Muslim-Americans in Mainstream America
by: Nihad Awad
February - March
2000
The Link - Volume 33, Issue 1
"Hello, I am with the Council on American-Islamic Relations here in Washington," I introduced myself to a former diplomat at a Washington reception. "Yes, we need one!" he responded.
When CAIR first opened its cramped, two-person office on K Street in June 1994, we inherited two great challenges. The first was the negative image of Islam and Muslims in the American media, and the multifaceted effect that negative image had on public perception and public policy. More daunting was the second challenge: the lack of interest and motivation among Muslims themselves to do anything about it.
I can still hear the skeptical reaction of those we contacted in the first few days. "Good luck," some unenthusiastically said. "Welcome to the club," said a frustrated D.C. activist when our office opened. "Do we really need another organization?" commented another.
Many believed that a Muslim organization could not work in Washington, D.C. and still maintain its integrity. "It doesn't sound promising," many people said to us. "Tread carefully--you have to fit in." "They'll change you before you even dream of getting your foot in the door," warned another frustrated D.C. activist. It was quite discouraging to realize that those we looked to for support had only predictions of failure for us. We understood their pessimism, born of frustration, but we were determined to move forward and build bridges of understanding.
SEEING THE OTHER SIDE
In a recent CNN Crossfire interview, Mary Matalin asked me if I had any personal prejudices of the West or of Americans. I said I did, but added that once I came to America and met Americans, I found my prejudices to be just that --- prejudices. Which is what I am trying to do now: to help Americans see that prejudices they may have against Muslims are equally false and hurtful.
I came to America from Jordan in 1984 as a student and quickly realized how misunderstood Islam was. Although the anecdotes I relate here are personal, they are typical experiences of thousands of Muslims who came to America from other countries.
On the University of Minnesota campus, our biggest challenge was the ignorance regarding the basics about Islam, now the second largest religion in the world, with a billion-plus adherents. It was generally assumed that Allah was the Arabic deity, something vague and Asian. Didn't He have something to do with those people in India?
Certainly Allah was nothing like the Almighty familiarly worshipped in church, and few realized that Muslims shared any spiritual heritage with Christians. It was rare indeed to find anyone who knew that Allah was simply the Arabic word meaning God with a capital G.
Frequently, as a representative of the Muslim Students’ Association, I would receive requests to speak at area schools, especially in times of international political crises. While I appreciated the opportunity to share information, it also brought home the amount of misinformation found even in textbooks. Basic concepts and terms were routinely wrong.
"Mohammedanism" was a common misnomer. This term is wrong because it is based on the assumption that Muslims worship Muhammad as Christians worship Christ. Muslims abhor the term because it implies that Muhammad, a human being, is elevated to the position of godhead, a violation of strict Islamic monotheism.
I always bore in mind that the high school students being educated by poorly researched and poorly conceived textbooks were destined to become America's future leaders. They would rise to positions of responsibility crippled by the cliches that Islam was a primitive, reactionary dogma, spread by the sword by violent fanatics.
It dawned on me that Islam, in the 1980s, was seen in the United States through the myopic lens of the Middle East (more precisely, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). Its global presence, the history and contributions of its civilization, and its spiritual richness were all completely unknown.
I began to understand the inflammatory images I saw on television, the superficial reports and the attitudes shared by most of the public about Islam and its followers. They were rooted, I realized, in a lack of knowledge.
FIRST TIME IN A CHURCH
One invitation to speak about Islam I remember vividly. It came from a church located in a remote, rural community. As I drove out into the countryside I was moved by the fact that this small community wanted to learn about my religion.
As the brick church with its steeple came into sight and I entered a church for the first time in my life, the warmth of the congregation genuinely touched me.
My speech started with basics and ended with basics. The audience had many questions. I was the first Muslim to ever address them. To my surprise and pleasure, I found the audience was receptive. Surely we have to share the information we have, I thought! The questions these people had in their minds had been hanging for decades, and we had to answer them.
Many Muslims from my community began to be frequent guest speakers in schools and churches. Yet it soon became apparent that, while individual Muslim volunteers were generous with their time, there was no Muslim institution that we could turn to for resources or support. Other communities had spokespeople to present their views in the public forum, while not a single national voice could be heard giving a Muslim perspective, and not one major Muslim organization existed to monitor the insults and distortions about Islam that appeared in U.S. newspapers, magazines and television coverage.
Big conventions have been held annually for Muslim students and families in the Midwest since the 1960s, but their focus was on internal-spiritual development, community affairs, and the problems of Muslims abroad; they did not devote a lot of time to bridge-building in America.
Some of us suggested holding workshops at the conventions on how to work with the media. "Muslims and the Media" seminars became standard fare at large gatherings. Concerned Muslims in various cities tried to pierce the oppressive atmosphere which smothered them. One of the first coordinated efforts was a "Muslim Media Watch," which issued a newsletter and responded to unfair reporting and television villainization of Arabs, and by extension, Muslims. Islamic communities attempted to protest their stereotyping but their input was largely ignored.
The sense of injustice felt by Muslims at this portrayal of their beloved faith, their source of strength and serenity, mutated into a sense of hopelessness and despair. Many Muslims distrusted the media and assumed that it was ideologically dedicated to defaming Islam and Muslims.
The Gulf War, though tragic for the Middle East, proved catalytic for the Muslim community in America. The public sought out local Muslims and Middle Eastern people to provide insight into the events behind the headlines. Muslim Americans were forced out of their lethargy when they became targets of anti-Arab sentiment. Threatening, vulgar calls appeared on the answering machines of mosques and Islamic centers. Our Muslim Students’ Organization received many. Stones were thrown through the windows of immigrants' shops. Reporters, covering stories of harassment and intimidation of local Muslims and Arabs, realized that residents with Middle Eastern ties were being singled out unjustly.
Muslims with the surname Hussein became special targets. One mother, her sons taunted at school, her tires slashed and her home vandalized, was spurred into becoming a leading community activist.
Muslims felt very much marginalized. It was obvious that problems facing the Muslim community were national in scope. They affected not only the Islamic community but also the entire country. Volunteer efforts, no matter how valiant, would not be enough. Local efforts, no matter how sincere, could not encompass a national problem.
CAIR OPENS
My experiences as a newcomer to this country had convinced me that Americans are a fair, open-minded people, but largely uninformed about Islam and Muslims. I also saw that they were being deliberately misled about Middle Eastern affairs. I felt that Muslims needed to take their message about who they were and what they believed directly to the public.
After the Gulf War was over, I was offered a job with the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) as their public relations director. Since many Americans had been exposed to only one side of the story, my responsibility was to explain the Palestinian experience to the public and the media. In this effort I worked closely with IAP president Omar Ahmad.
Omar, however, had the insight to realize that the central issue facing the Muslim community in the United States was not being addressed. The core challenge, that of stereotyping and defamation, was having a devastating effect on our children and paralyzing adults from taking their due roles in civic affairs.
Omar suggested to me that we leave the IAP and concentrate on combating anti-Muslim discrimination nationwide. He proposed that I move to Washington, D.C., where any effective national effort would have to be based, while he tried to raise the seed money for the project.
I contacted my friend Ibrahim Hooper, a professional journalist and communications genius, and tried to persuade him to move to Washington and join the project.
Omar's vision and concern for Muslims in America coincided with Ibrahim's and my desire to take up the task. Ibrahim and I had worked together for years to help our local community reach out to its neighbors and we understood that individual initiatives were essential, but that they would never be as effective as a coordinated national effort.
So the three of us took a chance. We decided to try to bridge the chasm of ignorance between Muslims in America and their neighbors. We knew it was a simple prescription but one that would not be easy to apply.
In June 1994, we used a modest donation as a starting budget to open the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington, D.C. Ibrahim and I were the two first committed but uncertain staff members. As we prepared our bare, two-room office, we heard of the latest in a long line of insulting Hollywood potboilers. The humiliation was familiar to American Muslims and Arabs: "Delta Force," "Rambo," "Terrorist on Trial...". Here came another public degradation for Muslim families. "I've seen a preview for an upcoming Schwarzenegger movie with Arabs in it — as terrorists, of course," someone told us.
We took on the seemingly futile task of contacting 20th Century Fox to object to the negative stereotyping of Muslims suggested by the images in the movie's trailer: sweaty, swarthy, kuffiyeh-clad Arabs firing wildly into the air; enormous bombs wrapped in the American flag.
CAIR's first action alert, explaining the danger of the stereotypes in "True Lies," reached only a couple of dozen fax machines. But it was a start.
When we called 20th Century Fox, our concerns about stereotyping in the movie fell on deaf ears. For the first time, CAIR took its case to the community. At the film's Washington, D.C., premiere, we held an "informational picketing." The dozen people who stood outside the theater handing out information about Muslim objections to the film did not know that they were turning over a new leaf for Muslims in America. They were joined by Muslims in different cities in a coordinated national effort.
The modest but organized effort of Muslims nationwide generated enough media interest that 20th Century Fox felt compelled to call CAIR and offer a disclaimer on the film. This minor victory planted a badly needed seed of hope in Muslim hearts.
HUMOR YES, BIGOTRY NO
It was the photo of the Islamically-dressed woman on the greeting card that caught the eye of the mother and her sons browsing in the Hallmark store in Reston, Virginia.
The mother picked up the card and opened it. Inside she read: “So you‘re feeling like Shi‘ite. Don't Mecca big deal out of it." The reference was to the holy city of Mekka, the site of pilgrimage for all observant Muslims. But it was the reference to excrement, playing on the spelling of the name of Shi'ite Muslims, that was particularly insulting.
"This has got to stop," she resolved, and she became the first of many Muslim community members to contact CAIR about an offensive anti-Muslim product. We at CAIR responded by picking up the phone to request that the card’s manufacturer, Recycled Paper Greetings, recall the offensive card and offer an apology. I remember that no one bothered to return our calls.
When RPG finally deigned to contact us, they informed us that we had no sense of humor. "If we allow that kind of disrespect to go unchallenged," we reasoned, "then more companies, and thousands of consumers, will continue making degrading others into a profitable business."
A one-page action alert bearing a picture of the card was faxed to our list of less than 100 supporters and interested institutions. Some of the recipients circulated the alert in their mosques. Within two weeks, Illinois-based RPG received over 800 complaints, an overwhelming number if one considers that the company typically receives about 300 complaints per year.
Despite the strong response from Muslim community members, RPG was disinterested. They made it clear that they had no intention of withdrawing the card. Chicago newspapers picked up on the controversy when local Muslims, joining those in Virginia, Kansas, Minneapolis and elsewhere, began picketing greeting card stores which stocked the card. Muslim children joined their parents in the protests, carrying signs emblazoned with, "HUMOR YES! BIGOTRY NO!"
Not only Muslims were offended. A Lutheran minister became one of CAIR's earliest Christian allies when he joined in protesting RPG's lack of response by writing to them, "If the calls of our Muslim brothers and sisters fall on deaf ears, we are going to ask our church membership to boycott RPG products." Others join-ed him.
When RPG stonewalled, CAIR called for donations to distribute bumper stickers asking all people of conscience to boycott RPG. The community responded and promised to keep up the pressure.
Finally, after three months, RPG’s president called CAIR to say he was ready to sign an agreement which included an apology for the insulting nature of the card and its recall from stores. Those who had participated in this national campaign received this news with joy and relief. Their efforts had borne fruit. It also served to encourage those who had stood by watching skeptically to join in future efforts.
The following month, a Texas businessman who had seen the results of the campaign against RPG called CAIR to complain about a software ad placed in a business magazine by Timeslips Corporation, the world‘s number maker of time and billing software products. In the ad photo, worshippers prostrated in Muslim prayer toward a box of software. CAIR contacted Timeslips and was told by their marketing manager that the ad was already paid for, that it would appear eleven more times, and that the company had no intention of dropping it.
Then Timeslips found that the news clippings CAIR faxed them about the successful RPG campaign focused their thinking. Half an hour after the faxes were sent, a company representative called, ready to talk. Initially, he offered to brush the prayer rugs out of the photo ad, but in the end he decided to cancel the contract altogether.
It was the impact of the three-month-long RPG campaign that brought this one to a successful conclusion after only a few days.
“NEXT I'LL HAVE INDIANS COMING IN WANTING TO WEAR FEATHERS”
Islam, while simple in its conception (that there is only One God, and Muhammad is the last of His many prophets), can seem tricky to implement in America. It demands certain etiquettes, like modest codes of dress, avoidance of social gatherings involving alcohol, and specified acts of worship from its followers. These disciplines provide spiritual satisfaction and inner peace to Muslims, but are not familiar to many of their acquaintances of other faiths. This misunderstanding can lead to friction.
"Fatima" was overjoyed when the manager told her she had gotten the desk clerk position. "Come in tomorrow morning," he said. "I'll be there!" she replied. "Come in at nine a.m., and without the headpart," he added. Her joy turned to dismay. "I can't! I can't!" Just as quickly as she had been hired, she was fired.
The Virginia Quality Inn hotel manager certainly couldn't have foreseen the nationwide support that the Muslim lady received after he fired her for refusing to come to work without her religiously-mandated headscarf. And the reason he gave only underscored his lack of knowledge: "If I let her come in with her head covered, next thing you know I'll have Indians coming in here wanting to wear feathers!"
Clearly he not only didn’t know about Islam, he also didn't realize that "Fatima's" right to wear a scarf over her hair at work is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Courts have repeatedly upheld the right to wear religiously-mandated clothing, such as a Muslim hijab, or headscarf, on the job.
Only after the Quality Inn manager saw a nicely arranged news conference in front of his hotel and after he received a call from Quality Inn's national headquarters did he begin to feel more flexible. In the end, "Fatima" received an apology, financial compensation, and the invitation to begin her clerk's job, scarf and all.
"Fatima's" hijab case became the precedent that produced many fruitful efforts across the country to preserve the Muslim woman's right to work and to express her religious identity. The hijab is now well-respected in major cities, where it is a familiar sight on Muslim clerks, cashiers, and physicians.
This right also extends to the beard worn by many committed Muslim men and the need to attend weekly Jumuah prayer services (Friday prayer). The courts have protected one's right to practice sincerely-held religious beliefs. Even when some workers do not practice their religion, the employer is required to respect the rights of those who do.
CAN'T YOU PRAY LATER?
"Can't you just pray when you go home? Can't you do your prayers on the weekend?" asked the puzzled assembly line supervisor in Suwanee, GA. Why did the Muslim employees have to pray during their shift? And why did these struggling blue-collar workers care enough about saying their prayers at certain times to resign from their jobs, en masse, when the company refused to let them use ten minutes of their hurried lunch breaks to pray? It was all too much for him to understand.
The truth was that these employees, all recent immigrants, needed their jobs and had been exemplary workers. But as Muslims, they were committed to the five daily prayers that are a minimum requirement for all believers. If they worked the day shift, this meant that they needed ten or 15 minutes during the afternoon to wash themselves, stand facing Mekka, and focus exclusively on God while they recited His praises. Any worker who postponed his prayer until he punched out would betray the fundamentals of his faith: "Prayers are prescribed for believers at assigned times" (Qur'an 4:103).
Yet the workers were not asking for special privileges. They were willing to deduct the time needed for prayers from their lunch breaks, and they covered for each other on the assembly line. The difficulty was that the managers did not see any need to accommodate their Muslim workers' worship whatsoever. Prayer is private, they reasoned, not something to be carried on in the workplace!
What the managers at Solectron, the world’s largest electronics manufacturing services company, failed to comprehend is that skipping or delaying the prayers is not an option for a practicing Muslim. According to an authentic saying of the Prophet Muhammad, the difference between a Muslim and a non-Muslim is precisely the performance of the daily prayers. To leave one's prayers is to leave one's faith.
CAIR was able to negotiate with Solectron on behalf of the employees and reach a settlement which benefited both the company and the workers. The employees were allowed to return to work and were compensated for days missed. Prayers could be said during break times, and management would receive sensitivity training about Islam. The return for the company, which has a 10% Muslim workforce worldwide, was higher productivity, improved worker morale and loyalty — and an enhanced corporate image.
Muslims realize full well how their prayers are viewed and portrayed. Thanks to Hollywood, and careless TV news editors who use video of mosques and their praying congregations to frame stories of violence in the Islamic world, Muslim prayer is often viewed negatively and with fear. Just consider the impression left with the millions of American moviegoers who watched the leader of a gang of hijackers in “Executive Decision,” a popular film, take a break after murdering passengers in order to say his prayers to "Allah." Millions more have watched similar scenes in other movies.
The implication of these negative portrayals for Muslims is that meeting one's prayer obligations can be fraught with anxiety. When outside the home, it can be difficult to find an area unobtrusive enough to carry out one's worship.
In one case handled by CAIR, a Muslim trucker who chose a quiet spot outside a truck stop to begin his prayers was confronted by a security guard demanding he cease and desist at once. When the driver continued his worship, the security guard moved beyond verbal abuse to put a dead bird on the ground where the driver would bow in prayer.
What enabled this truck driver to complete his prayer in the face of such hostility? First and foremost, the security guard's animosity was not a total surprise to the truck driver, who managed to persist in his prayer while being screamed at. He understood that it was an environment fueled by stereotypes that had produced such malice. He also took action, phoning CAIR to report the incident.
CAIR receives at several such cases every day in its office. In order to prevent unnecessary episodes of tension and misunderstandings between Muslim employees and their managers, CAIR published a small booklet called An Employer's Guide to Islamic Religious Practices. The Guide is designed to introduce and explain the main issues that employers and co-workers should know about their Muslim associates.
The five daily prayers, Jumah prayer (the weekly Friday service), Islamic dress, the Islamic calendar and fasting in the month of Ramadan are all covered in the booklet. Hundreds of major companies have requested the booklet since its review in several major newspapers and the nation's largest human resources publication, Work Ethics. It is available by calling CAIR's information number, 1-800-78-ISLAM.
An Educator's Guide to Islamic Religious Practices is the second book in the series and was also well-received. It is a brief guide useful to school administrators, teachers and counselors which covers the problems most often faced by Muslim students: hijab (the Muslim headscarf), physical education classes (which pose dilemmas like group showering, co-ed dancing and skimpy uniforms), fasting in the month of Ramadan, unexcused absences on Muslim holidays, and diet (Muslims are prohibited from eating pork). The Guide is also used by many Muslim families to explain their concerns to teachers.
CAIR has grown since its humble beginnings in 1994 to represent the diversity that is the Muslim community in the United States. It is a multi-ethnic American organization serving a wide range of people. Workers at CAIR come from every imaginable group, including but not limited to Arab, Pakistani, African-American, European-American, Iranian, Chinese, Kenyan and Malaysian heritages. The constituency CAIR represents is even broader.
CAIR has become the nation's leading Muslim advocacy and civil rights group. Many Muslims turn to it for help when facing job or religious discrimination. CAIR has a successful track record of negotiating amicably, enjoying huge community support and taking conflicts to a win-win resolution.
CAIR is able to help companies with personnel issues, explaining the need to respect workplace diversity. It helps them avoid unnecessary misunderstandings, whether in the workplace or the global market, and prevent the bad publicity that often accompanies them.
CAIR also has a mandate to explain Islamic perspectives on important issues to the American public. It provides information on Islamic religious beliefs, practices and culture to news media, government, private industry, and other interested parties.
At present CAIR has 19 full-time employees in its national office and has also six regional offices. Dozens of chapters are located across the country. It is supported by volunteers in 2000 mosques coast to coast.
BETTER MEDIA COVERAGE, MORE NEEDED
Information about Islamic religious practices was often hard to come by in the past. Since 1995, Americans have been able to learn more about Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, because of a Ramadan publicity kit released annually for the last five years.
The first year, the kit was distributed to mosques, media outlets and community activists. 314 articles about fasting in Ramadan appeared in local and national newspapers. This number has grown steadily as local communities forge new ties with reporters and media outlets. By 1998 over 1300 articles appeared along with dozens of TV and radio reports covering Ramadan and local Muslim activities.
CAIR also initiated a Mosque Open House project, encouraging Muslim congregations to hold open houses for their communities. Many mosques have done so during the month of Ramadan, sharing international foods and crafts along with information. Anyone interested in visiting or touring a mosque should call that institution to make arrangements.
Hundreds of Muslim activists have attended media and public relations seminars conducted by CAIR across the country and have been able to put their training to good use, representing their communities and becoming commentators on issues.
RUSH TO JUDGMENT: EGYPTAIR 990
Recent events plainly show such commentary is needed. EgyptAir 990's tragic crash into the Atlantic Ocean is still unexplained. The controversy over the investigation and the rush to scoop the story of "what really happened" in the cockpit caused additional, unnecessary pain to the families of the victims, including the large, close-knit family of Gameel Al-Batouti, the co-pilot who is reported to have been praying as the airliner plunged toward the ocean.
The manner in which the alleged prayer by Al-Batouti was released and interpreted reminded many of us of the way Jordanian-American Ibrahim Ahmad was seized in London's Heathrow airport the day of the Oklahoma City bombing. The common denominator in the two incidents is the readiness of investigators and the public to assume the guilt of Muslims and Arabs.
Given the history of racism in American society, this practice of assigning guilt is all too familiar. Of the hundreds of travelers of various appearances and ethnicities who flew out of Oklahoma City's airport that fateful morning, Ibrahim Ahmad was selected simply because of his Muslim-sounding name.
Ibrahim Ahmad did not commit any suspicious acts on that morning. He was guilty only of "flying while Muslim." His name was released to the media, and a case began to be custom-tailored against him. The gifts he was carrying to his family in Jordan, including silverware and a video cassette recorder, morphed into "bomb-making tools" in media reports.
Back home in Oklahoma City, Ibrahim's wife also felt the weight of the false accusation. On the street, people spat on her and her young daughter. Others dumped garbage in her yard. For their own safety, the wife and daughter went into hiding.
In the meantime at Heathrow airport, Ibrahim was being interrogated. Humiliated, strip- and cavity-searched, he was forced to remain naked in the interrogation room. He was prevented from calling his family and even using the bathroom.
His first realization of why he had been singled out came only when, being escorted through the crowded airport in handcuffs, he looked up to the television monitor to see CNN broadcasting images of the shell of the destroyed Federal Building.
CAIR stepped in to defend the Muslim community against the rising anti-Muslim, anti-Arab hysteria. While CAIR staffers were busy receiving reports from Muslims harassed or attacked (Arab American churches and Sikhs were also among the victims), I flew to Oklahoma City to deal with the situation on the ground.
While delivering $21,000 in Muslim donations for the relief effort to Oklahoma Governor Keating, we urged officials to condemn the anti-Muslim backlash. We also helped an Iraqi refugee family that was among the victims of hate, and we ensured that Muslims were represented at the memorial service.
Why was Ibrahim Ahmad singled out? Many people assume the worst when they see an Arab or Muslim. Certainly, Hollywood has done much of the damage, introducing the Muslim and Arab world as backward, violent and misogynistic.
Unfortunately, a great deal of this damage is deliberate. For years now, spinmeisters wishing to turn the reporting of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to their advantage, have willfully distorted the facts. Knowing the misconceptions about Islam and Muslims prevalent in America, they have exploited and amplified them in order to portray Israel's history as that of a righteous underdog, hated and attacked by irrational enemies. In the past, the negative focus was on Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. With the rising visibility of the American Muslim community, that focus has widened to include Islam.
Several Hollywood thrillers have associated Islam with terrorism. The common thread in such movies as "Executive Decision," "True Lies," and "The Siege," is the terrorist who invokes Allah before slaughtering (in Hollywood-speak) "the infidels."
No wonder the prayer spoken by EgyptAir co-pilot Al-Batouti, Tawakaltu ala Allah, ("I trust in God") now serves as an index of criminal intent. But this leap, which may seem logical to one accustomed to Hollywood thrillers, triggered an angry reaction against the investigators, the American media, and the U.S. government not only from the Egyptian government, but from Muslims worldwide, including the Arab press and the American Muslim community.
Although it is disturbing to see how a single unnamed source in the government can trigger a media frenzy by leaking the words "Muslim prayer," nearly setting off an international incident, progress has been made since the high emotions of the Oklahoma bombing.
In Oklahoma City, for example, where passions were most intense, the home of Iraqi refugees was stoned by people angered by the bombing. Led by the media, they assumed the explosion was the work of Arabs. The young wife and mother living in the house was so terrified by the shouted curses, squealing tires, and rocks crashing through her windows that, as she ran to hide in the bathroom with her child, the trauma caused her to miscarry her near-term baby.
The parents named the unfortunate infant Salaam ("peace"), and buried it in the Muslim tradition.
The horrible period following the Oklahoma City bombing, when false accusations against American Muslims and Arabs dominated the news for two days, is branded on the American Muslim psyche. Over 200 incidents of hate crimes and harassment were documented by CAIR in that time period. It is a lesson we will not soon forget. (CAIR’s Report, “Rush to Judgment,” documents some of the hate crimes committed against Muslim community centers and individuals in the hysteria following the Oklahoma City bombing.)
From the very first hours following the EgyptAir 990 crash, CAIR moved to prevent further pain to the families of the victims and to protect Muslims in the U.S. and abroad from unwarranted defamation.
I was watching the developing story of the crash hours after it occurred when I saw New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announce that he was at the JFK Ramada Hotel, comforting some of the families of the victims along with a priest and a rabbi. Noting the lack of Islamic clergy, I immediately called Ghazi Khankan, a friend and well-known community leader, and imam at the Islamic Center of Long Island. Ghazi was on his way to the hotel to help counsel the families. We asked others to join us. We knew a large number of the plane's passengers were Muslims.
Within hours I was in Long Island along with Imam Mohamed Al-Hanooti, a respected Islamic scholar, meeting with the families of the passengers. Many were sobbing uncontrollably. Others were in shock, not knowing what to say or do.
A good number of local imams and Muslim volunteers were on hand. At sunset, the fourth daily Muslim prayer was due: "God is the Most Great...God is the Most Great. I testify that there is nothing worthy of worship except God..." In barely audible voices, people began to repeat the words of the call to prayer after the muezzin.
We announced that the hotel had provided a special room for the prayer. As we gathered, Mayor Giuliani came in and offered his condolences to the families.
In front of the gathering, I thanked the Mayor for his careful public statement about the crash, in which he set a tone cautioning people not to speculate on its causes. I urged him to continue warning people against jumping to conclusions.
Minutes later, we announced the salat al-ghaib, or prayer service for the dead. Mayor Giuliani sent a representative to the hall asking for permission to join us. We welcomed him. The prayer lasted about five minutes. Family members of the victims stood behind the imam, praying to God to grant His forgiveness and mercy on their loved ones, and patience and forebearance on themselves.
Afterwards, Mayor Giuliani invited us to join him outside the hotel for his second news conference. As we walked out with him, surrounded by security men, we were met by a sea of cameras. The reporters were anxious, waiting for more information and reaction to the crash.
We assumed that we would watch the Mayor speak. He took the microphone and said, "We just finished a prayer service which was led by Imam Al-Hanooti. I introduce to you the imam."
On the spur of the moment, Imam Al-Hanooti said as he faced the cameras: "We believe what happened was the will of God. We offer our sincere condolences to all the families, and we pray God to forgive the deceased and to accept them in Paradise."
Throughout this tragedy, Imam Hanooti was instrumental in explaining Muslim etiquette and worship to reporters and family members. Reporters were not allowed to enter the hotel where families were housed, so they crowded around to interview us, curious to know what the mood and condition was of those inside. Television coverage conveyed some of the grief and faith of the families.
CAIR worked with local leaders to coordinate Muslim efforts. We became liaisons for the media, explaining what we did in the hotel to counsel and comfort the families. Many reporters began to discover more not only about the Muslim traditions, but the faith itself.
Journalists wanted to know whether families inside were coping. Many of the volunteers told reporters that the five daily prayers conducted in the room near the NTSB briefing hall were having a great impact on the families' reactions, because it made the bereaved feel linked to God.
We explained to the media that one of the meanings of being Muslim is to submit to the will of God and that what happened was a test of our faith in the Almighty. Reporters from national networks like CNN, CBS, ABC and FOX, and many others like the BBC, appreciated that we were willing to talk to them.
As we approached Friday noon, millions of people in America and around the world saw a Muslim Friday Prayer service for the first time, broadcast live from the Doubletree Hotel. About 150 family members and volunteers participated. Muslims were able to offer invaluable advice on how to conduct the interfaith memorial service held that weekend. We realized that the service needed to accommodate the religious sensibilities of all the families involved in the crash. Without Muslim advice, well-meaning officials and volunteers could easily offend the Egyptian government and people.
For instance, the participating chaplains planned religious music, assuming that the use of music was universal in worship services. We were able to explain that music is never used in Muslim worship and could indicate a lack of seriousness, or could be perceived as an affront by the Egyptian public. The chaplains concurred that our session together was educational. Although there were many mosques in the area, little was previously understood about Muslim customs.
Plans were drawn up to have a government official open and close the service, to avoid the appearance of favoring one religion over another. Religious music was omitted from the service for the same reason. A dignified and moving memorial was the result, appropriate and respectful to the faiths of all those lost on the flight.
As the investigation of the EgyptAir 990 crash progressed under the NTSB, we felt that our job was far from finished. When we heard the news that sabotage of the plane was a strong possibility and that the FBI would soon take over the investigation from the NTSB, our first question was, "Where was the evidence?"
The evidence, seemingly, was only that no mechanical failure was immediately apparent. That did not seem to point conclusively to sabotage. To our disbelief, the "evidence" of sabotage presented was a prayer the co-pilot supposedly had uttered. That prayer was the very same I heard pass the lips of many family members of the victims who had sought God's help over the previous five days.
"I trust in God" is the same prayer said every day when I and countless other Muslims walk out of our homes to go to work, and when we put the key in our car’s ignition. As a matter of fact, it is essentially the same as "In God We Trust" that is found on the American dollar bill.
Whoever decided that the prayer was the indication of an impending suicide and mass homicide understands neither the prayer nor the fact that suicide and prayer in Islam are contradictions in terms.
Firstly, it does not make sense because the prayer is one that would be recited by a believing Muslim. Suicide, on the other hand, is an act of disbelief. Putting the two together would be as incongruous as praying, "Dear God, please help me to mug this commuter!"
In trying to understand what led some people to conclude that prayer can provide probable cause for a criminal act, we realized that prayers, and the name of God, are rarely heard in America any more except in profanity or weekend services.
While "Glory be!" and "Praise the Lord" were at one time phrases not strange to the American ear, now they are not very commonly used in the daily affairs of most people. In contrast, the mention of God is a constant undercurrent in Muslim conversation, whether Egyptian, American, or Malaysian.
Alhamdu lillah (thanks be to God), Subhan Allah (glory be to God), Astaghfir Allah (may God forgive me), Masha Allah (God has willed it), and Insha Allah (God willing) are all staples of Muslim speech.
Roadsigns along the streets of Muslim countries proclaim Allahu Akbar (God is Most Great).
Any Muslim undertaking a task, (beginning a meal, opening a letter, or starting an important speech) will say Bismillah (in the name of God). Longer prayers are memorized for many occasions. The now infamous Tawakkaltu ala Allah is part of a supplication said while leaving the safety of the home: "In the name of God. I put my trust in God. There is no power or might except God's." In the Muslim culture, it is perfectly logical for the pilot to repeat part of this prayer while at the controls of the plane. The Muslim knows that there are no guarantees in life — the plane only remains airborne by God's permission.
Equally logical is that a man, facing death as his airplane dives out of control, should call on God in his struggle to control his fear. Newsweek magazine later reported that Al-Batouti repeated the prayer 14 times.
Some might curse as things get worse in a crisis situation. Many Muslims would invoke God repeatedly, especially if they feel they are losing control over events and death is near. It is an Islamic belief that one should meet God with a statement of faith as his last words.
FLYING WHILE MUSLIM
Only a few days after the EgyptAir crash, I was leaving an evening reception when I met two pale, shaken individuals at the main entrance.
"Are you Brother Nihad who works at CAIR?" asked one of them as I greeted him.
"Yes."
"Do you know what happened to us?"
"What?" I asked.
The man told me that both he and his friend were detained and interrogated in Columbus, Ohio, on the charge of trying to hijack the airplane they had been riding on.
I could not believe my ears.
"Our names are all over the world as suspects!" they said. "They showed it on CNN!"
Momentarily I thought I must be playing a part in a movie. Mohamed showed me his thumb, which was numb, and the red welts around his wrists where he had been handcuffed.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Nothing!" he stated emphatically. My blood started to boil as I heard their story.
Mohamed Al-Qubaiyeen and his friend Hamdan Al-Shalawy, both Ph.D. students in linguistics, were enjoying their trip from Phoenix, Arizona, to Washington, D.C. They were looking forward to a conference sponsored by their Saudi government and thought they might have some time to take in the sights of America's capital.
As they boarded the plane in Phoenix, they were anxious to know what time the plane would arrive in Washington. They asked the flight attendant and she told them.
As they were seated, they found that Mohamed was seated in the sixth row, but his friend Hamdan was all the way in the back of the plane, in the twenty-second row. They asked to be seated together.
The flight attendant said she would seat them together once all the passengers had boarded.
"Are more people coming on the plane?" Mohamed asked. He didn't know it at the time, but this was the fateful question which the flight attendant regarded as suspicious.
The flight attendant said she didn't know.
Eventually, after a wait, the two managed to be seated together. Their conversation, in Arabic, turned to their studies. They hoped to meet the president of Imam Mohamed bin Abdul Aziz University at the reception they were headed to. The school had been sponsoring their graduate studies in the U.S.
Their conversation, apparently, sounded dangerous to some people. After a while Mohamed needed to use the restroom. He walked to the front of the cabin, as he had seen another economy class passenger use that restroom shortly before.
He found a flight attendant blocking his way.
She told him he couldn't use that bathroom, as it was for first-class passengers only.
Thinking it a little odd, since he had just seen another woman use that bathroom, he turned without argument and went to use the bathroom in the tail section.
Mohamed didn't know his innocent trip to the rest room was the straw that broke the camel's back. Returning to his seat, he dozed off, as did Hamdan.
The pilot's announcement woke them up. They were scheduled to make a stop in Columbus, but the pilot told the passengers there would be a change in the usual landing procedures.
This time the plane followed an emergency landing procedure, taxiing to a distant part of the airport, far from the terminal.
"I had a weird feeling," Mohamed said, "when I looked out and saw police cars everywhere with their lights flashing."
Seconds after the door was opened, several police officers made their way down the aisle and asked Mohamed and Hamdan to stand up and turn around. They pulled the men's hands behind their backs roughly and handcuffed them, spun them around and pushed them down the aisle and out the open door of the plane.
Ninety passengers looked on in shock. More shocked were Mohamed and Hamdan. They were speechless as a police dog was ordered to sniff them. The dog didn't seem very interested in them, returning repeatedly to his handler, who repeatedly had to order him back to the two students.
Mohamed's and Hamdan's carry-on baggage was then dumped onto the grass so the dog could inspect it for explosives. Meanwhile, the two Ph.D. students were shoved handcuffed into the back of police cruisers.
They complained that the handcuffs were too tight. One officer said, "Okay, okay," — but he did nothing about it for two hours.
After spending two hours manacled in the back of the police car, while all the other passengers were evacuated from the plane, the two men were taken to interrogation rooms where they were grilled by FBI and FAA agents. Their rights were never read to them.
"Where did you enter the U.S.? When? What are you doing in the U.S.? Why did you come here?" Mohamed and Hamdan heard diatribes, ridiculous sounding to Muslim ears, about how the U.S. had supported Saddam Hussein but he turned against it, and about how lucky Muammar Qaddafi is to be alive today.
Hamdan protested, "We didn't do anything wrong! And we are from Saudi Arabia!"
"You're still from the Middle East!" retorted one of the agents. The agents went on to talk about the EgyptAir crash, the crazy world we live in, and that co-pilot business.
The episode lasted for about seven hours, during which time the two students were prevented from using the restroom. They were not allowed to make a phone call to their families or the seminar's organizers.
Mohamed and Hamdan were found to be blameless and were released that evening, but not before being told their names were now in the FBI headquarters database. "If you need information, there's a procedure for that," an agent told them helpfully.
When the pair walked out, they found the media waiting for them. As I listened to their story, I thought: Their crime was being Arab, speaking Arabic, asking questions which America West characterized as unusual, yet questions asked thousands of times every day by other travelers without precipitating emergency landings.
The next day, Mohamed and Hamdan tried to regain some control over their lives by telling their story at a CAIR news conference. We reiterated to the public and the other passengers on the flight that Mohamed and Hamdan had done absolutely nothing wrong.
Mohamed, fighting back tears, told the press, "We were victims of how we look and where we come from." Hamdan added, "It is very difficult to comprehend what happened to us. What kind of impression passengers were left with about us. What feeling will those bystanders have the next time they see a Muslim on a flight with them speaking Arabic?” The two students repeatedly expressed their dismay that children had witnessed the scene.
In our news conference we condemned this ugly case of racial profiling fueled by the atmosphere of speculation in reporting on the crash of EgyptAir 990. For their own protection, we asked Muslims not to fly America West, lest any other passenger be subjected to the same mistreatment and humiliation suffered by the two graduate students.
WE'VE BEEN HERE SINCE THE BEGINNING
Muslim presence in the Americas can conclusively be traced back to the 1500s, when the Spanish imported captured Ottoman sailors to work their galleys, and Moriscos fleeing the Spanish Inquisition brought Andalusian culture to the Spanish colonies.
Evidence suggests, however, that Muslims had a presence even before. Chroniclers relate that expeditions left both the West African Muslim empire of Mali and Moorish Spain and traveled to Western lands. Reports by Christopher Columbus and others of Muslim trade goods, lion skins and other artifacts in the Caribbean substantiate the histories.
Genetic testing has proved the Middle Eastern heritage of the Melungeon people of Appalachia. This group of mountain people from North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee may be descended from escaped Ottoman prisoners or abandoned Spanish garrisons.
Another wave of Muslims arrived with the advent of the African slave trade in the 1600s. This forced immigration continued to bring Muslims to America in significant numbers for over 200 years.
Although the African Muslims were forcibly prevented from practicing their Islamic religion, some of them left writings in Arabic (the language of education and books) which document their presence. The Islamic practices of others were recorded by their masters and passed down in the oral histories of their descendants.
Other echoes can be heard in their names. The condescending name Sambo is a derivative of the proud name of a second son, Samba, in an African Muslim language. Phyllis Wheatley, the African-American poet of the Revolutionary War period, was called Fatu in her homeland — a nickname for the Muslim popular girl's name, Fatima. One of the rebel leaders in the Seminole Wars was an African named Abraham (Ibrahim).
Despite the oppression and disenfranchisement that they suffered, the descendants of these enslaved Muslims kept the memory of Islam alive in America. This memory was expressed through socio-religious movements like the Moorish Science Temple and the Lost-Found Nation of Islam early in this century.
Immigrants from the Levant (Syria, Palestine and Lebanon), Bosnia and Albania were among the droves that came through Ellis Island in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They established mosques and small Islamic communities in the Dakotas, Iowa, New York and elsewhere. Chinese and Indian Muslims settled in California.
This immigration came to an abrupt halt in the 1930s when the culmination of a legal battle over the definition of "white" and a successful attempt to stem non-European immigration led to an act of Congress banning it. The passage of this legislation led to a decades long hiatus in immigration from the Muslim world and the continued isolation of African-American Muslims from their co-religionists.
All this changed in the 1960s with the repeal of the exclusionary law. A new period of Muslim immigration began as well-educated professionals flocked to America from the Indian subcontinent. They settled and became prosperous as doctors, engineers and scientists.
Many Arab students, having acquired American wives during their years of study, also settled down to raise a generation of American Muslim children. At the same time that these new immigrants founded institutions to preserve their Islamic religious heritage, Imam Warith Deen Muhammad disbanded the Nation of Islam in 1975, leading African-American Muslims into the Islamic mainstream.
In 2000, Muslims in America are a potpourri of ethnicities. Recent immigrants from the Horn of Africa and Kosovo rub shoulders in the prayer lines with second-generation Pakistani-Americans, converts of every complexion, Palestinians, Kurds, Cambodians and others from literally every corner of the globe.
THE FUTURE
Discrimination and stereotypes were once stumbling blocks for the American Muslim community. Their negative impact was one of the driving reasons behind the founding of CAIR. We did not want our children to feel that they had to hide their Muslim identities or change their names to survive.
CAIR has grown since its humble beginnings in 1994 to represent the diversity that is the Muslim community in the United States. Now the nation’s leading Muslim advocacy and civil rights group, it is a multi-ethnic American organization serving a wide range of people. Workers at CAIR come from diverse groups, including but not limited to Arab, Pakistani, African-American, European-American, Iranian, Chinese, Kenyan and Malaysian heritages.
CAIR’s constituency represents an even broader base. Many Muslims turn to it for help when facing job or religious discrimination
CAIR also has a mandate to explain Islamic perspectives on important issues to the American public. It provides information on Islamic religious beliefs, practices and culture to news media, government officials, private industry, and other interested parties.
At present CAIR has 19 full-time employees in its national office and it has six regional offices. Dozens of chapters are located across the country, with volunteers in 2,000 mosques coast to coast.
CAIR receives more than 1,000 requests for help every year from its constituency. It sometimes involves the community by organizing a public response, and this in turn raises the community's political consciousnesss. These campaigns and their positive results then lead more people to become involved.
This growing sense of optimism is helping CAIR to reach another of its goals: to create a healthy environment in which Muslims can thrive and take up their rightful places in American society. Their wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and experiences means that they have much to offer in the national dialogue. We look forward to a vibrant exchange of ideas.
CAIR's membership is open to anyone sharing its goals and mission. I invite you to learn more about CAIR through its publications, available from CAIR's national office (453 New Jersey Ave. SE, Washington, D.C. 20003-2604) or by visiting us at