9/11
On September 11, 2001, nineteen extremists associated with al-Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out terrorist attacks on the United States. Two of those planes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. A third plane hit the Pentagon outside of Washington D.C while the fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Around 3,000 people had died during these attacks. This event prompted the United States government to create new policies and initiatives to combat terrorism. These policies portrayed Muslims as the face of global terrorism.
The USA Patriot Act was an important policy that impacted the lives of Muslims in the United States. Soon after the attacks on 9/11, congress convened and passed legislation that gave more power, resources, and funding to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. This legislation was passed without any input of experts outside of law enforcement. The Patriot Act was passed to strengthen national security by expanding the power of law enforcement to investigate anyone it suspects of terrorism. However, this act led to the restriction and deprivation of certain civil liberties and constitutional rights of Arabs and Muslim Americans. A report from the Justice Department's inspector general showed there were many claims by Arabs and Muslims have being abused by law enforcement offices. These abuses were documented as including airport profiling, verbal harassment, and physical assault. 9/11 had real consequences of state violence and surveillance in the lives of Arabs and Muslims in the United States.
These events and policies have also shaped the image of Muslim Americans in America’s general public imagination. Muslims were seen as dangerous and potential terrorists. Muslims and anyone who had “Muslim-like” features were targeted. In the eight weeks following 9/11, more than a thousand incidents of hate crimes and racial violence were reported. Among that is the murder of at least nineteen people, attacks on places of worship, work, and home, as well as individual cases of personal intimidation and harassment. These hate crimes were in response and relationship to the 9/11 attacks. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, 481 hate crimes were documented against Muslim Americans and Arab Americans in 2001. This is a massive increase from the 28 cases reported in 2000. These statistics and reports reveal American sentiment towards Muslims.
Cordoba House or “Ground Zero mosque” is another case that reveals anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States post 9/11. Cordoba House or as it's more commonly referred to as “Ground Zero mosque” was a plan to develop an Islamic cultural center two blocks away from the where the World Trade Center used to be (known as Ground Zero). The imam who was part of the planning process explained that the initiative was to cultivate understanding among all religions and cultures. The imam Abdul Rauf explains, “ what happened that day [9/11] was not Islam.” That the development of the Cordoba House would be to push back against the narrative that Islam supports terrorism. However, the plan was met with protest and resistance from many Americans. Among those were politicians such as the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who commented “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust museum in Washington.” Here, we see how 9/11 has shifted the perception of Muslims in the United States and have had them conflated with Nazism. This rhetoric has allowed for more violence against Muslim Americans. The attacks on 9/11 were a violent tragedy, but they should not become an opportunity for more violence.
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Sources
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“September 11 Attacks” by Peter L. Bergen
“The Sad, True Story of the Ground Zero Mosque” by Brendan O’Connor
“Building on Faith” by Faisal Abdulrauf
“Do Nazis Have the Right To Put Up a Sign Next to the Holocaust Museum?” by Brian Palmer