Many have spent years since 9/11 working toward acceptance, now surprised to find hatred so widespread.
Anti-Muslim sentiment: 'Really scary
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN • New York Times | Posted: Sunday, September 12, 2010 12:00 am
For the nine years since the attacks of Sept. 11, many American Muslims have made concerted efforts to build relationships with non-Muslims, to make it clear they abhor terrorism, to educate people about Islam and to participate in interfaith service projects. They took satisfaction in the observations by many scholars that Muslims in America were more successful and assimilated than Muslims in Europe.
Now, many of those same Muslims say that all of those years of work are being rapidly undone by the fierce opposition to a Muslim cultural center near ground zero that has unleashed a torrent of anti-Muslim sentiments and a spate of vandalism. The knifing of a Muslim cabdriver in New York City has also alarmed many American Muslims.
"We worry: Will we ever be really completely accepted in American society?" said Dr. Ferhan Asghar, an orthopedic spine surgeon in Cincinnati and the father of two young girls. "In no other country could we have such freedoms — that's why so many Muslims choose to make this country their own. But we do wonder whether it will get to the point where people don't want Muslims here anymore."
Eboo Patel, a founder and director of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based community service program that tries to reduce religious conflict, said, "I am more scared than I've ever been — more scared than I was after Sept. 11."
That is a refrain echoed by many other American Muslims. They say they are scared not as much for their safety as to learn that the suspicion, ignorance and even hatred of Muslims is so widespread.
This is not the trajectory toward integration and acceptance that Muslims thought they were on.
They liken their situation to that of other scapegoats in American history: Irish Roman Catholics before the nativist riots in the 1800s, the Japanese before they were put in internment camps during World War II.
Muslims sit in their living rooms, aghast as pundits assert over and over that Islam is not a religion at all but a political cult, that Muslims cannot be good Americans and that mosques are fronts for extremist jihadis.
Young American Muslims who are trying to figure out their place and their goals in life are particularly troubled, said Imam Abdullah T. Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at Duke University.
"People are discussing what is the alternative if we don't belong here," he said. "There are jokes: When are we moving to Canada, when are we moving to Sydney? Nobody will go anywhere, but there is hopelessness, there is helplessness, there is real grief."
Antepli just returned from a trip last month with a rabbi and other American Muslim leaders to Poland and Germany, where they studied the Holocaust and the events that led up to it (the group issued a denunciation of Holocaust denial on its return).
"Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s," he said. "It's really scary."
American Muslims were anticipating a particularly joyful Ramadan this year. For the first time in decades, the monthlong holiday fell mostly during summer vacation, allowing children to stay up late each night for the celebratory iftar dinner, breaking the fast, with family and friends.
But the season turned sour.
The great mosque debate seems to have unleashed a flurry of vandalism and harassment directed at mosques: construction equipment set afire at a mosque site in Murfreesboro, Tenn; a plastic pig with graffiti thrown into a mosque in Madera, Calif.; teenagers shooting outside a mosque in upstate New York during Ramadan prayers. It is too soon to tell whether hate crimes against Muslims are rising or are on pace with previous years, experts said. But it is possible that other episodes are going unreported right now.
"Victims are reluctant to go public with these kinds of hate incidents because they fear further harassment or attack," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "They're hoping all this will just blow over."
This year, Sept. 11 coincided with the celebration of Eid, the finale to Ramadan, which usually lasts three days (most Muslims began observing Eid this year on Sept. 10). But Muslim leaders, in this climate, said they wanted to avoid appearing to be celebrating on the anniversary of 9/11. Several major Muslim organizations urged mosques to use the day to participate in commemoration events and community service.
Ingrid Mattson, the president of the Islamic Society of North America, said many American Muslims were still hoping to salvage the spirit of Ramadan.
"In Ramadan, you're really not supposed to be focused on yourself," she said. "It's about looking out for the suffering of other people. Somehow it feels bad to be so worried about our own situation and our own security, when it should be about empathy towards others."
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