Muslims in U.S. are wary [FONT class=byLine][FONT color=#211c1c size=1]
By [/FONT][A class=storyByline href="mailto:
[email protected]"]
[FONT color=#900000]Tim Townsend[/FONT][/A][/FONT]
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ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH[/FONT]
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Saturday, Sep. 30 2006[/FONT]
Since June, area Muslims have become increasingly uncomfortable and even
fearful not because of overt attacks or threats against them, but because a
sequence of incidents have built upon each other to form an intense, low-grade
foreboding.
Beginning with the monthlong Israel-Hezbollah conflict through Pope Benedict
XVI's inflammatory lecture last month, American Muslims say they feel more
uneasy in their own country. Local incidents, including the August screening of
a controversial anti-terrorism movie and an FBI raid on the home of a Muslim in
Columbia, Mo., have heightened the anxiety, according to dozens of St. Louis
Muslims interviewed over the last few weeks.
"Muslims are feeling like the world is closing in on them," said Orvin T.
Kimbrough, executive director of the Interfaith Partnership of Metropolitan St.
Louis. "They feel like they're being targeted."
The specter of World War II Japanese-American internment camps makes its way
into many conversations these days.
"We're faced with same situation as anyone else in this country as we all move
forward in this post-9/11 world," said Ishmael-Lateef Ahmad, a staffer in Rep.
Lacy Clay's office. "Lumping us all together and treating us all as the enemy
for many Muslims that's a real possibility, and we're trying to wrap our heads
around that."
Last month, the quarterly meeting of the eastern Missouri U.S. attorneys' hate
crimes task force focused on the concerns of St. Louis Muslims. The meeting was
held at Central Reform Congregation in the Central West End.
At the meeting, Sheila Musaji, editor of the online magazine "The American
Muslim," decried the frequent transposition of the words "Islam" and "Muslim"
in the public debate about terrorism in the U.S.
"When people consistently use 'Islam' instead of 'Muslim,' as in 'Islamic
fascist,' it creates the notion that the religion itself is responsible for
creating these criminals," she said.
Waheed Rana, professor of anatomy at St. Louis University, saw things
differently. Rana said American Muslims should stoically accept their current
position in American society. "Instead of complain, complain, complain, we have
to get used to it," he said. "There's a certain amount of this we have to
take."
These two views one angry at the seeming willful ignorance of a confused and
frightened non-Muslim majority, the other a mixture of apprehension and
surrender make up the cleft state of mind of American Muslims in St. Louis
today. And they're not sure their president is helping.
In August, President George W. Bush said that the United States "is at war with
Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love
freedom." Since then Bush has not publicly repeated the phrase, and at a
late-September press conference with Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf,
Bush, challenged about the "Islamic fascists" statement, said that in United
Nations, he "stood up and said loud and clear, 'America respects Islam.' And we
do."
But it's a statement that, according to Muslims, is outweighed by other
messages tied to the Bush administration that have hurt. At the hate crimes
task force meeting, Rana suggested that a television ad by the Washington-based
Progress for America was demeaning and frightening for American Muslims.
The ad, which ran only in Missouri and nationally on Fox News Channel, features
a retired three-star general, who says over film of a plane flying into the
World Trade Center, Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda training camps "these people
want to kill us because we're Americans."
Along with another so-called 527 group a type of tax-exempt organization Swift
Boat Veterans for Truth, Progress for America gained fame in the months before
the 2004 elections for its ties to the Bush-Cheney campaign.
Asked if her group was worried that American Muslims may be offended by its
ads, Progress for America spokeswoman Nicole Philbin said that "the images on
the ad are of terrorists committing terrorism." Philbin said the ads were
purely about the issue of terrorism and "had nothing to do with politics."
And yet the ad suggests to some Muslims that election-year politics are at
least partly to blame for Muslims' increasing discomfort.
"It's possible that those who want a tougher stance on terrorism and against
Muslims have felt election campaigns might benefit from bringing this issue to
the forefront," said Khaled Hamid, a member of the St. Louis chapter of the
Council on American-Islamic Relations.
It's not just leaders of countries who have upset some Muslims of late. While
giving a lecture in Germany in mid-September, the pope quoted a 14th-century
emperor who said Islam's influence was evil and was spread by violence. The
pope repeatedly apologized over the hurt his remarks caused. Last week he met
with Muslim leaders from around the world, but some Muslims have refused to let
the issue die.
Reaction among St. Louis Muslims to the pope's comments was more subdued, and
Catholics and Muslims alike cited a history of dialogue as the reason. The Rev.
Vincent A. Heir, director of the St. Louis Archdiocese's office for ecumenical
and interreligious affairs, said Archbishop Raymond Burke had sent a letter to
local Muslim leaders, wishing them Ramadan greetings and enclosing a full text
of Benedict's lecture. Heir said plans were in the works for Burke to visit
Daar-ul-Islam mosque in west St. Louis County soon.
Early last month, the Interfaith Partnership of Metropolitan St. Louis narrowly
averted a community-wide Muslim boycott when it invited Abraham Foxman,
national director of the Anti-Defamation League, to speak at its 20th
anniversary dinner.
In mid-September, the FBI raided the home in Columbia, Mo., of a former
engineering professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia. The former
professor, Shakir Abdul-Kaf Hamoodi, said the agents were interested in his
connection to an Islamic charity in Michigan that was also raided the same day.
The search of Hamoodi's home came three days after a community meeting at which
area Muslims raised concerns about racial profiling.
Also early last month, at a town-hall meeting at Daar-ul-Islam with four FBI
agents from the bureau's St. Louis division, about 100 members of the mosque
conveyed a sense of wariness and weariness for more than 2 1/2 hours as they
launched question after question about telephone wire taps, hate speech on
local radio, airport harassment and computer surveillance at the FBI agents.
Sheikh Mohammad Nur Abdullah, the mosque's former imam who opened its doors to
the FBI in the weeks and months after Sept. 11, 2001, seemed to speak for many
in the crowd when he told the agents that after five years of doing all they
could as a community to be helpful to the government in its effort to combat
terrorism, St. Louis Muslims were growing increasingly frustrated that they
were still being treated as suspects in that same effort.
At the end of August, a thousand people about half of them Jewish and half
Christian, according to organizers attended a screening of the movie
"Obsession: What the War on Terror is Really About" at the Frontenac Hilton
Hotel. The group's sponsors promoted the movie with a provocative billboard
featuring a dark-skinned man whose head was wrapped in a kuffiyeh and the
words, "Confessions of a Terrorist."
The terrorist in question was Walid Shoebat, who said he was a former member of
the Palestine Liberation Organization. Shoebat appeared in the hour-long movie
and then spoke to the audience.
Muslims who were there said they were horrified by what they believed was the
movie's inference that Islam, terrorism and Nazism were one and the same,
despite a disclaimer that ran at the beginning and end of the movie that said
"most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror."
Far more upsetting, they said, was the reaction of the audience.
Writing in "The American Muslim" two weeks after the screening, Manji said
those Muslims who attended were "still experiencing physical and emotional
distress primarily due to the positive reaction of the audience including
applause and standing ovations and to some of the hateful comments we overheard
from individuals sitting around us."
Fatemeh Keshavarz, head of Washington University's department of Asian and Near
Eastern Languages, who was at the screening, said: "This was hate speech, pure
and simple. ... being in that room, I felt threatened."
The movie was made by Honest Reporting, "a grassroots movement dedicated to
ensuring that Israel receives fair media coverage," according to its website.
Honest Reporting is an arm of Aish HaTorah, an orthodox Jewish education
network based in Jerusalem.
Richard Senturia, executive director of Citizens for a Just and Lasting Peace
in the Middle East, which co-sponsored the screening, said that the Muslims who
attended "saw what they saw and heard what they heard. I'm not going to deny
their feelings."
Karen J. Aroesty, the Anti-Defamation League's regional director for Missouri
and Southern Illinois, was also in the "Obsession" audience and said she was
disturbed by what she saw in the crowd's reaction. She is now working with
Muslims on an effort to re-screen "Obsession," but this time to also provide a
forum for people to discuss their feelings about the movie.
"Frankly, things are getting out of hand," Aroesty said about the sequence of
events that have frightened many St. Louis Muslims. "All these things happen,
and they converge in different ways in a community like St. Louis."
Many Muslims said they recognized that most of their fellow Americans wished
them nothing but happiness and peace. Several told stories that clearly touched
them about Jewish and Christian friends and neighbors who have gone out of
their way to comfort them in the last few months.
"Americans must learn more about Islam so they can understand the differences
and defuse the hate and misdirected anger," said Ishmael-Lateef Ahmad. "Given
an opportunity, Americans will investigate and learn and, as time goes on, that
will help."
