Aneesah Nadir confesses she was a “nervous wreck” when her daughter Zarinah and friends chose to go to school on Sept. 11, 2001, dressed as always in the hijab, the traditional apparel of observant Muslim females. She feared the terrorist attacks on the East Coast that morning made them targets for ugly remarks or harassment.
“They were determined that they were going to go to school anyway because they didn’t want their classmates to think they would not be there out of some guilt, and they wanted to be there to answer questions,” she said. Nadir herself, at the time a social work professor at ASU West, remained home that day, but returned the next day to the classroom to healthy dialogue with her students about the events.
Ten years after the deadly terrorist attacks on America, the Valley’s Islamic population finds itself more highly visible and engaged in the rest of their community.
“Millions of Americans started wondering and asking questions about Islam and Muslims,” say Ahmad Shqeirat, the imam of the Islamic Community Center of Tempe, a masjid, or mosque, that serves Muslims of about 75 nationalities. “I think 9/11 put all of us Muslims on the spot to answer questions about our communities and religion.” The imam said the tragedy “provided mainstream Muslims with the opportunity to distinguish from extreme and violent individuals” and led them to build connections with those of other faiths.
In the past decade, the number of mosques in the Valley has grown from seven to 19, said Marwan Ahmad, editor and publisher of the Muslim Voice and Arab Voice newspapers, based in Phoenix. Shqeirat, however, thinks there are now 25 Valley mosques, including four for Shia Muslims, plus five mosques in other parts of Arizona.
The Valley’s Muslim population may be as high as 120,000, Ahmad said, although no census has been taken. An influx of Muslim immigrants and refugees has fed that growth, along with the attraction of Muslims with professional degrees in health and technology.
Ahmad said there are nearly 1,200 businesses in the Valley owned by Muslims. “More Muslims have grown to be more involved in society and more integrated economically,” he said, “We are working with a lot of businesses. … We are involved in politics more, we meet candidates, and we meet with the mayor and the governor when needed.” In addition, Muslims have formed police advisory boards in some cities “that work closely with police to not only protect the Muslim community, but help police make sure that we and everybody is safe,” he said.
After 9/11, Muslims were impelled to deal with the reality that 19 Muslims had been identified as the hijackers of four commercial airliners that were used on suicide missions to slam into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Virginia. A fourth plane was forced down and crashed in Pennsylvania before it could reach a high-population target. The combined death toll was nearly 3,000.
Even “though there were a lot of people upset and angry” and projecting that toward Muslims after 9/11, many non-Muslims were suddenly open to dialogue, said Deedra Abboud, executive director of the Muslim-American Society’s Freedom Foundation in the Valley. “They were open to the idea that it was not our people’s fault just because they had some crazy among them — we all do.”
Abboud said it seemed the Muslims in the Valley were invisible before 9/11. “Just as the larger community was shocked that we were here — in fact that we landed here on Sept. 11 — I think that Muslims were shocked that they were shocked.” Muslims had always regarded themselves as part of the community, she said. “We met politicians, we had photos with them, we voted, we knew our neighbors and our co-workers, so we thought everything was normal, but then after 9/11, we suddenly realized that all of that was kind of an illusion.”
She said her boss at a manufacturing plant, “whom I considered a friend, approached me after 9/11 and told me that I needed to decide whether I was a Muslim or an American first. I was floored. This woman had been to my house, and I thought we were friends.
“It was an entire shift in my world,” Abboud said, adding that “Muslims started realizing they needed to not only be more active in their community, but it needed to have more substance.”
Muslims gathered Aug. 30 in mosques and public auditoriums for the annual Eid al-Fitr celebration that marked the end of Ramadan, a month of daytime fasting, intense prayer and submission to God.
Hafez Turk of Tempe, who came to Arizona 44 years ago from Jerusalem, marveled at the ever-larger gathering of Muslims at Phoenix Convention Center for the Eid. An estimated 10,000 attended. “We had more people than ever,” he said. “It was full to the brim, and then there were 3,000 in Glendale Community Center.” He gave examples of people who had converted to Islam after exploring the faith, “reading and seeing the facts. ... They realize the religion really teaches people to be nice.”
Turk and others said they resent extra airport security where “they push you aside” for additional pat-downs or to get more information because of their ethnicity.
“We would like to see the world safe again,” said Turk, who recently returned from three weeks in Jerusalem, when as many as 80,000 surrounded the Dome on the Rock mosque for Ramadan prayers. At another gathering, more than 300,000 Muslims were on hand.
Ahmad Moharram, the imam of the Islamic Center of the East Valley in Chandler, which opened in 2008, said one day two men showed up with a long list of criticisms and accusations about Islam. “When they were finished, I smiled and said, ‘This is not the first time I have heard this. We hear them on TV and read them in the news. It is not new.’ ” He commonly hears non-Muslims claim that the mosques are places of terrorism.
Saaeh Nawar, a 17-year-old Chandler High School student, recalls little about 9/11, but as he grew up he found himself talking about it with his friends, along with answering many questions about Islam. “I’ve talked about it during debates with other kids,” he said. “It’s how we present ourselves, how we introduce ourselves to each other in the community.” He lauded schools that have strong, well-led Muslim Student Associations because of the way they can nurture understanding among peers.
Shehab-Eldean of Chandler, a native of Egypt studying at Chandler-Gilbert Community College, recalls watching TV in Egypt when America was struck. “There was a lot of panicking in Egypt, and people were under the impression it was doomsday, that this was the end of the world.”
He calls it a “disaster that affected everybody. They forget that a lot of Muslims died and got injured over there and forget that Muslims were risking themselves to help injured people.” Eldean told of “very interesting conversations” in his college classroom about Islam and 9/11. “They have a lot of questions,” he said. “They don’t know Islam.” Talking to Muslims firsthand is crucial, he said.
Shqeirat, the Tempe imam, recalls the calamitous day 10 years ago: “I immediately started making some calls to arrange for the safety of the center and the full-time school with 110 students. We decided to close the school for that day the following five days.”
Aneesah Nadir said the Tempe Muslim community was heartened when Tempe City Hall hosted an Islamic exhibit in 2008 called “Jewel in the Desert.” When the Tempe History Museum was remodeled two years ago, “they interwove the Muslims as part the Tempe community — not an exhibit off to the side or over yonder, which is usually what we get,” Nadir said. “The day I saw that, tears rolled down my eyes. It was now like we were part of the community.”
• Contact writer: (480) 898-6514
beefrits posted at 11:58 am on Thu, Sep 8, 2011.
Actually Dale, I did know some Muslims prior to 9/11 and they were peaceful, friendly people, so that's obviously not my problem. They were also quite secular in that the women did not wear the hijab and were permitted to drive a car and leave the house without being accompanied by a male family member, unlike in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam and the country to which all Muslims on earth seek to make their hajj, one of the pillars of their faith. That will ultimately be THEIR problem if those that I do have a problem with take over, as the Quran commands, since secular Muslims are considered apostates and are condemned to death. Not my idea of a peaceful religion, Dale.
One more thing, Dale. Before you call me an Islamoignoramus, know that I have read the Quran and know something about those who would offer me 3 choices: 1. To convert to Islam, 2. To pay jizya and live in fear a s a second class citizen, or 3. To die by the sword.
If you think that the IRA violence, inspired by politics, is equivalent to Islamic violence, commanded by Allah as jihad, you are delusional, Dale. Muslims kill more in 2 months than all the dead combined killed by the IRA. And read your history. The Islamic prophet Mohammed was a military leader who waged war on nomadic tribes and Christians alike to spread his faith, and he was enthusiastic about it. Right or wrong, the Crusades were a response to the occupation of Jerusalem and the Levant by warlike Islamic forces. The notion that the Middle East was peaceful until the Europeans invaded is absolutely false and your stating it as fact is either motivated by deception or ignorance.
One last thing, Dale. Terrorists are very much unlike us. They seek to impose their beliefs on me by force and are willing to commit suicide to to do it. I understand them just fine. Unlike you, I'm not inclined to apologize for them or make invalid comparisons equating them and us. As long as they are willing to attack me and mine, I want them destroyed, not accommodated.
By the way, get yourself a spell checker and use better grammar or readers might think you are stupid.
Slabside posted at 2:02 am on Thu, Sep 8, 2011.
What is sad is you asked and I explained. Don't go away mad... just go away.
shrinkingviolet posted at 1:11 am on Thu, Sep 8, 2011.
It's rather sad that you are compelled to attack everything this man posts. And you talk about moving on! But some people just aren't happy unless they have the last word... Enjoy.
Slabside posted at 7:29 pm on Wed, Sep 7, 2011.
violet, read whiting's post above mine. He has written about the slaying of his buddies over and over. While tragic, it's time to move on. He doesn't but still defends Muslims (peaceful Muslims and Radical Muslim terrorists) just the same.
shrinkingviolet posted at 5:31 pm on Wed, Sep 7, 2011.
SS, what the heck are you talking about?
Slabside posted at 4:33 pm on Wed, Sep 7, 2011.
beefrits, I agree with you 100%!
Keep reading the posts here at EVT (especially those pertaining to Muslims) and you will read and re-read the story of the 5 buddies being machine gunned while getting off the bus over and over again like I have.
Dale Whiting posted at 3:30 pm on Wed, Sep 7, 2011.
You know, beefrits,
perhaps your problem is that before 9-11, you did not know any Muslims, knew next to nothing about Islam, never lived amongst and worked with Muslims and only cared about Islam to the extent that much of the world's crude oil reserves are in countries which are predominantly populated by Muslims.
For those of us whose experiences were drastically different from yours, 9-11 was a very sad day, sad indeed. We sensed a attack coming, knew about the rising levels of discent amongst a militant minority, but did not need anyone to tell us what Muslims thought or how they felt about the West and its curious geopolitics. We already knew!
This article tells us that notwithstanding the fear 9-11 generated in you Islamo-ignoramuses, over the last decade those Muslims living near us here in Maricopa County are doing much better than we feared they would after 9-11. We Christians are not as bad as many of us feared we would be. For this I observe, "Allah be praised!"
I never sought to place any sort of blame on Roman Catholics at large for the membership of Irish Catholics in IRA, the strongest terrorist group in the British Isles during our time. I never thought Irish Catholics wanted to kill all Protestants living in Northern Ireland. However, some tried, didn't they! One or two even asked me for donations!
But I do know that Christians seeking fame and fortune did wage a series of Crusades against otherwise peace loving peoples living in the Holy Land, all respecting eachother's religious faith. According to the diary of a French Priest who entered Jerusalem when it fell in the First Crusade, the streets ran red with the blood of men, women and children, of Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths. If you were not French, you were killed. And in the end, guess who won those wars? Generally God is on the side of the righteous! God is Great! It's His children who are not so great, children of all faiths!
I count my Muslim friends and acquaintances to be among the greatest people I have ever known. And most importantly, although I know of 5 men, former co-workers of mine, who while stepping off a bus I used to ride, were machine gunned to death on the streets of Istanbul in the Fall of 1978 by Muslim Kurdish separatists, I know that the vast vast majority of Muslims are as peace loving, forgiving and desireous to make your acquaitance as are the few true followers of the Prince of Peace. Let Peace be praised. And let the Kurds have their own home land!
As the weekend approaches, go back and read the 9-11 Commission's report and recommendations. Read it carefully. Then ask youself what if any progress we here in the USA have made towards adopting and implementing those recommendations. One does not have to read much between the lines of that report to understand why that minority of militants despise us and resist our prevasive influence in their cultures.
Truth is, the best way to fight terrorism and terrorists is to come to understand them. They really are not so different from us. Were we in their place, chances are, we would be terrorists, too. And it is this realization which must sadden the heart of the Prince of Peace.
beefrits posted at 8:35 am on Wed, Sep 7, 2011.
OK. I'll get it out of the way so everyone doesn't have to tell me that I'm an ignorant, bigoted, hate filled Islamophobe. By your standards, I guess I am.
But I'm sick of Muslims telling me how peaceful their religion is while their brothers and sisters show me how it is by spreading death in the name of Allah worldwide. I'm sick of spokespeople like CAIR trying to convince me they all want the same things as we do while they scream about persecution by those who react to honor killings, violence against women and systematic elimination of Christians from Islamic countries globally, with revulsion. Organizations like CAIR and Deedra's group rarely join in the condemnation. They just whine about the reaction.
"Even “though there were a lot of people upset and angry” and projecting that toward Muslims after 9/11, many non-Muslims were suddenly open to dialogue, said Deedra Abboud, executive director of the Muslim-American Society’s Freedom Foundation in the Valley. “They were open to the idea that it was not our people’s fault just because they had some crazy among them — we all do.”"
Yes Deedra, we all do but the rest of us seek to jail or eliminate the crazies from our midst, not make excuses for them or provide support. A recent poll by Pew Research showed that the percentage of Muslims in the MIddle East who support suicide bombing (the numbers are declining) range from 5% in Tukey to 68% in Palestine. That's a LOT of crazies, Deedra. Heck , your peaceful brethren can't even stop killing each other over such stupidity as whether Shia or Sunni versions of the religion are correct. Sorry, but I'm not buying what the ad campaign is selling.
You want me to believe your version? Mount a vigorous and widely Muslim-supported campaign condemning the violence, with spokespersons putting out press releases every time it occurs. Publicly disown those committing the murders as well as those in your midst who support them in any way as un-Islamic. Stop going ballistic over cartoons, perceived insults and vague social slights.
And one more thing. Until you do these things, stay away from 9/11 memorializing. The memorial by Islam is still visible in NY at Ground Zero. This date is my sacred day of mourning, not yours.