DEARBORN, Mich. – Dearborn, a city of nearly 100,000 people that borders Detroit’s west side, is home to the country’s largest Arab-American population by proportion, with 41 percent of the city’s population being of Arab descent. Dearborn is in many ways a typical American city, with the only discernible difference being many of the storefront signs are written in English and Arabic.
The city becomes a focal point whenever acts of terrorism occur, regardless of the perpetrator. The city’s political and religious leaders quickly got out in front of the fear and denounced the bombings and honored those who were injured and lost their lives.
“Let there be no mistake that we all condemn this senseless act of violence,” said Dr. Kassem Charara, chairman of the Islamic Institute of Knowledge, during a vigil held for the victims last Saturday. “By the same token, we should condemn the killing of innocent people anywhere in the world. There should not be a double-standard when we’re dealing with terrorism.”
Wounds of 9/11 re-opened
When it was revealed that the two primary suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings were Muslim, many of the wounds opened by 9/11 became fresh again for Arab-Americans and Muslims across the country. There have been isolated incidents around the country of ethnic intimidation and physical assaults of Muslims following the bombings, and the mistakes made by the national media during the coverage did not help matters.
“We know that whenever the airwaves are flooded with news of suspicion and profiling of Muslims in America, we see a surge of hate incidents and hate crimes on the ground,” said Valarie Kaur, Senior Fellow at the Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. She started Groundswell, an initiative at Auburn Seminary that helps people to create their own social action campaigns including marriage equality, fighting human trafficking, and standing up for religious pluralism.
“On Monday, after the bombing, one man in the Bronx was beaten by a group of men who called him an Arab. On Wednesday, a Palestinian woman in Massachusetts was punched by a man who screamed, ‘You are terrorists! You are involved in the Boston explosions.’”
Kaur, 33, was born in California and has done advocacy work on behalf of people of all races and faiths. She is also a Sikh. Sikhs are often confused with Muslims and have been subjected to the same suspicions, reactions, and hate crimes as Arab-Americans and Muslims – including last summer’s shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.
“The first suspect arrested after 9/11 was a Sikh American, Sher Singh, who was arrested on a Boston-bound train for the way he looked,” Kaur said. “As officers led him off the platform, people in the crowd yelled, ‘Kill him.’”
‘Let’s kill them all’
Kaur pointed to errors such as CNN’s John King first reporting that the potential suspect was a “dark-skinned male” to Fox News and the New York Post, misidentifying people – most of them Arab – as potential suspects helping to stoke public fear. Unlike the aftermath of 9/11, the reaction has been tempered due to changes in attitudes.
“This is nowhere near the violence we saw in the aftermath of 9/11,” Kaur said. “I think a new generation has come of age in the last 12 years, especially with Millennials who have far less tolerance for overt acts of racism and bigotry. When Fox News commentator Erik Rushed tweeted that Muslims are evil and said ‘Let’s kill them all,’ many more people used social media to challenge him, issuing statements of solidarity and unity.”
In southeast Michigan, there have been no reported cases of physical assaults of Muslims, Arabs, or Sikhs. However, that does not mean there have not been problems.
“Unfortunately, around the country and here in Michigan, we have seen some backlash including complaints that we’ve gotten here of Muslim kids being bullied in school late last week in Oakland County,” said Dawud Walid, the Executive Director for the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “I do have a belief that the American public is much more educated about Muslims and Islam (since 9/11).”
Walid, who wrote a blog for the Detroit News on April 16 condemning the attacks, noted that CAIR often receives complaints of ethnic intimidation from local Muslims weekly, but saw a spike in the aftermath of the bombing and he points directly at the media as one of the root causes.
“It’s a long term process that needs to take place in cutting down social acceptability of these statements in the media and by politicians,” Walid said. “That’s not to say people won’t continue to make those comments under the veil of social media.
“Social media has desensitized people and they have gotten cyber space courage where many times in the general public, people wouldn’t say certain things but with the anonymity of cyber space, they can make outrageous comments.”
“Teachers who would bring in newspapers and ask me if I was related to any of the terrorists.”
Khadigah Alasry loves helping children understand the facets of Islam when she is not doing her day job. A middle school teacher and youth organizer with the Muslim American Society (MAS), Alasry was born and raised in Dearborn. Her father is a community organizer who helped build Dearborn’s then-burgeoning Arab community.
“He was one of the founders of Masjid Dearborn,” said Alasry, whose family emigrated to the U.S. from Yemen in 1983. “I have kind of an ‘establishment’ background as my father has been an organizer for a while.”
Alasry was 14 years old on Sept. 11, 2001. While she has never been physically attacked, she has dealt with her fair share of ignorant comments and insults regarding her Muslim faith – she wears a hijab like most Muslim women – from peers, complete strangers and even teachers.
“Even when I was in high school, teachers would make sarcastic comments about a person being Muslim and relating it to terrorism,” Alasry said. “I’ve had teachers who would bring in newspapers and ask me if I was related to any of the terrorists. I was 16 and 17. I didn’t really know how to handle it. We just kind of kept quiet.”
Alasry noted that as she got older, she has dealt with a multitude of rude remarks from people, including once walking into a store and being called a “motherf—ing camel jockey.” She wonders why people believe what they hear about Islam so easily and often don’t come to the defense of Muslims when misinformation is presented.
“I think there’s a fear of what is different that exists in parts of our society,” Alasry said, also noting that American tensions with the Middle East have not helped matters. “It’s fueled in a lot of ways by how the media portrays Muslims and Islam. People who aren’t proactive in exploring what Muslims are really like, you’re going to be influenced by what our media is putting out there and that’s a lot of misconceptions.”
Working with MAS, Alasry, now 26, helps local children gather a better understanding of Islam through retreats, fellowships, and helping kids “improve society through their faith.” She helped launch MAS’s Detroit Hearts and Minds program, which helps local youth get a greater understanding of Islam through mentoring.
“We used focus groups of different groups of youth and we asked them about the transformative experiences they’ve gone through,” Alasry said. “Some of them said mentors were transformative for them. Some of them said that they went through really traumatic experiences.
“We came to the conclusion that when you’re exposed to something you’re not used to, it transforms you and we created the exposure aspect of the program. The youth who are involved in this program are some of the most upstanding citizens in their communities. They’re involved in other organizations such as the Michigan Muslim Youth Council and other organizations that help the community in a positive way.”
“If even 1 percent of Muslims believed in terrorism, the whole world would be on fire.”
As the manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev neared a close last week, a commenter on my Facebook page said: “If Muslims are tired of being associated with terrorism, then they should consider leaving Islam.” A point that has been frequently brought up in the two weeks since the attacks is how a double-standard is applied to acts of terrorism in the U.S. in terms of race and ethnicity.
“The last major incident of domestic terrorism on U.S. soil was the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin at the hands of a white supremacist,” Kaur said. “We did not hear experts on the media suggest that white should be profiled, or Christianity denigrated or see Christians living in fear.”
“When the perpetrator is white, our society diagnoses the problem as an individual issue,” she added. “When the perpetrator is Muslim or a person of color, people rush to assume the dangerousness of entire group of people.”
When Muslims speak about their faith being one of peace, they often refer to a verse in the Quran that states: “If someone kills another person — unless it is in retaliation for someone else or for causing corruption in the Earth — it is as if he had murdered all mankind.” The misconception of all Muslims being terrorists and Islam being a religion that encourages violence does not logically jibe with the numbers.
“The vast majority of Muslims eschew violence and terrorism like everyone else who follows a spiritual system,” Walid said. “There are 1.6 billion Muslims on Earth. If even 1 percent of these Muslims – which would be 160 million people – believed in terrorism, the whole world would be on fire.”
Walid, who is African-American, is also disheartened by the ease with which being Islamophobic is accepted in the United States, even among minorities. Of note, nearly 40 percent of Muslim Americans are black.
“Being Muslim or especially Arab is the new black in America,” Walid said. “What people used to say about black folks – but can’t say now – or about Jews, or the Irish, it’s socially acceptable to say those things about Muslims now. That’s just going to take time, education, and more interaction to weed those people out. But a lot of those people will never change.”
You can follow Jay Scott Smith on Twitter @JayScottSmith