Loading ...Muslim-Americans in metro Denver fear backlash after terrorist attacks
By Colleen O’Connor
The Denver Post
Daily life changed dramatically for Muslims in Colorado after the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. Some Middle Eastern restaurants have received online threats, and many students are frightened.
Some women have been verbally attacked; others are planning to attend a self-defense class in martial arts.
While hostility toward Muslims is not new, experts say, fears of increased violence in a backlash have driven many local Muslims to keep a very low profile, and women in head scarves — the most visible symbol of Islam — feel especially vulnerable.
“It feels like a new wave of Islamophobia is coming back, just as strong as 9/11, and it makes everyone nervous,” said Nadeen Ibrahim, a member of the Muslim Student Association at the University of Colorado Denver. “We just had an e-mail from (Islamic) community leaders telling women who wear the hijab to keep a beanie or hat with them if they need to conceal that part of their appearance.”
But even this doesn’t guarantee safety, according to Iman Jodeh, a Palestinian-American raised in Denver who works as executive director of Meet the Middle East.
“My girlfriend in Colorado Springs was afraid to wear the headcover, so she wore a hat on top of it,” she said. “She was at Target, in the bathroom with her child, when a woman followed her in, locked the door and threatened her. She said, ‘Don’t think I don’t know you’re wearing a scarf and who you are.’ ”
Jodeh doesn’t wear a hijab, but most women in her family do. Last week, Jodeh and family members wanted to go out to eat, but her mother refused to join them unless they went to “an Arabic restaurant,” Jodeh said.
Everyone agreed and headed out, but somehow plans changed along the way. “My mother said, ‘No, take me back.’ That broke my heart,” said Jodeh, whose eyes brimmed with tears. “She didn’t feel safe somewhere she’s lived for 41 years, longer than in her native country, and raised her kids here.”
Concerns
At the Metropolitan Denver North Islamic Center in Northglenn, the new imam, Shems Adeen Ben-Masaud, sees increased concerns over potential violence.
“One of my wife’s cousins was in King Soopers and an old man came up to her and said, ‘You Muslim,’ and then he used a really nasty curse word,” he said. “We have youth and kids scared to go to school, and women are conflicted about the head scarf, whether to take it off for safety or keep it on. People want to stay under the radar.”
Backlash from the recent attacks seems further fueled by other events, such as the Syrian refugee crisis and the American presidential campaign, with Republican candidate Donald Trump calling for a ban on all Muslims coming to America.
Iman Jodeh associate director of Meet the Middle East at her Denver office on Thursday, December 10, 2015. As Muslims feel they are under attack following San Bernardino and Donald Trump’s comments, Jodeh a Muslim-American woman, is speaking out on behalf of her community. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)
Lori Peek, author of “Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans After 9/11” and associate professor in the sociology department of Colorado State University, has heard from many Muslim-Americans in recent weeks that they feel more targeted than after 9/11.
“Backlash and scapegoating are much more likely to occur after major events, and much more likely to be directed at marginalized minority populations,” she said in an e-mail interview.
“How many young, white, Christian males have shot up schools and other public places over the past decade? Are there ever hate crimes directed against that population after these major events? Are their places of worship monitored? Are they told they won’t be able to live in this country any longer?”
Nabeeh Hasan, a biomedical researcher at National Jewish Hospital, was stunned when he heard discussions about Muslims being banned from traveling to the U.S.
“I thought, wow, now I’ll have to think about the same things that the Jewish people faced when Nazi Germany started to get rolling,” he said. “I was sincerely thinking that if things kept going down like they are at this moment, am I going to have to move to Europe, Canada, the Middle East or Africa?”
Soon after Trump’s remark, an anonymous poster on the student Facebook page at Colorado State University in Fort Collins expressed agreement, saying, “Islam is the cause of all the world’s problems. Heck, I wouldn’t mind if someone started an anti-Muslim militia to ensure Islam is banned from campus!”
For Israa Eldeiry, the Egyptian-American president of CSU’s Muslim Student Association, it was a chilling moment.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, I don’t feel safe,’ ” she said. “People act on this hatred, and you don’t know who it will be, someone in your class or someone walking next to you to class.”
She posted a defiant response claiming her right as an “American-Arab” and “proud Muslim woman” to a feeling of safety on campus and denouncing the assumption that all Muslims are terrorists. That post triggered more than 500 likes within 24 hours, and much support. This response encouraged her to write an opinion column for the college newspaper, published Friday, about anti-Muslim bigotry.
“I still have the fear in me, and I don’t feel safe, but I decided to take this opportunity to feel support,” she said. “Hopefully, most people don’t like to see this much hate going around.”
Support
People in the local Muslim community stress that they’ve also received overwhelming support, from flower bouquets dropped off at mosques, kind messages and phone calls, and a recent interfaith vigil at the Colorado Muslim Society that drew hundreds of people.
And in important ways, the Islamic community in Colorado is much stronger than ever before.
In the wake of 9/11, interfaith groups began working harder, including the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado, the Abrahamic Initiative at St. John’s Cathedral, the Religious Advisory Council at the University of Denver and the Multicultural Mosaic Foundation.
“My feeling is that the incident in California caused a unity, not just among Muslims but among all people who believe in peace. They’re standing together in solidarity and friendship,” said Ismail Akbulut, the Turkish-American president of the Multicultural Mosaic Foundation in Denver.
On Thursday, the Colorado Imam Council published a letter signed by more than 90 local faith leaders — including Christians, Jews and Buddhists — expressing solidarity with local Muslims.
“We abhor the criticism and disrespectful rhetoric that is being misguidedly directed towards Islam and Muslims,” it read.
And on Friday, the local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace held a rally against Islamophobia in Denver as part of the organization’s nationwide effort in 15 cities during Hanukkah to support refugees and speak out against anti-Muslim rhetoric.
“That brought me to tears, knowing that the Jewish community is coming out in support of Muslims,” Ibrahim, the CU Denver student, said.
Besides the strong interfaith network, there’s another significant shift in the local community: a new generation of Muslim-Americans who are “loud and proud,” said Jodeh, a first generation Palestinian-American who’s the daughter of Mohamed Jodeh, co-founder of the Colorado Muslim Society.
“My generation is coming of age in our careers and establishing ourselves,” she said. “We’ve become doctors and lawyers and small-business owners. We’re educated and American-born. We speak English perfectly but still have our native tongue, and we can be great representatives. We understand American culture and how to communicate with Americans.”
At Meet the Middle East, she works to foster relationships between the United States and the Middle East through immersion trips to the Middle East and cultural offerings in Denver, but every terrorist attack creates another setback.
“We are tired of the violence that keeps happening in our name,” she said. “It’s frustrating. There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world who practice and love our religion, but at the same time we’re keeping our heads down because we have to be safe.”
That conflict — between wanting to be vocal but also to avoid harm — also shows up in Obeid Kaifo, a first generation Syrian-American finishing his pre-med degree at the University of Colorado Denver.
Working Tuesday night at his family’s restaurant, the Shish Kabob Grill across from the state Capitol, he talked about an online threat the restaurant received after the recent terrorist attacks — he immediately reported it to federal authorities.
“It’s been a very difficult couple weeks for me,” he said. “More emotionally draining than 9/11.”
He was one of three Muslim-Americans to attend the rally in Civic Center Park the day after the attacks in Paris to show solidarity with the French, but was very disappointed that more Muslim-Americans didn’t attend.
Kaifo believes that extremist factions like the Islamic State want to divide Muslims from non-Muslims to create isolated communities of Muslims in the West, which then become fertile ground for alienated youth to become radicalized.
So he fights hard for openness and friendship.
“It’s on us to go out to meet people in the street, and hand out things in gestures of kindness,” he said. “Like Muslim women in the hijab handing out flowers or bottles of water to show that all of us are not like that.”
As for Ben-Masaud — a Denver native with a business degree and a former corporate career — he looks at the current backlash as part of the shadow side of American history.
“The Jews (were targeted) when they first came to the United States, and so were the Irish and the Italians,” he said. “And the Native Americans — what did we do with them? Or the African-Americans, or the Japanese in the internment camps? Right now, we are the modern bogeymen.”
Source: www.denverpost.com