Being and Belonging: Muslims in the United States since 9/11

1. Introduction

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION KATHERINE PRATT EWING THE ATTACKS on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, had a dramatic, immediate effect on Muslims in the United States. Both the magnitude of the destruction within the borders of the United States and the ensuing war on terror have brought the issue of Muslims living in the United States into public awareness in an unprecedented way. Islam and terrorism were already closely associated in public discourse: Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, for example, public officials and the media had speculated that Muslims were responsible. This error led reporters to be more careful on the morning of September 11 when they made their initial assessments. But once the involvement of al Qaeda became clear, the association between Islam and terrorism moved to the center of public awareness, foreign policy, and domestic politics, where it has remained. In the days following the attacks, some members of the American public, including a few radio talk show hosts and Christian leaders, quickly generalized and racialized this threat to include anyone who might look Muslim or Arab. This public talk created a sense of panic in some circles and triggered a backlash of violence, harassment, and insult that was widely reported in the media. As a result, Muslims and those who looked Middle Eastern feared for their safety. The Bush administration made public statements that distinguished terrorism from the activities of most Muslims and from Islam. Nevertheless, al Qaeda and its possible sleeper cells of terrorists who might be hiding within the United States, ready to strike at any moment, posed the powerful threat of an ethnicized, racialized enemy within that the United States public had not experienced since World War II.1 Parallels to the imagined threat posed by Japanese Americans during World War II have frequently been drawn. For many American Muslims, the possibility of a similarly strong response to the al Qaeda threat, generalized to include all who had immigrated from Muslim-majority countries, was an unavoidable part of the post 9/11 experience. Muslims had suddenly become highly visible outsiders. The government’s responses to the threat of Islamic terrorism included the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, the suspension of certain civil rights, the detention of many Muslims, and the launching of the war on terror. Though not as drastic as the internment of Japanese Americans, these policies, as well as media coverage and local politics, have affected the lives of Muslims in the United States, as well as the lives of non-Muslim Arabs, South Asians, and others who fell under suspicion in the wake of 9/11. The racial crystallization of the category of Arab-Muslim legitimized a distinction between an American Us to be protected through homeland security measures and the dangerous immigrant Other who came under intense surveillance. Even those who had considered themselves American suddenly found themselves excluded from the sphere of those who were to be protected. Not only has this complex aftermath of 9/11 altered everyday environments; it has also shaped possibilities and strategies for belonging, cultural citizenship, and identity, though not always in ways that might have been expected. In addition to the effects of the events of 9/11 on specific communities of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, this volume examines how local Muslim responses have evolved in the years since 2001. In her comprehensive 2003 overview of existing scholarship on Muslims in the United States, Karen Leonard cautioned that research on the impact of 9/11 might have the effect of obscuring continuities in the history and development of Muslim communities in the United States (2003, 139). This book looks at both disruptions and continuities : chapters in part I highlight how Muslims have experienced and been shaped by the events and aftermath of 9/11, and those in part II foreground how preexisting trends in the development of Muslim communities and Islamic institutions have continued and even intensified despite the disruptions and displacements created by the effects of 9/11 and the war on terror. With their emphasis on local communities, these essays as a collection question and consider the ideas of citizenship and belonging when an entire immigrant minority is abruptly reinscribed as a stigmatized Other. The papers gathered here were first developed as part of a Russell Sage initiative to document and analyze how Muslims have managed the stresses associated with the effects of 9/11. They are based...