Recently a friend of mine sent me a disturbing article about the Park51 debate in New York City (a cultural center that will include a Mosque built down the street from ground zero. Article enclosed at the bottom of this blog entry.) This debate has been heating up and really creating some ugliness with it. It's really starting to make me wonder what's wrong with Americans? One of my favorite things to tell people here is that America is diverse. That we have all different cultures, and we have people from all over the world. We aren't one religion, we aren't one race, we aren't all one language. We are the "melting pot" of the world. America takes the best of all cultures and combines them. It's a source of pride for us Peace Corps volunteers to be able to say that we have Muslims in America too. That America has "freedom of religion." We are free to practice how we want, when we want, and where we want. And now, we hear comments drifting across the world to us that Americans are fine with freedom of religion... as long as that religion is just not Islam. Which is a frightening thought for the more than 1.3 million* American-Muslims.
While a friend of mine who is also married to an Azerbaijani was in the USA she noted that random people would make very unflattering comments about Muslims, (eg "why do they come where they aren't wanted?"), and thought her husband was an Arab. Our program and training officer was also recently in the US for a Peace Corps conference, and people thought he was also an Arab -- for the record Azerbaijanis are Turks (descendant from Turkish ancestry). It's really unfortunate but there's a lot of misinformation and preconceived notions about Muslims, and people are becoming more vocal with their misinformed ideas. Sometimes that vocalization further spreads hate, violence, misinformation and fear about something Americans just don't really understand.
I've begun to notice through online newspaper articles, blogs, and other American news outlets online, that the American people don't know that not every Arab is Muslim and not every Muslim is Arab (there are Christians in Egypt, Lebanon, etc. and Indonesians and Turks are usually Muslim but obviously not Arabs). Worse than generalizing all Muslims as being Arab, people really don't understand that most Muslims are peaceful people. The number of people who think that Obama is Muslim has increased too, which shows how many people don't like the idea of a diverse president representing our diverse America. Does anyone remember when the US was afraid to elect a Catholic? Without John F. Kennedy we wouldn't have the Peace Corps today. The third goal of the Peace Corps is to teach Americans about other cultures around the world. I'm not even home yet, and my work is mounting up before me. I've got a lot of good things to say about Azerbaijani Muslims, and how it really hurts when this whole debate affects the people I love and care for, and who have loved and cared for me so well these past three years.
Since I'll be home in just over a month, I wanted to send this out prior to arriving with my wonderful Muslim husband. Azerbaijan is a Muslim country. But like America, most people don't wear head scarfs, don't wear scull caps, or any outward sign of their religion. It's a secular (as in, not a religious) state, and like America, the government is run separate of religious influence. It's very hard for many Americans to understand that Azerbaijan is a former soviet union country, and lies on the outside edges of Europe while simultaneously being a Muslim country. There are influences from many different cultures here, and if one did not know it was a Muslim country, you probably wouldn't be able to tell based on just the culture and looks alone.
Now, just to dispel any confusion... Like the Christianity, Islam teaches peace, and non-violence. Muslims in general are not violent people. The same way that Christians in general are not violent people. (How would you feel if your entire religion was effected and viewed based on the actions of Timothy McVay, the Oklahoma City building bomber?) If any of you have ever watched the West Wing there is a great analogy that you should know. Think back to SATs, when you had to compare things.
al-Qaeda is to Islam, what the KKK is to Christianity. It's a horrible subgroup of fring people that don't represent the views of the entire group, and focus on hurting people to prove their point. So for those of you who seem to equate all Muslims with terrorism, I know this bursts your bubble, but you'll have to look more realistically at the situation. A hand full of bad people can't be the whole reason that 1.57 billion** Muslim people become discriminated around the world. It isn't fair, and it isn't practical to assume that just because a few bad people do hurtful things, that everyone else will do it too. Please, don't be one of those Americans who uses fear and misunderstanding as an excuse to discriminate and hurt people who are really not that different from us after all. As Americans we have an obligation to all Americans, not just the ones who look, act and think just the same as we do. We have an obligation to uphold our constitutional rights, including protecting religions and the right to practice those religions for anyone who wants to, even if we don't practice the same one. We have an obligation to protect each other from violence, from hate speech, and from discrimination. We have the responsibility to give every American the chance to be themselves while building a better future for all of us.
NEW YORK – Adnan Zulfiqar, a graduate student, former U.S. Senate aide and American-born son of Pakistani immigrants, will soon give the first khutbah, or sermon, of the fall semester at the University of Pennsylvania. His topic has presented itself in the daily headlines and blog posts over the disputed mosque near ground zero.
What else could he choose, he says, after a summer remembered not for its reasoned debate, but for epithets, smears, even violence?
As he writes, Zulfiqar frets over the potential fallout and what he and other Muslim leaders can do about it. Will young Muslims conclude they are second-class citizens in the U.S. now and always?
"They're already struggling to balance, `I'm American, I'm Muslim,' and their ethnic heritage. It's very disconcerting," said Zulfiqar, 32, who worked for former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat, and now serves Penn's campus ministry. "A controversy like this can make them radical or become more conservative in how they look at things or how they fit into the American picture."
Whatever the outcome, the uproar over a planned Islamic center near the World Trade Center site is shaping up as a signal event in the story of American Islam.
Strong voices have emerged from outside the Muslim community. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been steadfast in his support for the project. Jon Stewart nightly mocks the bigotry that the protest unleashed.
"The sentiment, say, five years ago among many Muslims, especially among many young Muslims, was that, `We're in this all by ourselves,'" said Omer Mozaffar, a university lecturer in Chicago who leads Quran study groups as a buffer between young people and the extremist preachers on YouTube. `That has changed significantly. There have been a lot of people speaking out on behalf of Muslims."
Eboo Patel, an American Muslim leader and founder of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago nonprofit that promotes community service and religious pluralism, said Muslims are unfortunately experiencing what all immigrant groups endured in the U.S. before they were fully accepted as American. Brandeis University historian Jonathan D. Sarna has noted that Jews faced a similar backlash into the 1800s when they tried to build synagogues, which were once banned in New York.
Patel believes American Muslims are on the same difficult but inevitable path toward integration.
"I'm not saying this is going to be happy," Patel said. "But I'm extremely optimistic."
Yet, the overwhelming feeling is that the controversy has caused widespread damage that will linger for years.
American Muslim leaders say the furor has emboldened opposition groups to resist new mosques around the country, at a time when there aren't enough mosques or Islamic schools to serve the community.
Rhetoric from some politicians that lumps all Muslims with terrorists will depress the Muslim vote, analysts say.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a potential 2012 presidential candidate, said in opposing the Islamic center that, "America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization."
U.S. Muslims who have championed democracy and religious tolerance question what they've accomplished. If the "extremist" label can be hung on someone as apparently liberal as the imam at the center of the outcry, Feisal Abdul Rauf, then any Muslim could come under attack. Feisal supports women's rights, human rights and interfaith outreach.
"The joke is on moderate Muslims," said Muqtedar Khan, a University of Delaware political scientist and author of "American Muslims, Bridging Faith and Freedom." "What's the point if you're going to be treated the same way as a radical? If I get into trouble are they going to treat me like I'm a supporter of al-Qaeda?"
U.S. Muslims are themselves divided over the proposed mosque.
Feisal and his wife, Daisy Khan (no relation to Muqtedar Khan), want to build a 13-story, $100 million community center called Park51 two blocks from the World Trade Center site. It would be modeled on the YMCA or Jewish Community Center, with programming for the entire city, and would include a mosque.
Some Muslims felt from the start that the plan was misguided, given the wounds of the Sept. 11 attacks and widespread misunderstanding about Islam. Yet they felt compelled to defend the proposal when the discussion over religious freedom and cultural sensitivity turned ugly.
Days ago, a brick nearly smashed a window at the Madera Islamic Center in central California, where signs were left behind that read, "Wake up America, the enemy is here," and "No temple for the god of terrorism." This past week in New York, a Muslim cab driver had his face and throat slashed in a suspected hate crime.
The poisonous atmosphere comes at a still fragile time in the development of Muslim communal life.
Leaders have spent years trying to persuade Muslim immigrants to come out of their enclaves and fully embrace being American. The task became that much more difficult in the aftermath of 9/11. Many Muslims pulled back, convinced that if another terrorist attack occurs, the U.S. government will put them in internment camps, like the Japanese in World War II. Their American-born children, meanwhile, have felt rejected by their own country.
David Ramadan, a Muslim and vice chair of ethnic coalitions for Republican Party in Virginia, predicts that comments from political figures in both major parties will depress Muslim voting in years to come.
Ramadan and other Muslim Republicans have been pressing GOP leaders not to support a particular mosque, but to acknowledge that American Muslims have equal rights under the Constitution.
"Who wants to come into the fold of the Republican Party today, or even the fold of the Democratic Party?" Ramadan asked. "They just increased the number of independents in America."
