When Will The President Elect Stand by Muslim Americans?
November 23, 2008
On November 4th 2008, Yasmin Dwedar, a young Muslim from Brooklyn, was emotionally watching the acceptance speech of the candidate she had casted her vote for and in whom she had invested all the hope for a better future for her country. The speech, however, left a bittersweet impression on her, as the elected president did not mention Muslims or Arabs as part of this diverse America who voted for what he called “change.”
Muslims throughout America have felt alienated more acutely during this last presidential campaign where attacks and slurs were made against Barack Obama, who was believed by many to be a closeted Muslim because of his middle name, Hussein. Instead of defending the Muslim Community, Obama preferred to play a safe card and dissociated himself from them by saying, “I am Christian.
Dwedar believes that the attacks against Obama, and his responses, are a perfect example of what alienates Muslims from the American mainstream.
“That feeling of being a target is so unexplainable. It’s this horrible feeling on the inside of anger, hurt and frustration,” said Dwedar.
What this really means beyond politics is that “Muslim” alone is now an insult in the United States and Islam is now almost automatically connected with terrorism, fear, and danger. In the minds of many people, being a Muslim means being some bloody, violent, America-hater fundamentalist. According to Louis Cristillo, a Columbia University Professor specialized in the Middle East, in the United States, people associate Islam with violence and terrorism, and Muslims are seen as fanatics and opressors of women and utlimately are seeking to destroy the West.
A July Pew Research survey revealed that 12% of Americans were convinced that Barack Obama was Muslim. The Republican Party encouraged this misperception. For Example, the McCain campaign released a negative ad about Obama’s foreign policy agenda where they placed his face in front of a map of Iran, while playing music that sounded like a Muslim call to prayer.
At a republican campaign rally in Lakeville, Minn., a woman stood up and, with disgust, told John McCain that Barack Obama was “an Arab.” John McCain said “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.” Many Arabs were struck by the fact that it was assumed that being Arab was a terrible thing and the Senator did not even address that prejudice.
For Dwedar, the whispering campaign about Obama’s Muslim Background brought back her painful experience of being a Muslim in an American high school. While high school is for many a time of socializing and encouragement, for Yasmin Dwedar, a veiled Muslim born in the United States, it was a time of adversity and triumph as she found herself defending her religious principles.
Dwedar, 22, of Bay Ridge, has a story that symbolizes the struggles faced by many Muslims in the United States. Her two-year fight started in 2000 when she was an elected officer of her school’s student government. When she refused to participate at a school dance the students were organizing that conflicted with her faith, she was forced to resign from her position. Rather than give up, though, she took legal action against her Bay Ridge school, leading the administrators to change their rules and let her serve as an officer without compromising her religious beliefs.
“I felt like the school system had failed me,” said Dwedar. “It was telling me to give up on what I was standing for.”
Dwedar is Muslim and still believes she can accomplish great things even if there are many obstacles in her way.
She has worn a veil since she was five years old. She studied at an Islamic school in New Jersey until junior high school and then transferred to Fort Hamilton High School in Bay Ridge.
During her freshman year, she ran for a secretary position in her student government and, to her surprise and delight, won. During the first month of school, the student government started organizing the first dance. When her peers asked her if she was attending the dance, Dwedar said she would help organize, but couldn’t go for personal reasons, “We [Muslims] don’t do things like that, said Dwedar. “Dancing involves a lot of things: the room is dark, there is music, and people are all over each other doing things.”
The coordinator of student affairs, who supervised the student government, told her that she had to attend the dance or else resign from her position. Dwedar was crushed and desperate and ultimately resigned after realizing that it would be impossible to come to an arrangement with the school.
She continued, “I was crying all the time. My world was shattered. I felt like I wasn’t going to make it anywhere because I was Muslim.”
The following year, Dwedar decided to run again for the position of president for her school’s student government, but this time got in touch with a pro bono lawyer who filed a lawsuit against the school, which agreed to allow officers to miss certain events under special circumstances such as religious obligations.
Zohra Saed is another young Muslim who often feels powerless against the attacks Muslims have been subjected to.
A few weeks ago, Saed was walking in the lower east side in Manhattan. It was a normal day in New York with a lot of activity in the streets. In front of the Sunshine Theater, she was struck by the screening of a racist movie called “The third Jihad,” a movie on radical Islam that was mainly distributed in swing states during the campaign. She could not believe that a movie like was screened in New York City, a haven for all religions and cultures. She told the woman who was handing out flyers for the free screening that it was not right to show such a racially insulting movie, to which the woman responded with a slur of violence and racist comments. The woman called her a terrorist and yelled out many times “Tell your people their time has come!”
Zohra Saed is a literature professor at Hunter College in New York. She was born in Afghanistan and moved to the United States with her family at the age of five. She has always felt American but often feels like an outsider through the way some people see her.
Her most traumatic memory was after the Gulf War. Her family constantly got prank calls of people saying, “I am going to kill you.” She was in high school at the time and in the dark locker room, girls would pick on her, push her and yell out “baby killer! Baby killer!” she said. “I would just stand up defenseless and cry.”
Saed witnessed a change in the way Muslims were viewed. A negative one. “Every day it’s more and more difficult to be a Muslim in the country,” she said.
She feels so powerless in changing the prejudices against Muslims that sometimes she considers moving to another country. “I am always defensive because I say my name and people step back,” she said. “I want to move away for a few years and come back when things are better or maybe just hide in my apartment.”
Saed is not sure of how Muslims can get accepted and not seen as extremist radicals by a significant portion of Americans. However, she is proud of who she is and never hides her origins or her religion to be accepted. “I don’t want to change my name because my face won’t change anyway,” she said. “I feel not wanted, just like in high school.”
Teaching became her way to exorcise her frustration. She engages her students into talking about their perceptions of Muslims and Arabs and opens their mind about prejudices they may have. “Teaching was therapeutic for me,” she said. “It is the only outlet I have to fight back.”
Saed had lost hope for acceptance of Muslims until the former secretary of State, Colin Powell, clearly stood up for the Muslim community. On “Meet the Press,” he told Tom Brokaw that he was troubled by what other Republicans, not McCain, had said: “‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?”
“After being depressed for days [after the incident in front of the Sunshine Theater], I finally felt better when Colin Powell defended Muslims,” Saed said.
“Political Correctness was granted to the Muslim Community at that moment,” said Professor Cristillo on Powell’s stance.
Zeba Khan is the founder of the Muslim American for Obama organization, she is fighting back with taking action. She thinks that the best response Muslims should have is to get actively involved in their communities in order to show that they are citizens like everyone else. She thinks more Muslims should run for office and get influential positions in order to defend themselves.
“People don’t know Muslims and that is why they can be racist,” she said. “Mainstream Muslims need to stand up and change their image.”
Another Muslim activist, Zeba Iqbal, also thinks Muslims have the ability to change the general misconceptions that the public might have. “We need to look at our behavior,” she said. “We need to clarify what we believe in.” Iqbal has helped several non-profits encourage more Muslims to register to vote for the elections because she thinks their voices need to be heard more.
Mokhtar Ghambou teaches literature at Yale University. He is from Morocco and has lived in the United States for over 15 years. He believes that it is the government’s responsibility to defend and protect the Muslim community.
“What is at stake here is less the defense of an anxious community than the capacity of our government and public institutions to protect the civil rights of American minorities,” he said.
Both Saed and Dwedar are skeptical about president-elect Obama standing up for Muslims after he is in office. However, Professor Cristillo is optimistic about the integration of Muslims in America.
“From the post-election reactions, my feeling is that people are going to be more sensitive and accepting of Arabs and Muslims in the United States,” he said.