Aslam Abdullah, director of the Islamic Society of Nevada, felt compelled to respond when he learned about the controversial remarks made this week by Pope Benedict XVI.
Benedict's speech served as the topic of Abdullah's sermon Friday at Jamia Masjid, the largest of three mosques in Las Vegas.
The pope has the respect of people all over the world, Abdullah told the congregation. "His words carry weight," Abdullah said.
Abdullah said Benedict repeated a false statement when he cited a book recounting a conversation between 14th-century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and a Persian scholar.
The pontiff quoted the emperor as saying, "Show me just what (the Prophet) Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
As evidence of the inaccuracy of the statement, Abdullah read from a letter written in 628 by Muhammad to the monks of St. Catherine's Monastery in Mt. Sinai. Abdullah said the letter consisted of several clauses covering all aspects of human rights, including freedom of worship and the protection of Christians.
"It is wrong to say that he was spreading the faith by sword, or preaching violence, or preaching hatred," Abdullah said during an interview after his sermon.
Abdullah said he wants to encourage Muslims in Las Vegas to intensify their outreach program and become proactive in talking to non-Muslims.
"Our response has to be educated and peaceful," he said.
Abdullah also wants to encourage non-Muslims to visit the mosque at 4370 E. Desert Inn Road, either for the 1 p.m. sermons on Fridays or for classes offered at 5:30 p.m. on Fridays for non-Muslims.
"We would like them to come to the mosque and listen to us directly," he said.
Tamara Essayyad, vice president of the Muslim Student Association at UNLV, was at the mosque Friday and said she has not lost her respect for the pope, although she would like him to clarify the meaning of his remarks.
"Islam teaches us tolerance and peace and love for your brother or sister, whatever the religion," she said. "Most of my friends are Christian, and I think it's important to have that mutual respect."
9/25/2006
KILL US TOO WE ARE ALSO AMERICANS
Kill us, too: We are also Americans. Radical Muslims not worthy of the religion Las Vegas Review-Journal ^ | 9/10/06 | ASLAM ABDULLAH
The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, recently issued a decree to its supporters: Kill at least one American in the next two weeks "using a sniper rifle, explosive or whatever the battle may require."
Well, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, I am an American too. Count me as the one of those you have asked your supporters to kill.
I am not alone, there are thousands of Muslims with me in Las Vegas, and many more millions in America, who are proud Americans and who are ready to face your challenge. You hide in your caves and behind the faces of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. You don't show your faces and you have no guts to face Muslims. You thrive on the misery of thousands of Muslim youth and children who are victims of despotism, poverty and ignorance.
During the past two decades, you have brought nothing but shame and disaster to your religion and your world.
You said you "invite you not to drop your weapons, and don't let your souls or your enemies rest until each one of you kills at least one American within a period that does not exceed 15 days with a sniper's gunshot or incendiary devices or Molotov cocktail or a suicide car bomb -- whatever the battle may require." I invite you to surrender, to seek forgiveness from God almighty for the senseless killing you and your supporters are involved in and repent for everything you have done.
You say that the word of God is the highest. Yes, it is. But you are not worthy of it. You have abandoned God and you have started worshipping your own satanic egos that rejoice at the killing of innocent people. You don't represent Muslims or, for that matter, any decent human being who believes in the sanctity of life. Many among us American Muslims have differences with our administration on domestic and foreign issues, just like many other Americans do. But the plurality of opinions does not mean that we deprive ourselves of the civility that God demands from us. America is our home and will always be our home. Its interests are ours, and its people are ours. When you talk of killing of Americans, you first have to kill 6 million or so Muslims who will stand for every American's right to live and enjoy the life as commanded by God.
By growing a beard, shouting some religious slogans and misquoting and misusing some verses of the divine scriptures, you cannot incite Muslims to do things that are contrary to our religion. Yes, you even fail to understand the basic Islamic principles of life and living. Islam demands peace in all aspects of life, Islam demands respect for life. Islam demands justice.
What you are doing in Iraq, Afghanistan, India or other parts of the world is anti-human and anti-divine. You are an enemy of Islam as much as you are an enemy of America. You must understand that God who entrusted you with life is the same God who spelled his spirit in every human being regardless of his or her religion or ethnicity or nationality or status. You are violating him.
We feel totally disgusted with your action and we condemn you without any reservation. Don't come to our mosques to preach this hatred. Don't visit our Islamic centers to spill the blood of innocents. Don't think that just because we share the same religion, we would show some sympathy to you. You are not of us. You don't belong to the religion whose followers are trying to live a peaceful life for themselves and others serving the divine according to their understanding. In our understanding of faith, you appear as anti-divine and anti-human. We reject you now as we rejected you yesterday.
There is nothing common between you and us.
We stand for life, you want to destroy it.
We accept the divine scheme of diversity in the world and you want to impose conformity.
We respect every human being simply because he or she is a creation of the divine, and you hate people based on their religion and ethnicity.
We support freedom and liberty and justice, and you promote bigotry, murder and strangulation.
You will never be able to find a sympathetic voice amidst us. Our differences with others will never lead us to do things that are fundamentally wrong in our faith, i. e. taking the lives of innocent people and killing others because they are different.
So on Sept. 11, when you will be hiding in your caves, we will be out in the streets paying tribute to those who you killed because you failed to see the beauty of life. We will condemn you once again the same way we have been doing ever since 9/11 because we are Muslim Americans.
Aslam Abdullah is director of the Islamic Soceity of Nevada.
9/25/2006
THE LONG SHADOW-TAKING CROSSFIRE
The spiritual director of Las Vegas' largest mosque and editor in chief of a national Muslim newspaper, Aslam Abdullah, has drawn criticism from Muslims and non-Muslims alike for his controversial opinions.
By JOAN WHITELY REVIEW-JOURNAL
Aslam Abdullah of Las Vegas speaks of a grand vision. He foresees American Muslims one day assuming moral leadership of the Muslim world as a result of high literacy, relative prosperity and -- above all -- experience at operating democratic organizations in the contentious open society of the United States.
He is a constant advocate of peace yet stands accused of spreading radical theories that encourage terrorism
"This is the country where history lives and history is made," says Abdullah, 49. "So many cultures and so many ethnicities are coming together, not living under the domination of one religion, but in a secular environment where they can express themselves and find a space."
Abdullah pursues this high goal through the diverse and sometimes lowly activities of his hectic daily life.
He is spiritual director at Jamia Masjid, the city's largest mosque, where he preaches, holds youth camps and officiates at weddings and funerals.
He helped launch, and is editor in chief of, The Muslim Observer, a national weekly newspaper out of Michigan.
He has authored more than 10 books, including "The American Muslim Identity, Speaking for Ourselves," published in 2003.
He has accepted a role at a new Muslim think tank in Pakistan, the Iqbal International Institute. The institute will examine Islam in light of modern issues and train young Muslims in critical thinking, says Abdullah, who will head its expected book division from the United States.
And he's a husband, father of four and long-distance commuter because his immediate family still lives in Southern California, where two children still are in school. When he's there on his days off from the Las Vegas mosque, he helps his wife, Amtul, with a small book-distribution business.
In sum, Las Vegans may not instantly know the name Aslam Abdullah. But he is nationally known -- and controversial -- in circles that pay attention to U.S. Muslim thinkers and activists.
Sometimes it seems a no-win situation, as when criticisms fly at Abdullah from opposite ends of the spectrum.
On one hand, fellow Muslims have said he is too hard at times on Islamic organizations or leaders. On the other, Steve Emerson, the non-Muslim author of "American Jihad," claims Abdullah is a "pretend moderate" who puts out dangerous rhetoric.
Take Abdullah's June 6 commentary on the alleged Marine massacre of civilians in Haditha, Iraq. He uses the incident to illustrate anti-Muslim bias.
He likens the Marines to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists. Both groups committed atrocities. Both claimed they acted to avenge injustices. Then Abdullah contrasts the public response: "In the case of Osama, Islam was declared a villain. In the case of the Marines, personal stress was described as the main reason."
In 2003, Abdullah publicly questioned whether the famous videotapes attributed to Osama Bin Laden were authentic. The U.S. government uses the tapes to cause panic, he claims.
In July, Abdullah published an editorial claiming that U.S. and Israeli foreign policy are determined not by secular considerations but by the intention to fulfill various scriptural prophesies. As a result, Abdullah questions whether the two nations are truly seeking peace in the Middle East.
Abdullah also brands Israel an apartheid state, based on the differing treatment of Jewish and Palestinian residents on property rights and other matters. But the writer claims he's just as tough when it comes to spotting violence or injustice perpetrated by members of his own faith. He has condemned the Sept. 11 attacks, suicide bombings and other acts by Muslims in Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and England.
Unlike many spiritual leaders of mosques, Abdullah did not come up through religious ranks. His higher education did not take place at any of the fabled Islamic theological academies. His advanced degrees are, rather, in what might be described as fields of "applied ethics" such as sociology and journalism. His doctorate is in journalism from a secular institution, City University, London.
The cleric was born to poverty as the oldest of 11 children in a family that belongs to India's Muslim minority. When his father died, just as Abdullah was finishing university, he needed to support his widowed mother and the siblings, but he couldn't find anything decent-paying in India. So he went into journalism in 1979, obtaining a job in Saudi Arabia as a reporter for a bureau of the London-based publication "Arabia: Islamic World Review."
"It was banned in most Muslim countries," including Egypt, Indonesia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, he says of the Review. "We were writing openly against the monarchies," which although Muslim, were not advancing the public health or literacy of the populations they ruled.
The publication shut down in the mid-1980s, so Abdullah moved to the United States and worked as a consultant for several years at the American Islamic College in Chicago.
He and his growing family moved to California in 1989, where he joined the Islamic Center of Southern California, to publish the Minaret, a feisty newsmagazine for Muslims. His editorials drew lightning bolts.
He wrote, for example, against U.S. mosques taking financial support from foreign Muslim groups, including members of royalty, who then impose their own agendas on the recipients. "Their money is dirty money. Their money is not moral," he says, pointing out that Jamia Masjid does not receive funds from overseas.
In 1999, when the Muslim religious police in Afghanistan ordered jail time for men who trimmed their beards, Abdullah protested by shaving his beard off entirely, then editorializing in print against coercion. To strict Muslims, a beard shows devotion to the lifestyle set by Muhammad, the prophet and founder of Islam.
The Muslim Observer is Abdullah's brainchild. A friend, Michigan cardiologist A.S. Nakadar, bankrolled the launch of The Muslim Observer in 1998. Abdullah writes editorials for the weekly but says he doesn't draw a paycheck from it.
Today, the Muslim Observer is going strong, but the Minaret has folded. It had been Abdullah's principal paycheck, so he gratefully joined the paid staff at Jamia Masjid in 2004.
The mosque does not want a traditional imam who does all the preaching. Abdullah shares the pulpit with other scheduled speakers. The mosque monitors closely who is permitted to speak, according to Khalid Khan, board president. "If one person is giving the sermon every week, we have a single track (viewpoint). If we have different people, they come up with different views, different prospects. It is better for us." Sermon topics are normally "issues that we are facing these days: how to raise our kids, how we can be a good person," according to Khan.
Interfaith dialogue is high on Abdullah's community agenda. He believes it gives Muslims chances to do charitable work and breaks down misconceptions about Muslims. To that end, Jamia Masjid last year joined Family Promise, a long-standing network of local churches and other houses of worship that serve homeless families.
"He's got the drive to get out there and educate and enlist" helpers, is how Family Promise director Terry Lindemann describes Abdullah. His social conscience impresses her. "He doesn't have anything to do with terrorism, any more than my father, who was German (American). During World War II, he was afraid they'd think he was with Hitler."
Not everyone views Abdullah as positively as does Lindemann. Emerson told the Review-Journal: "The record of Aslam Abdullah's comments during the past few years demonstrates an ideology of militant Islamic extremism. Pretending to be moderate, his radical agenda typifies the deception of groups ... (that) falsely assert to be nonextremist."
Emerson himself is a controversial figure. He won the prestigious Polk Award for his 1994 documentary "Jihad in America" and has been credited for predicting, in advance of Sept. 11, a major attack on the American homeland by Muslim militants. He has testified before Congress and the 9/11 Commission, and he consulted with several federal agencies. However, some journalism watchdogs charge that Emerson foments anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hysteria. Other Emerson critics point out his errors: He initially theorized that Yugoslavians bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing looked like the work of Muslim terrorists.
The cleric remains calm at Emerson's remarks, but they clearly disturb him. "If (I'm) pretending, I hope the pretensions would come out in my 20 years of working with non-Muslims."
A longtime naturalized citizen who votes in California as an independent, Abdullah likes the moral conservatism of Republicans and the social awareness of Democrats. He thinks of himself not as a radical, not even as a liberal, but as a "progressive."
To Emerson, he answers, "The intellectual leaders (in the U.S.), the thought 'processors,' everybody tends to view opposition to Israel as opposition to the United States."
Yes, Abdullah supports Israel's right to exist. That doesn't mean he thinks the United States should tolerate what he perceives as Israel's prolonged mistreatment of Palestinians. Nor does he think the United States should blindly support every military or strategic move Israel makes.
"Why should an American be questioned (on) his loyalty to his country on the basis of his support for Israel?" he asks. "There are thousands of (non-Muslim) Americans who do not identify with the interests of Israel. But they are not described as radicals."
When it comes to "policing" his own mosque for potential terrorists, Abdullah says he would notify homeland security or law enforcement if a person talked about "bombing (a) building," but not if he heard someone say, "I don't like Israel."
Another critic of Abdullah is Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser. An Arizona physician, a former Navy officer and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Jasser says he is concerned that Abdullah recklessly mixes religion -- which arises from his mosque post -- with politics, by virtue of his journalism.
Abdullah answers that mixing the two is natural and healthy. He cites Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson -- and, of course, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- as religious leaders known for doing the same.
"They want me to confine myself to the prayers?" he says. "I don't think a conscious person could be silent on everything going on in the world."
9/25/2006
THE LONG SHADOW OF 9/11
THE LONG SHADOW OF 9/11: Seeking acceptance
By JOAN WHITELY REVIEW-JOURNAL
A minaret is a slender tower at a mosque. In ancient times, minarets stood out conspicuously on a skyline so Muslim travelers easily could find houses of worship.
A genuine minaret -- attached to a real mosque, not to a casino with a Middle Eastern theme -- is expected to rise in Las Vegas by the end of 2006. The 80-foot tower will fulfill a dream for local Muslims.
It will stand on East Desert Inn Road at Jamia Masjid, the largest mosque in Nevada. The minaret won't be functional; no crier will climb to the top to announce daily prayer times. Its role will be to "signify the call to prayer, the oneness of God -- oneness because it stands by itself," explains Aslam Abdullah, 49, who is spiritual director of the masjid, the Arabic word for mosque.
Like a spire, the population of Muslims is soaring in the United States. The number of adults 18 or over who identified themselves as Muslim more than doubled from 1990 to 2001, the period covered in a landmark study of American religious identification done by City University of New York.
Muslims make up only about 2.3 percent of the nation's population and less than 1 percent of Clark County's. But estimates are slippery because the U.S. Census doesn't count people by religion. About two-thirds of U.S. Muslims are immigrants, most sources indicate. The reverse is true in Clark County, where about two-thirds of Muslims are U.S.-born, Abdullah estimates.
Both in ways they intend and in ways they cannot control, Muslims today are imprinting American culture.
In Las Vegas they have expressed religious piety in recent years by founding an Islamic private school and holding annual Quran conferences that bring in distinguished outside speakers.
But most Muslims here feel tarnished by caricatures of Islam projected by terrorists, the media, politicians or the ignorant. After the terrorist hijackers of Sept. 11, 2001, were identified as Muslims, they have worried about ethnic profiling by law enforcement and job discrimination by leery employers.
MOSQUES IN LAS VEGAS
The new Las Vegas minaret literally will raise the public profile of Jamia Masjid, which began informally in the 1970s when a handful of Muslims began meeting for prayer on the swimming pool patio at Khalid Khan's Las Vegas apartment complex.
Khan, born in India and raised in Pakistan, was then a student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Today he's a prosperous business owner and head of the Islamic Society of Nevada, which officially formed in 1984 to launch and govern the Jamia Masjid. It built the first phase of its present facility at 4730 E. Desert Inn Road in 1994 -- a fairly rare achievement. Only 26 percent of U.S. mosques have erected their own buildings; most buy a resale property, according to a study of U.S. mosques released in April 2001 by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Jamia Masjid now encompasses about 300 regular families, encompassing more than 1,000 people, who regularly participate in activities including prayers, classes, lectures and social outreach such as assisting the homeless. Mosque turnout on special occasions has exceeded 4,000, according to Abdullah. He's thinking of the annual celebration to end the fasting month of Ramadan, when Muslims from mosques across the valley throng to Jamia.
Five mosques dot Southern Nevada, but that number includes any location where public prayers are held, so a private school and an Islamic information office are among the five. The oldest valley mosque is Masjid As-Sabur, 711 Morgan St., in an older neighborhood near downtown Las Vegas.
It was founded, technically, in 1986 by a group of blacks who had embraced orthodox Islam. But it incorporated most members from a pre-existing mosque of the Nation of Islam, a racially separatist offshoot of Islam. Today As-Sabur, which translates to patience, has about 200 members, said its imam, or leader, 37-year-old Fateen Seifullah. At the average prayer service, 30 percent to 40 percent of attendees are nonblack.
ON THE JOB
Muslims in Southern Nevada run the economic gamut. Lawyers, real estate agents, interior decorators, grocers, caterers and clothing retailers are all represented on a counter at Jamia Masjid, where people have dropped leaflets and business cards for networking.
Khan, president of the executive committee that runs the mosque, has done well in the 32 years he has been in Las Vegas. A graduate of the UNLV hotel administration program, he got into textile importing at the urging of a cousin who manufactured towels back in Pakistan. Today, Khan's company, Hina's Textiles, is a wholesaler of institutional linens and clothing. A naturalized citizen for many years, Khan is proud that he supplies many of the patriotic-themed T-shirts -- think "USA Original" or "American and proud of it" -- sold by gift shops on the Strip or at the airport.
Dr. Osama Omar Haikal has prospered, too, with a Las Vegas gastroenterology practice. He founded the Omar Haikal Islamic Academy, which opened in 2001. "We opened the day before September 11. We closed that one day and have been open ever since," principal Nancy Gasho said. A career educator, Gasho is a non-Muslim who was drawn by the school's high academic goals. Now with classes running from kindergarten through eighth grade, the school requires an hour of daily instruction in Arabic and the Quran, the Muslim holy book. It expects to have 90 to 95 students this year.
The school suits Husna Alikhan, an immigration attorney, and her husband, Dr. Farrukh Imtiaz, both of Indian descent. Alikhan grew up in Canada; her husband came from India to the United States to advance his medical education. Both are now U.S. citizens. They have two children.
"We'd like to maintain, or preserve, our way of life, our culture," is how she explains their school choice. "I think one of the best ways of doing that is having them in a private (school) setting. When they're with their peers of similar background, it makes my life easier. It makes my husband's life easier."
She's referring to Muslim values and lifestyle practices that cover diet, fasting, modest dress for girls and prayers at set times during the day.
Career progress has been hard for some Las Vegas Muslims. One is Mirza N. Baig, 34, who arrived in Las Vegas in October 2001. He and his father migrated just days after his mother's death to join Mirza's four brothers, who already lived in Southern Nevada.
Baig holds a master's degree in geography, an MBA from the Pakistan campus of an American university and a law degree from the University of Karachi. In Pakistan, he made a good living as a district sales manager for a U.S. pharmaceutical maker.
After two years of trying to land a job in corporate sales, he runs what amounts to a convenience store.
With his brother as business owner, he launched and manages a small specialty store that sells halal meat (hand-butchered, according to Muslim protocol), hard-to-find Indian and Pakistani foods and typical convenience store goods. That's minus the beer, because Muslim religious law proscribes alcohol. To surprised non-Muslim beer shoppers, he says, "I don't say 'I don't want to sell it,' just 'I don't have the license'" to sell it.
On the side, Baig does real estate. He's underemployed and can't figure out why U.S. companies won't hire him. But he suspects his foreign origin and arrival after Sept. 11, 2001, have a lot to do with it. Patience is his best strategy. "The way I was thinking it would be (in America), it is not. ... I don't feel bad. I know I have to start my life over."
A 30-year-old woman who attends Jamia Masjid works as a nursing assistant as she attends nursing school. Bilingual because she grew up in the Middle East, she speaks flawless English thanks to her English-speaking Christian mother. But the young woman, who declined to provide her name for inclusion in this story, reports that she couldn't find a job whenever she interviewed wearing the head scarf of hijab, an Arabic term for modest female dress. Once she started interviewing minus the scarf, she easily got a job. Now working as a temp at a health care agency, she complains, "The people who hire, they basically don't like us because of our beliefs."
Balancing civil rights, national security
A national survey of U.S. Muslims in October 2004 found that a majority (57 percent) said they, their friends or members of their family had experienced anti-Muslim discrimination since the Sept. 11 attacks. The Metropolitan Police Department and the Las Vegas field office of the FBI claim a good relationship with the Muslim community, but many Muslims say their treatment by law enforcement and security agencies has been mixed.
Airport snags for Muslim passengers are common, beyond what the typical traveler faces, they claim. Flying while brown -- akin to driving while black -- is a pejorative term that has emerged in some quarters to describe ethnic profiling of Muslims at airports.
Businessman Khan has been extensively vetted by law enforcement to obtain an access pass that he uses to visit retail clients located in secure portions of McCarran airport. But when he flies, which is frequently, he always has problems, noting, "I can never get the boarding pass on the (self check-in) machine."
Normally a Transportation Security Administration supervisor has to show up for airline personnel to issue Khan a boarding pass. Once, though, the TSA rep summoned the police, too. The airport officer, fortunately, recognized Khan and knew his clearance level actually exceeded that of average travelers.
"Look, I'm not going to change my name. I'm not going to change my religion. Why don't you change my (TSA) record?" is Khan's comment on the almost identical rigmarole each time he flies.
Abdullah gets the same intensive airport treatment. As a scholar and journalist, he travels regularly to speaking engagements at mosques and universities around the country and overseas. He says his worst experience came in May 2003 at McCarran. At that time he wasn't on staff at Jamia Masjid, but flew in weekly from California to lead a Friday prayer service.
After undergoing the usual security process, he was the last person to board a plane headed back to California. Barely seated in the back, he heard a voice on a loudspeaker ordering him off the plane. A June 2003 article in LA Weekly recounted the ordeal: "As Abdullah walked up the aisle, the plane was quiet. He felt all eyes upon him, taking in his business suit, full beard, brown skin and Muslim name. 'I was trying to erase those looks,' he said. 'I was embarrassed and humiliated.'" The airline rechecked him and gave him a seat on the next flight but never explained or apologized, he says.
Other local Muslims have negative airport stories, too, but are more apt to let things slide. Imam Seifullah, a black convert, has learned the hard way not to book a flight at the last minute -- doing that is sometimes interpreted as an earmark of a potential terrorist.
Baig, the shopkeeper, stoically allows more time for his airport processing. He always goes through stepped-up security. First he stands in a special "puffer" machine that shoots jets of air at him, searching for traces of explosives, then undergoes a body search. "This is OK if it's for security," he reasons. "This world has been changed."
Snags go beyond the realm of air travel. Khan remembers a 2003 case in which a young Pakistani graduate of Arizona State University had found work in Las Vegas as a legal nonresident. Local newspapers reported how the young man had stopped at a Strip hotel several times to find a friend who was supposed to be checking in. Garage guards thought his repeated visits suspicious and detained him. Las Vegas police officers showed up at the hotel to question him because he had been stopped recently at Hoover Dam for a minor traffic violation with a copy of the Quran on his car seat.
What the newspaper didn't report was the aftermath of the incident, Khan says. From that point, the young man went under immigration surveillance. Shortly after, immigration arrested him at his workplace parking lot late on a Friday. They claimed that his work visa had expired that day, even though it had been renewed in California that same day and put him in the county jail over the weekend. Las Vegas police later said the man was on a watch list.
After he was released, an FBI agent paid a personal visit to the man's now-wary employer to assure them that he was not under investigation, but his family asked him to return home to Pakistan for safety.
"That case bothered me," Khan admits. "This does not leave a good impression on the Muslim community. It's really awkward when I tell them I have worked closely with authorities, they will protect your rights."
Anti-Muslim backlash also occurs in everyday life apart from government settings, some Las Vegans say. It can take the form of casual comments or jokes that cut nonetheless to the quick.
"It's not Halloween, why are you wearing that?" is how some neighbors react when they see Las Vegan Valentina Tawalbeh in the traditional long robe and veil. Tawalbeh is a 28-year-old housewife from Jordan. Her husband, Walid, an electrical engineer, has his own least favorite remark, she adds. Co-workers sometimes joke that his last name sounds like "Taliban," the fundamentalist Muslim militia in Afghanistan.
"Ninja" is what some strangers have said to Abdullah's daughter, Khadeeja, 21, when they see her wearing a black head scarf. Khadeeja chose to start wearing her veil after the attacks of Sept. 11. "In terms of defining identity, it definitely was a turning point," she says. "It had an effect on me ... an awareness there's going to be a more watchful eye on everything you do."
A recent graduate of UCLA, Khadeeja recalls strangers confronting her on campus to say she should fight oppression of Muslim women by shedding her veil. She answered, "I feel more liberated (wearing a veil.) If they cannot see this body or this hair, they'll have to actually listen to what I say."
Naseema Ansari, who gives her age as "over 40," was born in the Middle East but raised in California, where she met her husband, who grew up in Afghanistan of Saudi Arabian ancestry. Sept. 11 was a turning point for American Muslims, she claims. Before, she encountered little ethnic unpleasantness. Since, she has regretted giving her children Muslim first names because it causes them to stand out at school or in the Navy, in which one son now is serving.
She also has stopped using a vanity license plate that read "Al Ansar," an allusion to her husband's Arab heritage. It did spark friendly banter when people would ask whether it referred to Al Unser, the race car driver. On the other hand, she wonders whether it led to her husband's death.
Abdul Ansari died in the summer of 2005 in a nighttime hit-and-run car accident on a remote Nebraska highway as the family returned from a trip to Chicago. Naseema was critically injured in the accident but slowly worked free of her wheelchair and walker.
"Littlefoot here," she says, pointing to Kareema, her 11-year-old, their youngest child, "he died saving her."
Abdul Ansari was in the front passenger seat when the couple suddenly saw the lights of a vehicle behind them, advancing rapidly. He was reaching around to protect Kareema in the back seat when the vehicle rammed them. Their van left the road and rolled; the other vehicle kept going.
The Nebraska Highway Patrol has not solved the case. To this day, Naseema Ansari does not know what to believe. "I just wish they would catch the person. If it was a DUI, they're going to drive and drink, or drive and use drugs, and do it again. If it's a hate crime, that's even worse."
BUILDING BRIDGES
"I've been living in this country for the last 35 years. This is my country. All my children are born here. All my family's future is here," says Khan, who received U.S. citizenship decades ago.
Now he feels a divide in his life caused by Sept. 11.
"Before that, when I was socializing or having a business deal, they took me as Khalid Khan. ... Now I have to do more to make sure they have no misconceptions about me." So he tells them about his faith, about his ideals.
Other Muslims here say they, too, strive to show by personal actions that Islam, their religion, is separate from the violent politics of Islamic terrorists. It rankles to be tarred with the same brush as Osama bin Laden, they say. Other faiths are not judged by the deeds of individual adherents, such as Eric Rudolph, the abortion clinic bomber who was lionized by some Christian groups, or Baruch Goldstein, an American immigrant to Israel who in 1994 mowed down Muslims in a Hebron mosque with a rifle. Some Israelis called Goldstein, who died in the attack, a hero.
Islamic organizations in Southern Nevada try to build bridges of understanding. Two mosques, As-Sabur and Jamia, reach out by feeding or housing the homeless. Last year Jamia Masjid joined Family Promise, an interfaith program in which local houses of worship take turns opening their buildings as a weeklong overnight shelter for homeless families.
As-Sabur and Jamia also are studying how to start a health clinic for low-income people, regardless of religious affiliation. Five Muslim doctors have volunteered their services. "We already have the commitment of medicine and equipment. What basically we are looking at is the legal aspects," Abdullah says.
Muslims here discount the concept that Las Vegas is too sinful for devout people to raise solid families and show compassion to neighbors. "From a Muslim perspective," Abdullah concludes, "the entire universe belongs to God. He didn't say, 'except Las Vegas.'" DeleteReplyForwardSpamMove... Previous | Next | Back to Messages Save Message Text | Full Headers
9/25/2006
Captain James Yee
Captain James Yee was the Muslim Chaplin of Prison Camp at Guantanamobay. He went through lot of trouble and fought with courage to come out successfull at the end. He will speak at Jamia Masjid Las Vegas on May 12,2006 at 7:30 PM about his experience and about rights of Muslims in USA. Please come and listen to such a famous and couragious person. The entry is free.
