伊斯蘭恐懼症在美國。
Washington,
DC - Thirteen
years after the September 11 attacks, Arabs and Muslim
Americans in the US still face continuing bias and prejudice, Arab
Americans and civil rights activists say.
"It
has gotten worse for us," said Nadia Tonova, the executive director of the
National Network for Arab American Communities (NNAAC) in Dearborn, Michigan.
"We are a community that is constantly under
suspicion. It's really at a point where it's out of control."
The
NNAAC is rolling out a $4.5m grassroots mobilisation campaign called "Take on Hate" in New York City on
July 15, designed to give Arab Americans and Muslims tools for combating bias
and prejudice. The campaign, funded by the Open Society Foundation and the
Proteus Fund, will focus on achieving public policy changes, educating the US
public about Muslims and giving community activists a platform to battle
discrimination.
The
campaign aims to challenge acts of discrimination such as an incident that
occurred on June 16, during a panel discussion held by the conservative
Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC.
During a
discussion about the attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, a
Muslim law student named Saba Ahmed said: "We portray Islam and all
Muslims as bad, but there's 1.8 billion followers of Islam. We have eight
million plus Muslim Americans in this country and I don't see them represented
here."
One
of the panellists, Brigitte Gabriel, responded
that moderate Muslims in the US were "irrelevant" in the fight
against radicalism. "It is time we take political correctness and throw it
in the garbage where it belongs and start calling a spade a spade,"
retorted Gabriel - drawing a standing ovation from the crowd of about 150
people.
In a
recent cable television exchange with Gabriel, Linda
Sarsour - the national advocacy director for the NNAAC - challenged Gabriel for linking all Muslims to terrorism. "I
want you to understand that if you want to combat terrorism, you need to work
within the Muslim community. You need to make sure that we are part of that and
the, quote, 'moderate' Muslims that you're talking about, which are almost
every Muslim living here in this country, need to be part of this
discussion."
Muslim American activists worry that rhetoric such as Gabriel's can
fuel violent attacks and hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims. There are some 3.6 million
Americans of Arab descent, many of whom are Christian, and an estimated six
million American Muslims of varying nationalities, according to the Arab American
Institute.
"The worse things get in the Middle East, the worse things get
for Arab Americans here in the US. Every time there is something serious
in the Middle East, things spike," Samer Khalaf, president of the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), told Al Jazeera. "People get attacked and beaten for doing nothing but
appearing Muslim."
Anti-Muslim
hate crimes
There were 155 anti-Muslim hate crimes committed against Arabs and
Muslims in the US during 2012, according to the most recent FBI
statistics. The deadliest of these was the Sikh temple
shooting in Wisconsin, in which a white supremacist, who incorrectly believed
he was attacking Muslims, murdered six Sikhs and was shot by police before
killing himself.
Since the
September 11 attacks, 30 new anti-Islamic hate groups
have formed in the US, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center,
which was founded in 1971 to combat racism against blacks in the American
south. "We've seen some horrible crimes committed against people who
are perceived to be Arabs," Richard Cohen, the president of the Southern
Poverty Law Center, told Al Jazeera.
In
March, about 40 worshippers attended sunrise prayers at the Prayer Center of
Orland Park, a suburban town south of Chicago, when a bullet was fired through
the mosque dome. No one was injured in the incident. The Chicago office of the
Council on American-Islamic Relations called on the FBI to investigate the
incident as a hate crime, but no suspects have yet been identified.
Starting
in January 2015, the FBI's hate crimes unit will specifically track hate crimes
against Arabs, a category the law enforcement agency had not previously
recognised, said FBI spokesman Stephen Fischer. The FBI
will also track hate crimes motivated by anti-Sikh and anti-Hindu sentiment.
At a
June conference in Washington hosted by the ADC, participants said Arab Americans recognise they are in a continuing
post-September 11 battle for civil rights. It's not just hate crimes: Arabs and
Muslims in the US say they face rampant discrimination in every area of
life. "We are the blacks of the 21st century," said
Azizah Y al-Hibri, the founder of Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights and a
retired professor at the University of Richmond's Williams School of Law.
A
2012 survey by the Arab American Institute found that
55 percent of Arab American Muslims have experienced discrimination and 71
percent fear future discrimination.
Arab
Americans routinely encounter extra hassles while travelling, and Haytham
Faraj, a Chicago-based defence attorney, claims prosecutors
often exaggerate charges against Arab Americans by alleging serious crimes
related to suspected spying or terrorism.
A
'fear stronger than ever'
Since
2010, the ADC says it has seen a surge in employment
discrimination complaints. Last month, the group filed a discrimination
lawsuit against an auto dealership in Lexington, Kentucky, on behalf of Easa
Shadeh, a US citizen who was called a "camel jockey", and told by
co-workers that Arabs are the "new niggers".
Denyse
Sabagh, head of the immigration practice group at law firm Duane Morris, said Arabs and Muslims encounter more bureaucratic delays and
obstacles in the US immigration system than other minorities. "I
represent people from all over the world and the ones that seem to have the
problems are Arabs and Muslims," she said.
Arabs and Muslims have long been portrayed as villains and enemies
in American popular culture - cartoons, movies, television shows. The September 11 attacks
accelerated the trend and injected it into the US political dynamic, said Jack
Shaheen, producer of the 2006 documentary Reel Bad
Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People.
"There
is a fear stronger than ever before of Muslims - not just Muslims, but American
Muslims," Shaheen told Al Jazeera. "It has spilled over to the
political arena and gotten worse."
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