"Mixed bag" for U.S. Muslims since 9/11

Tasawar Awan, owner of Magoo's California Pizza, dispalys one of his pizzas in the kitchen of his restaurant in Indianapolis, Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2011. Awan, a Pakistani, has lived in central Indiana since 2006. The restaurant is halal, so it follows Muslim dietary restrictions, but features items like Chicken Tikka Pizza and kabobs. Indiana Muslims have emerged from their mosques and private lives in the 10 years since the Sept. 11 attacks to become more visible members of their communities. / AP Photo/Michael Conroy

It was a Tuesday evening in August 2010 when a 21-year-old art student from suburban New York hailed a taxi cab on a Manhattan street, carrying a couple of notebooks, an empty bottle of scotch and a folding knife. After asking the cabbie if he was a Muslim, the student, Michael Enright, muttered "consider this a checkpoint" before slashing at the driver's neck and eventually fleeing through the car window.

The driver, Ahmed H. Sharif, survived with relatively minor injuries. Enright, who had actually visited Afghanistan earlier that year as part of a group aiming to promote interfaith dialogue, was arrested and charged with a hate crime.

The attack may well have been the most acute example of anti-Islamic sentiment last summer, but it was hardly the only one. For months, a debate raged over the plan to build an Islamic center within several blocks of the World Trade Center site - with critics weighing in from around the country, including some family members of 9/11 victims. In Florida, the Rev. Terry Jones threatened to burn a Quran if the proposed site wasn't moved. (Efforts to block the center's approval failed and Jones, though he backed away from his initial threat, went through with a Quran-burning in March after finding the Muslim holy book guilty of crimes against humanity in a televised "trial.")

In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, American Muslims have had a complicated relationship with their own country. According to a Pew Research Center study, more than half - 55 percent - say it's been more difficult being Muslim in the U.S. since 9/11, yet almost the same exact number - 56 percent - report being satisfied with the way things are going in the country.

"It's a mixed bag," Ibrahim Cooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations said.

"Yes, it's easy to be a Muslim in America as far as religious freedom, but there's a sense of being under greater scrutiny."

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Just last month, the Associated Press reported that the NYPD, with the help of the CIA, has been aggressively monitoring Muslim communities in New York and beyond, placing clandestine officers in neighborhoods in an effort to glean intelligence about possible security threats- tactics that have drawn accusations of profiling, though they have been defended by city officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

In March, Rep. Peter King launched a series of controversial hearings on Islamic radicalism in U.S. Muslim communities - hearings that were characterized by some as a witch hunt, though King, R-NY, defended them as important to understanding threats to Muslim communities and the country at large.

There are also examples from the fringe - Terry Jones' Quran-burning and opponents of the construction of a Tennessee mosque questioning Islam's standing as a legitimate religion in court.

Americans largely agree that Muslims face greater scrutiny in the country - a recent CBS News/New York Times poll found that 78 percent think Muslims and Arab-Americans are unfairly singled out.

But the statistics also show just how much of a "mixed bag" life in the U.S. can be for Muslims. According to the Pew study, while 56 percent of Muslims think most other Muslims want to adopt the American way of life, just 33 percent of the general public agrees (51 percent see Muslims as wanting to remain distinct from the mainstream) - highlighting a gap in how American Muslims perceive themselves and how they are perceived by others.

And while, according to the CBS News/New York Times poll, 73 percent of Americans report no negative feelings toward Muslims after 9/11, a sizable and at times vocal minority - 25 percent - do. Thirty-three percent believe American Muslims are sympathetic toward terrorists. 

But for however mixed the numbers may be or controversial some of the rhetoric may get, there are positive signs. After hate crimes spiked in the months following 9/11, they've dropped by 31 percent from 2002 through 2009, according to FBI data.

And there are encouraging stories of Muslims finding friendship and acceptance in communities throughout the country. In Cordova, Tenn., just outside Memphis, Dr. Bashar Shala began constructing an Islamic center right across the street from Heartsong Church two years ago. The pastor, Steve Stone, put up a sign welcoming them to the community and even made his church available to his new neighbors during Ramadan while their center was under construction.

As reported on "The Early Show," both sides have built such a relationship that they're now planning to build a park using property from both sides of the street and host events together like a recent Labor Day party.

Church member Lee Raines is perhaps a symbol of some Americans' evolving attitudes.

"I was anti(-Islam) at first, big-time," he admitted. "To me it was a religion of hate. And with 9/11, I just kind of lost it."

But unlike 20 other church members who left Heartsong, Raines decided to give his neighbors a chance.

"They're normal people just like me and you," Raines said. "They have families, they've got kids, you know, they're running around, they enjoy sports just like I did, you know, they do the same things we do."

[noloyalisti]

We have still not woken up to whom we have become, to the fatal erosion of domestic and international law and the senseless waste of lives, resources and trillions of dollars to wage wars that ultimately we can never win.

We do not see that our own faces have become as contorted as the faces of the demented hijackers who seized the three commercial jetliners a decade ago.

We do not grasp that Osama bin Laden's twisted vision of a world of indiscriminate violence and terror has triumphed. The attacks turned us into monsters, grotesque ghouls, sadists and killers who drop bombs on village children and waterboard those we kidnap, strip of their rights and hold for years without due process.

We acted before we were able to think. And it is the satanic lust of violence that has us locked in its grip.

[Levygp]

I don't know where to begin. Everything in your comment is wrong. Look, it's violence to kill a chicken to eat, and it is also violence to shoot enemy soldiers who are trying to kill you. The only other comment I have to make, before I sign off, is that Americans havew never knowiing bombed villages in order to kill women and children. You don't like America, move to Mozambique

[yandor123]

Wherever there is a drop of ability to be extreme, in the name of God, many will. It is the high ups in these communities of religion that should guide their people against such thoughts, rather than perpetuate them. It is like the Leviticus 18:22 passage in the Bible, which basically says being gay is an abomination. Is it really? Should we be focusing our efforts here? Or should we be out there helping people, as you have said, in the name of God, in the bounds of religion, bringing the world together.

However, until corruption and lies are removed from religion it will never have the full trust of all the people.

http://www.postmodernrevelation.com
A controversial painting series on the Bible

[Levygp]

Yes, being homosexual is an abomination. It is creepy. It demeans all of humanity. It is total sin. But you can change. Many thousands of homosexuals have changed and are happy about it.

[paulkrik]

muslims have been manipulated to serve our political agenda since the cold war
http://abledanger.de/

[Levygp]

What political agenda is that? Can't be America you are talking about -- we don't even have a political agenda. Freedom is literally all we stand for. But boy, that is sure enough. Freedom is the greatest gift any nation can bestow on its people.

[SouthernWriter]

It's true! if they thought that White Phosphorous was something, they should get a look at the lines in our airports! Man what our Freem costs us Big Mac eaters!

[Levygp]

Drinking alcohol before writing a comment has either given you great imagination and vision, or ruined your ability to think.

[obomba13]

this article is a mixed bag of poo-poo.

[noel90210]

Let's stop with the memorializing of 9-11, it's time to move on. The widows certainly have, they're millionaires with new husbands and kids. All it's about at this point is selling another book and politicians displaying phony partiotism. People die tragically everyday. They were all innocent victims, but i doubt many of them were saints, and you don't get an automatic ticket to heaven just because you're murdered. This is the tenth and hopefully the last year we will continual this ritual.

[Lerianis4]

That is the bottom line here.... it's time to let 9/11 fade into the past, as Pearl Harbor did. It's not really something that is connected to everyday life in America.

[OldUncleSam]

Get a hair cut.

[noel90210]

This country was founded on the doctrine of Christianity, and God has blessed us all the years because of it. The more we turn our backs on God, the less our country will prosper. If your country and your religion is so grand then why are you over here? Why not stay in your own country and fight to make it a better place.

[Lerianis4]

No, it was not founded on Christianity. Many of the founding fathers were Agnostics and, in one case, Atheist.

There is no such thing as 'god', it is a fallacy made up in order to make people kowtow to the personal likes and dislikes of other people, enshrined in 'holy books' written by humans.

[JohnDMann82]

CBS: Let's go ahead and make the Muslims out to be the real victims of 9-11-01. Let's ignore the American casualties of that day and focus on obvious (and reasonably expected) suspicions aimed at Muslims. Ignore the real victims. This is typical of CBS.

[Lerianis4]

John.... THERE WERE MUSLIM CASUALTIES ON 9/11 IN THE WTC BUILDINGS! Enough said. It's time to realize that Muslims were just as much victims of 9/11 as other people.
Victims of people who have PERVERTED their religion (though it is so damned easy to do with most religions) to justify the killings of others.

[newnameagain]

Muslim's are proud to die for ahllah

[T-Prop]

.
"Man, now, THAT looks like an Awesome Pizza." mmmmMMMMMmmmm.

(And THAT is the sum of any significance in this article.)
.

[loaferkan]

People her has no clue what they saying. I read every comment here. I'm a Muslim, I have lived 911, while 98% of America only heard of it. Many Muslims don't want to Drink Alcohol, or don't want to Eat pork doesn't mean we don't want to blend in. Also, talking about adopting, this country doesn't belong to NO ONE, EVERYONE here is Equal. This was not the land of anyone, it was the land of Indian...Where English, French and so well I don't want to label them Christians, but they came to this land kicked out and killed many many people, then brought Slaves from Africa...Lets just do this, read the History of Islam.

Islam was in India: where it created Justice for All, Islam was in Spain, and read the History, Islam was in Israel, Read the History. Islam is not a bad religion. It just the some big elements out there trying to give it a bad look. I'm Muslim, yet I never even thought about killing or hurting anyone. I have friends who are Hindu, Christians, Jewish and Budha.

People just come out here, with all the education, acts ignorant. Seriously people, it's easy to point a finger at someone but to produce evidence it's hard. If a person from a certain belief committed a crime, then we should say that religion was responsible for that?

Hitler was Muslim? I can name so many people, and if you perhaps look at the statistics you can see that Christians has killed more innocent people then any religion in the WORLD.

[JohnDMann82]

I have read history. Muhammed brought war to neighboring religions. You say Islam created justice for all? You say that Christians have killed more people? Where is your proof? I agree that most Muslims are good people. They are just like me, but you are mistaken if you think that I will buy into your argument that there is no Islamic fascism. How do you explain groups like Al-Quaeda, and the Taliban? How do you ignore the ill treatment of women in the Middle East? Equality for all? That's a load of horse crap.

[Lerianis4]

John, you had better read history a little more then. Mohammed brought war to neighboring religions who were PERSECUTING people of his religion, which you would do if someone tried to persecute your religion.