Two Victims of Two Backlashes

Further evidence...
Jews in the UK, Arabs in the USA, Both Victims of the Backlash
against Terrorism and Militarism, suggesting the a third path,
beyond Terrorism and Militarism is needed...

April 25, 2002

For Many American Muslims, Complaints of Quiet but Persistent Bias
The New York Times

By SUSAN SACHS

n ways large and small, from perceived prejudice in the workplace to a 
heightened sense of anxiety at home, the events of Sept. 11 continue to 
reverberate in the lives of American Muslims.

State and federal civil rights agencies have been flooded with complaints 
from Muslims who contend that their employers and co-workers openly 
denigrated Islam after the terror attacks, sneeringly labeled them terrorist 
and, in some cases, fired them solely because of religion or national 
origin.

Many other Muslims say they see evidence of a quiet but persistent 
discrimination against them in their everyday social transactions. It is not 
necessarily tangible. A once-friendly acquaintance no longer says hello. A 
child is repeatedly teased over his Arabic name. A customer calls the police 
to suggest that a foreign-looking merchant might be a terrorist.

"Being Muslims, will we always be suspected?" said Mansoor Khan, a 
Pakistan-born doctor who runs Help & Hope, a volunteer aid group for Muslim 
immigrants in Queens. "Will we always have to worry about someone coming to 
knock on our door? As American citizens, will our identities be shaky just 
because we are Muslim?"

It is difficult to say for certain whether the shock of Sept. 11, followed 
by the war in Afghanistan, has set off a widespread public reaction against 
people who are Muslim or are presumed to be Muslim. What is clear is that 
many Muslims firmly believe that American attitudes toward them have become 
more negative and mistrustful.







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In a national survey by the Zogby International polling company in March 
2000, 35 percent of the American Muslims polled reported having experienced 
discrimination because of their religion. Thirty-nine of Arab-Americans 
polled said they had experienced prejudice based on their ethnic heritage. 
But feelings appeared to have shifted significantly after Sept. 11. In 
November 2001, another Zogby poll found that 57 percent of American Muslims 
believed Americans held unfavorable opinions of Muslims and Arabs.

The unease that many people now feel is not necessarily linked to a concrete 
event or overt behavior.

"What we have now is a feeling of insecurity, a feeling that I can't really 
describe in words," said Zaheer Sharaf, a grocer and service station owner 
who immigrated from Pakistan six years ago.

His own sense of anxiety deepened four months ago, when some family friends 
visited from Pakistan. They stepped outside Mr. Sharaf's grocery store, on 
Main Street in Broad Brook, Conn., to snap a few photographs. Someone who 
saw them called the police to report suspicious foreigners with cameras. 
"The police came to the store, and I explained the situation," Mr. Sharaf 
said. "They were very nice, but I felt so embarrassed. I'd like to be part 
of society here, but minor things like these make me feel excluded."

>From the moment American officials identified the people who planned and 
executed the terror attacks as Muslims, a backlash against Muslims was 
feared. But there were also strong efforts to promote tolerance. Not long 
after the attacks, a host of celebrities publicly urged Americans not to 
blame all Muslims for the deadly acts of a few.

Despite a scattering of attacks on Muslims and Islamic sites across the 
country, there was no widespread eruption of hatred or vengeance. Volunteers 
offered to protect mosques and accompany Muslim women who were frightened to 
leave their homes. Synagogues and churches invited Islamic scholars to speak 
at interfaith seminars.

But at the same time, under the broad umbrella of fighting terrorism, the 
government directed a spotlight on Muslims, singling them out for 
investigation and interrogation.

In addition to the 1,000 men arrested in an early law enforcement sweep, 
5,000 young Muslim men who are in the country on tourist or student visas 
have been summoned by the F.B.I. for interviews. Attorney General John 
Ashcroft has said these men, because of their Muslim contacts, might have 
useful information about terrorism.

The Justice Department has also singled out for arrest another 5,000 Muslims 
immigrants who did not leave the country after being ordered deported, 
although they represent just a fraction of the 320,000 people of all 
backgrounds who violated deportation orders.

"I really believe that employers may be saying to themselves that if 
Ashcroft can do this to Muslims, then so can we," said Omar T. Mohammedi, a 
New York lawyer who is representing groups of Muslims who have filed 
discrimination complaints against their employers.

Indeed, the clearest sign of stress among Muslims has been the dramatic rise 
in civil rights complaints.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reported that in the seven 
months since the terrorist attacks, it had received 427 complaints from 
Muslims alleging religious discrimination in the workplace, up from 171 in 
the same period the year before. It also got nine complaints from Sikhs who 
said that they had experienced discrimination after Sept. 11 because they 
were mistaken for Arabs or Muslims. In the same period a year earlier, the 
commission had no complaints from Sikhs.

"We've never had anything like it since the creation of the commission," 
said Cari M. Dominguez, the chairwoman of the 37-year-old agency. "Charges 
by Muslims nearly tripled, and while the rate is slowing, we're still 
getting new complaints. "

The biggest number of complaints have come from California, Texas, Illinois 
and Florida, accounting for 150 of the post-Sept. 11 cases among them. 
Fourteen complaints were lodged by people in New York State from Sept. 11, 
2001, to April 11.

Ms. Dominguez said that some of the increase possibly resulted from efforts 
to encourage Muslims to exercise their right to file grievances. "But as 
long as we are internationally still on alert, I suspect we'll continue to 
see this trend," she added.

The New York State Division of Human Rights has also seen an increase in 
bias complaints from Muslims and Arabs. It got 38 such complaints dealing 
with workplace and housing discrimination after Sept. 11 and through the end 
of March, a 37 percent increase over the same period the year before.

The New York City Police Department got 117 reports of hate crimes against 
Arabs and Muslims ? covering everything from vandalism to verbal abuse to 
assaults ? between the terror attacks and the end of March. Most of those 
incidents occurred in the first charged months after the terror attacks.

In the first three months of this year, the department got only 14 
complaints. Nevertheless, police officials said, the situation is far from 
being back to normal: on average, the department used to deal with just 
seven complaints of bias attacks against Arabs and Muslims a year.

The wounds to the community may be deeper than any statistics might 
indicate. "We're a community that doesn't report, that doesn't come out and 
speak," said Dahlia Eissa, a lawyer who worked for the Arab-American Family 
Support Center in Brooklyn until this month. "We even attempted to talk 
about the issues in group meetings, but people were too afraid to come.

"We've heard that families have packed up and left, that people are thinking 
of changing their names. A lot of people now think that if their name is 
Omar or Mohammed or Osama ? something clearly Muslim ? they'll never get 
anywhere in this country anymore."

Middle East crisis blamed for surge in anti-Semitic attacks
By Marie Woolf Chief Political Correspondent
26 April 2002, The Independent

Painful questions after slaughter of innocents provokes soul-searching
Arafat stages trial of four wanted for Ze'evi assassination
Saudis threaten 'oil weapon' in talks to pressure Bush
Palestinian teenagers leave Bethlehem church
The unrest in the Middle East has led to a seven-fold increase in attacks on 
Jews in Britain in the past two months, prompting fears of a wider upsurge 
in anti-Semitism.
Figures collated yesterday show that so far this month there have been at 
least 48 attacks on Jews ? compared with 12 in March, seven in February, 13 
in January and five in December. Some of the assaults are so serious the 
victims ? mainly orthodox and Hasidic Jews ? have been hospitalised with 
serious injuries. Synagogues have also been daubed with anti-Semitic 
graffiti ? including the slogans "Star of David = Swastika" and "Palestine 
Lives" in a sharp rise in vandalism towards sacred Jewish sites.
Leaders of the Jewish Community believe the increase is linked to the 
situation in the Middle East and the Israeli crackdown in the West Bank, 
which has provoked an upsurge in assaults on Jews in France, Belgium and 
Germany.
"There has been an alarming jump in anti-Semitic incidents during the past 
three weeks which reflects the overspill of tensions from the Middle East," 
said Mike Whine of the Community Security Trust, a charity set up to protect 
Jews and monitor attacks, which compiled the figures yesterday. "What is 
most alarming is the assaults on Orthodox Jews often accompanied by 
references to the Middle East."
The victims, in major towns and cities across the UK, including London and 
Manchester, have been recognisably Jewish and wearing traditional clothes 
including a skull cap.
The rise in attacks is the biggest since last September, when there was a 
huge increase linked to the attacks on the World Trade Centre. The figures 
do not reflect the rise in hate mail or the dozens of incidents which go 
unreported.
Jews who have been the victims of anti-Semitism say they will not change 
their lifestyles, but they are being more vigilant. Simon, 30, a sales 
executive, who narrowly avoided being run over after a driver who shouted 
anti-semitic abuse accelerated towards him in London, said many of his 
friends had recently had "pretty horrible experiences" of hate crime.
"People are starting to take off their skull caps and wear baseball caps," 
he said.
Police in London have stepped up patrols in Jewish areas and warned members 
of the community to be watchful.

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