Racializing Islam Before and After 9/11: From Melting Pot to Islamophobia

• Author: Hilal Elver
• Pages: 119-174

Racializing Islam Before and After 9/11:

From Melting Pot to Islamophobia

Hilal Elver

I. POINT OF DEPARTURE .......................................................................... 119

II. PAVING THE ROAD FOR “RACIALIZING ISLAM”: PRE-9/11 ERA.............. 123

A. Muslim Community in the United States ...................................... 124

1. Immigrants ................................................................................. 125

2. Natives: African American Muslims ......................................... 128

B. Prejudices Against Muslims and Middle Easterners in the

Pre-9/11 Era ....................................... ............................................ 130

1. Discrimination Against Middle Easterners and Muslims in

the Process of Immigration ....................................................... 131

2. Anti-Arab Sentiment based on International Politics,

American Foreign Policy, and the role of Media ...................... 136

III. POST-9/11 ERA: “TERRORIZING MUSLIMS INSIDE-OUT” ....................... 137

A. Immigration Law ............................................................................ 139

B. USA PATRIOT Act ......................................................................... 141

C. Social Pressure and Racial Profiling ............................................ 143

D. Guantanomo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Interrogation

Techniques ...................................................................................... 145

E. Judicial Actions Against Government Policy ................................ 147

IV. 10 YEARS AFTER 9/11: ISLAMOPHOBIA AND RACIALIZING ISLAM ......... 150

A. Presidential Election: Is Obama a Muslim? .................................. 157

B. Islamophobia Emerges: Cordoba Project....................................... 159

C. Fear of Shariah Law in U.S. Courts? ............................................ 162

D. Freedom of Speech and Hate Speech ............................................. 166

E. Islamic Practices ............................................................................. 169

F. Surveillance ..................................................................................... 171

V. CONCLUSION: HOW TO LIVE WELL TOGETHER? ................................... 172

I. POINT OF DEPARTURE

American culture has a strong influence on foreign cultures. Nevertheless,

culture spreads through many channels and does not always bring truth.

Indeed, it almost never does. In my childhood, my first encounter with

American culture was reading comic books translated from English. The hero

was an “American ranger” against “bloody red-skins.” Turkish translators

named indigenous people, Native Americans, “red skins.” The comic books

described them as killing innocent settlers, setting fires, destroying the

environment, and peeling the skin off the skulls of their victims. “Heroic”

American rangers were fighting against American Indians and the colonial

British army, called “red jackets.” The stories always ended with glorious

victory for the American rangers. Many Turkish children grew up reading

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these politically incorrect comic books, learning American history from the

settlers’ perspective. Schools banned these books, but this made them even

more desirable. In the 1980s, TV dominated our popular culture, and

American TV series became our firsthand source to learn about the most

powerful country in the world. We learned the history of slavery watching

Roots and contemporary Texas culture watching Dallas.

Many years later, when I arrived in the United States as a Fulbright

scholar, I had the opportunity to learn more about the American legal system

and the legendary Supreme Court of the United States. My first encounter was

the vicious debate during the nomination process for a Supreme Court Justice:

Clarence Thomas’s hearing in the United States Senate and Anita Hill’s

testimony against him. It was a fascinating learning experience, showing how

the democratic system worked in the United States in such a transparent way.

Questioning the Supreme Court candidates, let alone broadcasting it live on

TV, was unimaginable in my country. No one was above the law in this

country, even those nominated to the Supreme Court! Of course, I did not

appreciate at the time the underlying racial tone, the importance of Justice

Thomas’s appointment to the Supreme Court, and his decidedly controversial

reputation in the African American community. I did not understand any of

the competing and contrasting interests shaping the whole debate. I just

admired the fact that people seemed to take sexual harassment seriously and

that the United States protected women’s rights in such a vigorous way. It was

a fascinating and impressive first encounter. In retrospect, I figured out that

half of the importance of such a case, the politics of race, had not registered in

my mind. I learned the side of the case that had been invisible for outsiders

many years later when I read Toni Morrison’s book on this famous trial.1

My first personal experience with race consciousness was in 1993 when my

13-year-old daughter started the 9th grade at a local public high school in

Ann Arbor. I received a warning from her German language teacher that she

was spending time with African American students, which she described as a

“potentially dangerous group.” She said I should be careful about my

daughter’s friends. However, I learned from my daughter that they were the

only kids in school friendly with her even though some of the African

American kids questioned her presence in the group as she was a “white girl.”

Soon someone explained that “she is not white, she is a Muslim!” This was the

first knowledge I received that being white or black is much more than one’s

skin color! Muslims were considered non-white in this country, yet not exactly

black, either. We entered our new lives with this new identity.

The same year, another important event filled TV screens: the hot pursuit

of O.J. Simpson. Police chased his white SUV and the whole country watched

this drama unfold. The trial of O.J. Simpson was even more odd and

1 TONI MORRISON, RACE-ING JUSTICE, EN-GENDERING POWER: ESSAYS ON ANITA HILL, CLARENCE

THOMAS, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL REALITY (1992).

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confusing to me as a foreign lawyer. I had no deep knowledge of the workings

of the U.S. criminal justice system in the real world, not in law books or

Hollywood movies. Race politics had high-jacked the criminal justice system.

People took sides. O.J. Simpson’s guilt or innocence could not be separated

from his racial identity. I was also very surprised that while society and the

justice system were so preoccupied with race, law school curriculum seemed to

deal with race from the perspective of “color blindness,” instead of critically

evaluated one of the most important issues in American society. Racial

discrimination was a “white elephant” in law school classrooms. After many

years, I learned that the Michigan Law School was one of the important

venues in a famous Supreme Court decision on affirmative action.2

The new era of awakening arrived in 1995, when Timothy McVeigh

exploded a public building killing hundreds of innocent people in Oklahoma

City. I was at the airport, returning from an American Society of International

Law meeting in New York on my way to Malta. They kept me at the airport the

whole day without any explanation, and then sent me home on another flight.

I figured that by carrying a Turkish passport I became an instant suspect in

terror cases. On the morning of 9/11, as I watched the horror on TV, I hoped

that the names of terrorists were not similar to mine! Unfortunately they were.

Since then, my travel experiences have been difficult and humiliating. Visa

applications to Europe were nightmarish, if not humiliating. They involved

long investigations, background checks, visa officers accusing me of

fabricating my documents. Flying back and forth was a stigmatizing

experience as I was “randomly” searched because of my Turkish passport.

Sometimes, they stamped my boarding card with a red sign, which meant that

they searched me again and again each time I changed planes, until I reached

my final destination. After 9/11, every time I returned to the United States

immigration officers interviewed me in a back room, sometimes for hours,

after long trips from Europe. They asked what is wrong with me that I am still

a Turkish citizen, despite my green card, my profession, and my American

husband. I should be an American citizen. I became an American citizen!

My personal experience in the United States helped me gradually

understand the deep and complex relationship between racial politics,

various forms of discrimination, the very important role of the legal system,

and the complex relationship between race and law from the perspective of

critical race theory. Law can be read, interpreted, and implemented from

various angles depending on who reads or interprets it and, more

importantly, who is the subject of a particular law. Looking from a critical

race theory perspective, I learned that court decisions are not dead materials.

Their lifetime is much longer than their historical moment of decision. They

can be interpreted, reused, and abused depending on what current motives

prevail. Law also could be used as a political tool to protect the interests of

2 Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003).