The state of the Muslim community: Post-9/11

The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, sent reverberations throughout the United States,… The attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, sent reverberations throughout the United States, particularly through the Muslim community after great emphasis was put on the religion of the offenders. Today, Muslim-Americans still face increased scrutiny because of their religion.

The Pitt News sat down with four people with ties to the Muslim community to discuss their personal experiences after the 9/11 attacks — from racial profiling to their abilities to engage in open discussions about religion. Living in the United States in the wake of the tragedy, these four individuals witnessed the word “Muslim” take on new connotations and the national perception of the community change.

Mahmoud Yacoub is a Pitt sophomore majoring in English writing and philosophy. He is Muslim-American and a member of the Muslim Student Association.

Louie Al-Hashimi is a Pitt sophomore majoring in psychology. He is a Muslim-American and the president of the Muslim Student Association.

Ryan Branagan is a Pitt junior majoring in history. He is the president of Pitt’s Students for Justice in

Palestine and considers himself a supporter of the Muslim community.

Tony Gaskew is an associate professor and the director of the criminal justice program at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.  Prior to 9/11, he worked in law enforcement. After the attacks he got his doctorate in Islamic studies, did field work in Muslim communities and wrote “Policing Muslim American Communities.”

The Pitt News: What did you first think was the reason for the Sept. 11 attacks? Did you really understand what was going on?

Mahmoud  Yacoub: My parents were … good about it, because they didn’t scare me. I think they knew that after that point things were going to change for us, at least the perspective of our family … They didn’t tell me exactly what happened, just that something bad happened to America. I said, “OK.”

TPN: What were some of the reactions of the people around you?

Tony Gaskew: I think at the time, there was so much misinformation. It was an emotional experience, and working in the field at that time, everyone wanted to get immediate intelligence … There was a strong sentiment that revenge was in the air.

TPN: What were some of the buzzwords you heard that day that you still hear today, and what do you think about them?

MY: I’d say “terrorist” is a big one, “extremist” and then “radical.” Also “jihad,” but they call it “ji-HAD” … I always knew I was a little different because I was Arab and everything, but it was OK. But then I  was different in a bad way, because then people would call you out like, “Do you know about the extremists? Do you know about the radicals?” And it’s like, “I don’t know anything.”

TPN: How has your attitude or opinion changed over the past 10 years regarding the attacks and the subsequent actions taken by the government?

Ryan Branagan: I used to argue for the Iraq War and everything, but then I started doing just independent research … I remembered cheering on the USA, like, “Let’s bomb them and get them back,” but I didn’t realize the people we’re bombing are not necessarily responsible, that the people that were being targeted weren’t criminals or terrorists.

TPN: What are some ways that 9/11 impacted your life, either directly or indirectly?

Louie Al-Hashimi: As for me, I feel like I wasn’t a victim of discrimination … It’s not as apparent that I’m a practicing Muslim, a lot of people aren’t aware of that until I tell them. But looking back on it now, it seems that 9/11 opened the door for discussion on Islam; it opened the door for clearing up those misconceptions. Lots of Americans didn’t know much about Islam, and after these attacks occurred, it seemed like there was a collective drive to learn more about Islam.

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TPN: How do you think that has been positive or negative?

MY: I think it’s been a double-edged sword. It has opened a discussion about Islam, but at the same time, most people in that discussion do not want to know. They really don’t care about what Islam is; they care about what Islam pertains to. So they find key words, key passages that say, “Attack the nonbelievers” or “Do this” or “Do that.” They take it out of context, and then people believe that this is Islam when it isn’t. If you read the passages where it says “Destroy the nonbelievers,” you’ll see a passage right after that says, “…in self defense,” or, “If they give up, don’t attack anymore.” We are a religion of peace, but people take it out of context, and I wish that 9/11 wasn’t the event that brought Islam to the forefront, because now it’s subconscious.

For the first five years or so after 9/11, we all assumed that 9/11 happened and we did nothing wrong. It just happened because “they’re bad people and we’re the good people,” and “we’re trying to right the wrong that they did.” But then you look at history, and you look at the Cold War with Russia and how we used Afghanistan and completely did nothing to help their schooling, their way of living. And that is why terrorists get bred, because they have resentment. Because if we use a person to an end, people feel disgruntled.

TPN: What about the people around you? How has it changed their view of their country and of you?

RB: We have a few friends, mutual friends, that the day after 9/11 they had their homes raided by the FBI. Of course, they weren’t connected, they were simply Muslim and they had Arab names, but their homes were raided and were being questioned. Most of these people were the same age we were, so it was like immediately they were not only “the other” — they were a threat. And I don’t think most people even considered that they would be a threat to their own society, and I don’t think people living in these communities that had high Muslim populations ever thought of them as the enemy. I think that’s caused a lot of tension and a lot of the anti-Muslim crusades that are going on right now all throughout the country.

TG: … [9/11] led to field work where I lived in a Muslim community for almost two years conducting field work looking at the impact the USA PATRIOT Act had on Muslim communities in Florida, and I continue to still write about it today.

It was an eye-opening experience as a former law enforcement agent to live in … [If] you look at the indigenous Muslim-American community or the immigrant Muslim-American community, there’s a sense of fear. If you cannot trust the police, which is an extension of the government, it makes an entire community really close down [and] become isolated. And we still struggle with that today. Outreach is simply not enough for these communities. It has to be a genuine, respectful, almost humbling experience for law enforcement … to say, “We need your help on this war on terror,” … It becomes a matter of respect — respect who you are as people, respect your faith.

TPN: What were some of the things you faced when you dealt with law-enforcement personnel and you were doing your research?

TG: Walking simply through the mall and having someone, a law enforcement agent, stare at you — and you have to keep in mind when I was doing the field work, it was around 2003, so sentiments were extremely fresh and emotional. When I would go to the mosque, it was apparent. I was a former law-enforcement agent, and I can tell surveillance.

[Law enforcement] couldn’t care less about you as a person, and they automatically associate you with knowing information about political violence … But you have to understand, fear is a very strange emotion. It makes people do things that they would normally never do. So I don’t want to lay too much blame on law enforcement. You have to keep in mind that that’s the only way they knew how to react to a situation that they felt was extreme circumstances at best — that their country was being attacked. That does have its ramifications, and long term, as you can see.

MY: On a very personal level, it affected my family. [About] four years ago, there was an attempted bomb threat at my younger brother’s middle school, and the first thing that they did was they called up three Muslims and he was one of them. And they raided their lockers, and they made them look like terrorist suspects in front of everybody. Everyone knew who was being called, and he was one of the people being called. He was about 12. How do you fix that? That’s damaging to a 12-year-old. How does he reconcile that he is not the enemy anymore if he’s put out on a line?

LA: I’ve never experienced anything quite on a personal level like Mahmoud has … There’s obviously a sense of fear that built up after 9/11, but the Islamic community in Pittsburgh, it does feel like we are kind of under a microscope lens at times, like we are always being watched. We have to monitor our own behavior. A sense of respect when it comes to law enforcement would make that enforcement more in effect and more practical.

TPN: What do you think could have been done differently? How could the government have handled it better? How could police have handled it better?

MY: After the attacks, [the government] could have clarified that it wasn’t all Muslims that did this. Because they did a very bad PR job, they said “al-Qaida,” but they said, “It’s a Muslim group, it’s a Muslim group, it’s a Muslim group.” So all of a sudden, Muslim is bad, it’s terrorist … But it’s not like that, but the government didn’t clarify. So the only thing [the public] knew was extreme. So the law enforcement, obviously they had to act like every Muslim was an extremist, a terrorist that could possibly attack America.

TPN: How do you think, since most Pitt undergrads grew up in this post 9/11 atmosphere, how do you think that’s going to influence our generation’s politics in the future?

MY: We’re very skeptical. That’s what it is, at least from my experience talking with a lot of people … But everyone questions. Like most people nowadays, especially me, they don’t take the news for anything. Because the news has an agenda, and the news were the ones that told us that we had WMDs in Iraq, and the news were the ones that told us that Osama was here, here, here and here. That he was in a cave, when we just found him just relaxing in his mansion. We’re very disenchanted with the world, and maybe that disenchantment will help with politics.

RB: I was just going to say that I think that disenchantment has existed for years. The spirit can, in many ways, can be related to the ’60s and the ’70s in Vietnam. The reason we don’t see the huge protests, I think, is because the fear that 9/11 still has in our hearts. There was no Vietnamese attack on America. It was a different dynamic. We all felt afraid, and for the last 10 years, this fear was pumped again and again into our heads by, again, the media, politicians, by almost every facet of the government.

So I think you know, if we’re going to change things and really reestablish a country based on civil liberties and the freedoms of all people, I think that we need to overcome that fear that lies at the heart of 9/11 and have the courage to stand up for the Muslim-American community and for the rights of all people.

TPN: I’ve often heard that our generation has been desensitized to violence and warfare, primarily because we were so young when 9/11 happened. Do you think this is true?

RB: I think so. I remember watching Israeli tanks go through the West Bank when I was little. I didn’t even know about the conflict at all, but I was cheering it on. I thought, “This [i]s good.” It was like a video game, it was like a movie, this is an action thing, this is exciting. And it was only after years that I truly saw the extent of the human suffering that goes into all of this. And it’s something we’re not faced with a lot, but that we need to come to terms with.

LA: I agree. Not only are we desensitized, we are very detached from any kind of violence. We have troops in Afghanistan right now, but we’re hardly aware of it when we live our daily lives just as students, so we don’t feel the consequences of war, of violence. And that’s another reason why 9/11 was a wake-up call, in many ways.

MY: Like Louie said, if you look at CNN or something and you see the death toll or whatever, it’s not a big thing — it’s like this little blurb that passes by. And we have two wars going on, wars where people die, but we don’t see death on our screens, we see it in numbers.

[For example], 100 Iraqis died today and then one troop died, but these numbers, they’re intangible. What does it mean to us? I brought up Vietnam again — it’s not like then when they showed you this is what’s happening, these people are dying. Because if they showed you that, people would not be as docile. People would be like, “OK, if that’s happening, we can’t have that happen.” Because if you see the woman in her hijab protecting her child because bombs are hitting down, that’s powerful. But we don’t see that, in our head we just see a bunch of Osama bin Ladens running around, and that’s the only thing that we’re killing. But that’s not the truth. For every one Osama bin Laden, there are probably 20 women or 20 children that are dying. That’s the truth.