When I got the Muslim community beat for civil liberties and national security reporting, my initial thought was: This will be a piece of cake.
I was right. Finding stories each week was simple.
However, over the course of the quarter, I realized my approach to the beat was skewed and a little bit naïve.
I began the quarter aware of the inaccurate stigmas attached to the community. But, after a couple of posts about hijab bans and Muslims running for office, and talking with local Muslim Americans, I started to see just how unfair and unjust the misconceptions are. While the Muslim community is inaccurately perceived as a threat to security, their security and civil liberties are compromised in a very real way.
Running for office is an American right, but it’s a struggle for a Muslim American to get elected.
“This is for the first time ever we have effort coming out of the Muslim community to run for local offices,” said Rema Ahmad, executive director of Project Mobilize, a non-profit organization that sponsored the candidates. “In the past the Muslim American community has been jaded.”
Jaded because the Muslim community is aware of the stigmas unfairly attached to them. And rather than getting angry, the community works to change peoples’ perceptions of Muslims. They do it by running for office and working within the laws.
Since the controversial Park51 Muslim community center was planned to be constructed near Ground Zero, many mosques and centers like it have struggled to get building permits.
To combat the discrimination, Muslim organizations around Chicago held a zoning summit to inform Muslims of their rights and to teach them how to work with the opposition.
Faiyaz Hussain, a volunteer for the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, one of the zoning summit organizations, explained the summit was a chance to explain zoning laws to Muslims. And, rather than fighting the opposition, he said it’s best to just inform the community and correct any inaccurate perceptions they have of Muslims and Islam.
“The purpose of the summit was to tell Muslims, ‘Look lets not assume the worst,’” Hussain said. “Start having open houses, and before you go into a location start doing discussions with neighbors and say we’re looking to build.”
To me, this kind of understanding is astounding. It would be easy, and in my opinion justified, for members of the Muslim community to be outraged by discrimination and file lawsuits.
Instead, Muslim organizations combat discrimination and misconceptions with education. Correcting the stigmas with facts and confronting prejudice with patience. It’s commendable given the injustices done to Muslim Americans, and Muslims around the world, in our post-9/11 society.
Still, the suspicions some, including in our government, have of Muslims impacts the community. That became especially clear when I did my final post about Muslims being suspicious of newcomers at Mosques, often worrying they are FBI agents posing as Muslims.
“I know my parents would have never, ever suspected anything of a anyone at the mosque before 9/11,” said Gulu Saiyed, a graduate student at Northwestern University and Muslim American.
The reality, that is too often ignored, is: It’s only perception of Muslims that changed ten years ago, not the Muslim community itself.
