SALT LAKE CITY (ABP) — Days before the five-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a panel of Muslims discussed media-perpetrated misperceptions of Islam and a “climate of negativity” in the United States — particularly concerning the war on terror.
Laila Al-Marayati, an activist with the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said civil liberties ranks as one of the most important topics for Muslims. Non-Muslims not only accept that Muslims will bear the brunt of civil liberty violations, she said, but they also expect Muslims to accept it as the price to pay for living in America.
Prolonged searches at airports, detainment without explanation, forced closures of charities and deportation are not acceptable, she said.
“The whole question today, five years after 9/11 is, ‘Are we safer?'” Al-Marayati said at the Sept. 8 discussion in Salt Lake City. “It's still kept at a rhetorical level, but nobody is really challenging a lot of these civil liberty violations that have taken place that have not resulted into any concrete changes that have made America safer.”
Lack of public outrage at this treatment, Al-Marayati said, stems mostly from superficial information and misinformation. A negative perception continues about Islam, and it often is revived on the anniversary of 9/11, she asserted.
The worst of it culminates in the phrase “Islamic fascism,” she said. That term, which President Bush used to describe conspirators in a foiled London bombing plot, creates fear and uncertainty “without a lot of information to balance it,” she said.
“One expression of this negativity is the deliberate perpetuation of the myth that the Muslims have not done enough to condemn 9/11 and to condemn Osama bin Laden and all acts of terrorism,” Al-Marayati said. “The facts are very obvious and very clear — every organization comes out with statements [condemning terrorism] ad nauseam … yet there continues to be this notion that is perpetrated and argued that [we] never said anything. So you're always put on the defensive, but that questioning remains in the minds of the American people.”
Omar Sacirbey, a correspondent for Religion News Service and former adviser for the Bosnian Mission to the United Nations, said Muslim-Americans and most Muslims worldwide have condemned terrorism, but Muslims still ask his advice on how to prove that condemnation to non-Muslims.
One way to demonstrate that Islam is not monolithic is to show that facets of it have existed for centuries, Sacirbey said. He's a Bosnian Muslim, and Muslims populate countries as varied as Indonesia, Egypt, and Turkey.
Plus, Al-Marayati said, the largest group of Muslims — 40 percent — is African-American and usually ignored when discussing the faith. And when asked about their reaction to the bombings, many Muslim-Americans wonder why they should feel any different than other Americans, she said.
“Most of us, we're Americans, so we don't have that kind of connection [with Muslim terrorists],” she said, adding that it is difficult to reason with “that kind of labeling that somehow we are connected [with the terrorists] and the wishful thinking that somehow we could influence those events and make them not happen.”
In fact, Asra Nomani said, a certain opening of dialogue within the Muslim community has benefited Muslims everywhere, especially those who do not identify with terrorists. Nomani, an Indian-American who worked for years at the Wall Street Journal and wrote Standing Alone In Mecca: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam, became the first woman in her West Virginia mosque to insist on the right to pray in the male-only main hall. She stressed that diversity within Islam actually serves non-Muslim Americans as they try to understand the culture and religion.
“There're a lot of battles within the community that I think American readers are better served hearing and seeing in great detail. … America wants to hear about the debate within Islam and within the Muslim community,” Nomani said. “They want to know that there are different voices within the community. And I think our Muslim world has benefited. It has actually evolved enough to the point where we can accept that there's dissent, and there's conflict, and there are various opinions.”
Both Nomani and Sacirbey mentioned several signs of a new dynamic within Islam — not the least of which are online Islamic dating sites, Islamic myspace.com accounts and Muslim-made T-shirts with edgy slogans on them, like “Product of an arranged marriage” and “I'm not a terrorist, I just look like one.”
What's more, Sacirbey has even befriended members of an Islamic boy band and a male Islamic hairdresser, who when asked about the difficulty of cutting hair covered by hijabs, said “Islam is less about what you wear and more about how you act.” Hijabs are scarves some Muslim women wear to cover their hair.
“We have heavy-metal Muslims,” Sacirbey said, also mentioning a Muslim punk band. “These are not some dumb punk-rock kids. … They are expressing their faith through music.”
That self-expression and debate about the inner workings of Islam come easier in America, where the “rule of law” protects them. Should that change, however, Muslims will look elsewhere for protection and guidance, said Al-Marayati, an American of Palestinian descent.
Hezbollah is so appealing, she said, “because what they say is what they do. And they don't make promises they can't keep. And it is not based on who you know or what you have to pay.”
“[Muslims] don't really care where [protection] comes from, but they're sick of corruption, and what they want is transparency, predictability and accountability on behalf of their government,” she said.
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