftermath of 9/11
has shown that joining together and taking action opened up significant
pathways to personal healing.65 spontaneous volunteerism, in particular,
provided an important outlet for 9/11 survivors to transform their feelings
of grief and victimization into what sociologists seana lowe steffen and
Alice Fothergill refer to as “meaningful therapeutic recovery.”66 steffen and
Conclusion / 177
Fothergill also found that the opportunity to volunteer impacted community
sentiment among volunteers by fostering new levels of identification with
and affinity for members of their community.
The exclusion and compounded fear that muslim Americans experienced
after 9/11 rendered them incapable of fully participating in the postdisaster
response—from taking part in the memorial services, to visiting the sites
of the attacks, to volunteering—which represented an additional form of
loss for muslims. in the end, they were denied an important opportunity to
resolve the traumatic impacts of the event, to bring closure, and to begin the
process of individual and communal recovery.
Decades of research has demonstrated that disasters do more than cause
death and physical destruction. Disasters can also do a great deal of damage
to the human mind and to the body. “individual trauma” is the term that is
most often used to describe the pain, shock, and helplessness that disaster
survivors experience. But as sociologist Kai erikson has documented, the
most severe events can also cause “collective trauma,” a particular form
of trauma that follows disaster and emerges as a result of the loss of the
network of relationships that make up the general human milieu.67 When
people are wrenched out of their communities, torn from the landscapes and
socialscapes in which they have been deeply enmeshed, collective trauma
will likely ensue.
erikson speaks of traumatized communities as something distinct from
assemblies of traumatized persons. in his words, “sometimes the tissues of
community can be damaged in much the same way as the tissues of mind
and body. . . . Traumatic wounds inflicted on individuals can combine
to create a mood, an ethos—a group culture, almost—that is different
from (and more than) the sum of the private wounds that make it up.”68 if
collective trauma is the outcome, i would like to propose that col ective grief
represents the collective emotional response elicited by the losses caused by
large-scale traumatic events.69 Collective grief, like collective trauma, must
be understood as something more than any given number of individual grief
reactions.
it is not the emotions, per se, that separate individual and collective grief.
in either case, affected persons are likely to report feeling sad, fearful, angry,
and so forth. it should be noted, however, that the emotions may be more
intense following disasters, given that extreme events result in widespread
social disruption and a sense of shared danger and loss among hundreds,
thousands, or even millions of people all at once. Thus, the number of
affected persons who simultaneously share the experience distinguishes
collective grief, as does the collective expression of grief-related emotions.
With individual grief, suffering is most likely to occur in solitude or in
178 / Chapter 7
intimate encounters between family members and close friends at visitations
or funerals. Collective grief, on the other hand, entails the sharing of grief
reactions with loved ones but also with strangers. Anyone who has survived
a disaster would understand this phenomenon and could likely call to mind
moments where persons completely unfamiliar with one another suddenly
find themselves embracing, sharing their deepest feelings, and assisting with
the most personal of matters. Therese rando, a clinical psychologist, has
noted that observing the grieving behaviors of other survivors (for example,
seeing others overwhelmed, crying, leaving flowers in reaction to death or
disaster), can catalyze grief responses in witnesses. This may, among other
potential responses, invite imitation, disinhibit one’s grief, and provide
legitimization and permission to openly engage in grieving behaviors.70
in moments of collective grief, people tend to join together, to develop
organized and spontaneous public grieving rituals, and to talk about the
event over and over and thereby find a forum for the expression of pain.71
it is through participating in these processes that individuals, as well as the
communities that they are a part of, begin to heal.
After the 9/11 attacks, bold lines were drawn between “us” and “them”
that marked the beginning of a new sense of national connectedness for
many Americans. Those who fell within the boundaries of the sharp dividing
lines were thought of, by themselves and by others, as part of a community of
sufferers. The collective grief that Americans experienced was widely viewed
as legitimate, normal, expected, and something to be taken seriously.
muslim Americans found themselves outside that bounded territory
that separated the “legitimate sufferers” from others after 9/11. Of course,
muslims were not immune from the waves of sorrow that swept over the
nation after the attacks. To the contrary, muslims were genuinely distraught
by the extraordinary devastation that will forever be associated with that
day. yet, in most cases, the grief that they experienced was left unexpressed,
unshared, and unacknowledged beyond their own faith community, and at
times, it was even actively contested by outsiders. in short, their grief was
dismissed as illegitimate; one could say it was invalidated. As a consequence,
their suffering remained largely invisible to the rest of America.
The fact that muslims felt unwelcome to join together with their fellow
Americans after 9/11 is significant, because recovery requires remembrance
and mourning. As Judith Herman argues in Trauma and Recovery, “restoring
a sense of social community requires a public forum where victims can speak
their
truth and their suffering can be formally acknowledged.”72 Collective
rituals of grief bind communities together. They provide an opportunity for
disaster-affected populations to share their sadness with others, and they
impose a sense of unity and order on communities struck low by collective
tragedy.73
Conclusion / 179
scholars and civil-rights advocates have attempted to quantify the most
visible injuries that muslims sustained after 9/11—the harassment, hate
crimes, and government detentions—while the more invisible forms of grief
and suffering have remained mostly unacknowledged. What happened to
muslim Americans after 9/11, then, should serve as a reminder that altruistic
communities have their limits. Until the boundaries of those communities
are extended to encompass the most marginalized among us, those on the
outside will be condemned to experience a second disaster, one that springs
from the exclusionary practices of human beings.
Notes
ChapTer 1
1. pew research Center, “post-9/11 Attitudes: religion more prominent, muslim
Americans more Accepted” (report, pew research Center, Washington, DC, 2001).
2. Central intelligence Agency, “The World Factbook,” 2007, available at https://
www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html (accessed January 22,
2010).
3. lori peek, “Becoming muslim: The Development of a religious identity,” Soci-
ology of Religion 66, no. 3 (2005): 215–242.
4. edward W. said, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How
We See the Rest of the World, rev. ed. (new york: vintage Books, 1997).
5. After 9/11, American evangelical leaders emerged as some of the most outspoken
critics of islam. in an effort to better understand the anti-islamic discourse, richard
Cimino analyzed eighteen books written on islam by evangelical authors. Five of the
books were published before 9/11, and thirteen were written or reissued after the ter-
rorist attacks. Cimino found that the two principal themes that distinguished the post-
9/11 books were their emphasis on islam’s “inherently violent nature” and the assertion
that muslims worship a false god distinctly different than the God of Christianity and
Judaism. see richard Cimino, “‘no God in Common’: American evangelical Discourse