Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 Hate Acts, Local Mobilizations, and the Crisis Point Police turned back 300 marchers—some waving American flags and shouting “USA! USA!”—as they tried to march on a mosque in this Chicago suburb [Bridgeview] late Wednesday. . . . “I’m proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have,” said 19-year-old Colin Zaremba who marched with the group from Oak Lawn. —Associated Press, “Arab Americans Attacked, Threatened,” September 13, 2001 A 39-year-old suburban man approached another young man who was working at a Palos Heights gas station. He asked the man what he was. The man said that he was “an American,” but the offender wasn’t satisfied. He said, “No, where are you from?” When the young worker said he was of Moroccan descent, the offender attacked him using a two-foot machete. The defendant later said he had been listening to the radio as he drove to the gas station. The news about the terrorist attack, he said, had upset him, and he lashed out at the first Arab-looking young man that he saw. —Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine, in Illinois Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (2003)1 Prosecutors said the 30-year-old Nix felt enormous hatred for Arab Americans after they started moving into south suburban Burbank where he lives and it was intensified after his van was towed and Salmi’s was not. —Mike Robinson, “Illinois Man Who Wrecked Muslim Family’s Van Going Back to Jail,” Associated Press, August 22, 2006 I N GENERAL, the safety of Arabs and Muslims on the American street was fragile for a few years after the 9/11 attacks, although some persons were more vulnerable to hate encounters than others and some places presented more risk than others. Risk of death was highest in the first few weeks after the attacks, but over time hate actions directed 190 Hate Acts, Local Mobilizations, and the Crisis Point 191 Map 6.1 Census 2000, Arab Ancestry Reported—Cook and Dupage Counties, Illinois Source: Created for this book by the Arab American Institute, based on data from U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census of Population and Housing, Summary File 3: Technical Documentation, 2002 PCT018006 (PCT018007—PCT018015), 17, 81, 83 U.S. Geological Survey. Note: The term “Arab” used here refers to three different ancestry groups as designated in Census 2000. The first are those of Arab ancestry including those from the following: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia or the western Asian countries of Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The second group is the Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac. The third is those from the Sub-Saharan category: the Somalian and Sudanese. against Arabs and Muslims were more likely to be minor assaults, verbal harassment, or vandalism. Although the statistical likelihood of being physically harmed or murdered was actually low, examined from a post facto perspective, an Arab/Muslim’s personal assessment of risk at the time was another matter altogether. Aggression motivated by anger or hatred was often directed against persons wrongly perceived to be Arabs or Muslims, marking the strength of ideas that connected a “Middle Eastern” phenotype and a certain mode of dress to persons who were understood to be somehow complicit in the 9/11 attacks. In the first nine weeks after the attacks, the American-Arab AntiDiscrimination Committee (ADC 2003, 7) reported “over 700 violent incidents targeting Arab Americans, or those perceived to be Arab Americans, Arabs, and Muslims,” including several murders. Another 165 violent incidents occurred between January 1 and October 11, 2002, according to ADC civil rights reports. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (2002) reported 1,062 incidents of violence, threat, or harassment during the initial onslaught of the post-9/11 backlash. Full 2001 to 2002 reportingyear claims affected 2,242 victims, mostly in incidents of bias-motivated harassment and violence. In its 2004 report, CAIR reported a 121 percent rise in all anti-Muslim incidents and a 69 percent rise in reported hate crimes (2004). Overall, statistics show an initial surge in hate crimes against Arab and Muslim Americans in the first months after the 9/11 attacks, followed by a lower but persistent pattern of violence, bigotry, and discrimination across the nation. Whether hate crimes actually rose in 2004, or how much they...