The Rise of Religious Identity Among the Second Generation
of Immigrants and Jihad Against the "Far Enemy" (1 of 3)
The "Change" slogan used by current American President Barack
Obama during his electoral campaign didn't affect only internal
American politics. It also affects foreign policy in a radical
fashion, especially the relations between the United States and
the Middle East.
The new President launched his term by sending more than one
message to the Arab and Islamic worlds and to the Muslim
community inside America itself. His first phone call as a
President was to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. His first
television interview was with an Arab television channel,
Al-Arabiya. This interview was then rebroadcasted by more
than 200 local and international stations. Obama outlined his
approach to governing, his attitude towards the issues of the
region and attempted to rebuild the bridges with the Arab and
Islamic world torn down by his predecessor George Bush,.
Through the symbolism of these choices, Obama sent out a
clear message: an unambiguous and decisive break with the
policies of the previous administration which used the "war on
terror" as the general headline for all its foreign and internal
policy decisions and the pretext for waging war on Iraq,
violating human rights in the Guantanamo Bay prison, and
violating the constitution with similar transgressions on
American soil.
During the electoral campaign, many people expressed fears
that if Obama won, then unlike his predecessor he might follow a
"less severe" approach in dealing with issues of national
security and terrorism and that "he would not protect the
country as it should be protected" from possible new
attacks. While it is true that the former administration changed
the country into a "security preserve" (with all of its pros and
cons), it succeeded in preventing new attacks from September 11,
2001 to November 4, 2008 and this is not to be dismissed lightly
by Americans.
Many argue that Al-Qa'ida's glow is weaker now because the
organizational body grew too large and thus became disjointed
and bloated. Its leaders were forced to hide and thus
became less effective on the ground. The real threat
however lies in the fact that what used to be a visible and
clear structure has shifted into small mercurial entities, that
enjoy a wide margin of independence, have local agendas, and are
satisfied with following the general guidelines of the mother
organization or alternatively with producing "homegrown" field
leaders as was the case in a number of European countries.
While it is true that Al-Qa'ida is not an organization or a
party with a known address and card-carrying members, which is a
weakness, its strength and its ability to pose a threat are
based on this same weakness because it has largely succeeded in
transforming itself into a "software" which allows any small
group, with limited experience located anywhere in the world, to
upload and follow the same modus operandi in carrying out
missions which can now be acclimated to the local demands. This
is why western governments, and especially the Bush
administration, placed their Muslim communities under the
microscope. Thus they applied unjust laws and procedures on
them, from the Patriot Act to the list of names prohibited from
traveling, to deporting hundreds of people with expired visas
and arresting others as "foreign combatants" out of fear that
they might follow the example of their European counterparts.
But Al-Qa'ida used these precautionary and pre-emptive measures
as pretexts to enroll more people in its battle against the West
headed by America. Of course, the other pretexts range from
Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan to the scandalous policies based
on double-standards. On the one hand, America preaches about
democracy and fights wars for it, while, on the other hand, it
supports totalitarian regimes in the Middle East (the original
countries of most of those immigrants) where the main victims of
the absence of democracy are Islamists! In this sense, an attack
on a McDonald's restaurant anywhere in the world or a suicide
attack in a metro station in a European capital become responses
to America's policies and evidence used to disprove its claims.
Even democracy which Washington keeps harping about is not
desired by Islamist. They don't hesitate in describing it as a "Bid'ah"
[innovation] because they simply don't want it. In their Jihad,
they are searching for justice and not democracy. Thus we have
here a loop in which the end result is also the main cause. But
if American policies are one of the sources of inspiration for
Jihadists and suicide bombers, then why wasn't America targeted
with another September 11 attack? Why wasn't Al-Qa'ida able to
recruit members from among the second and third generation
Muslim communities in America like it did in Europe? Can this be
explained merely by pointing to the differences in the
immigrants' environments or are there additional reasons that
helped the American homeland avoid the crosshairs of the
terrorists? Who are the American Muslims and how do they live?
Al-Hayat publishes a series of investigations about the
second generation of Muslim immigrants to the United states, and
the possibility of Jihadists arising from among their ranks by
following samples from that environment in Washington, Virginia,
and New York. The series also follows the judicial case of the
"last enemy combatant" as Al-Hayat met his lawyer and acquired a
copy of his case file which has yet to find its way to the
courts six years after his arrest. The first chapter is
today.
CHAPTER ONE
Its night on a weekend after a very cold week, and the "Happy
Yemen" Restaurant in Brooklyn, New York is full of customers.
Ahmad, the restaurant's owner, is helping his employees and
running between the tables to satisfy his customers' demands
from hot soup on the house to a selection of traditional dishes
followed most often by a desert; the traditional "Fatte" of
honey, bananas, butter oil, and served over pieces of toasted
bread. The customers are mostly of Yemeni origin and include a
lady or two wearing the hijab accompanied by husbands and
children, while the rest are men of varying ages with a
sprinkling of tourists. The restaurant, despite its local
popular culture which transports the visitors to the streets and
alleyways of Sana'a, carries a cosmopolitan nature that cannot
be ignored. The faces, clothes, languages, and even various
American dialects used by the customers all make the mixture a
miniature model of New York and a perfect resort for those
looking for other ways to experience life in this city, away
from Time Square and Lady Liberty. Ibrahim is a long-time
customer of the restaurant. He comes here everyday and has his
own corner and his favorite dishes. Ahmad greets him like a
neighbor and receives him with a hot loaf of bread. There is an
old friendship that ties the two young men who grew up in these
streets after their parents and grandparents came here in search
of a better life, or maybe just a life. Ibrahim's father used to
bring him to the restaurant when he was a young kid helping him
in his grocery store after school and on holidays. Back then,
the two fathers used to sit together and talk about their home
country, while the two young kids played together after a hearty
meal.
Facing "Happy Yemen" on the other side of the street, the
sign carrying the name of the Yemeni "Unity Restaurant" shines
with neon lights. Around the corner, there is "Damascus Bakery",
and "Tripoli Sweets", then a small lighted mosque which can be
reached through curving stairs rising from the entrance of one
of the buildings. For a while one would feel as if he is an Arab
capital and forget that he is in New York City! Ibrahim points
to a large shop and says: "This shop belonged to my father and I
was born in the house above it. We lived here for long years
until my family grew larger and my father sold the shop and we
moved to another neighborhood. Then I moved out to live on
my own ". This is New York. One neighborhood rises and another
falls down, people come and others go, families leave, faces
change. The Arab immigrants are not an exception to this rule as
they move between the neighborhoods depending on the shifts in
the market and the changing real-estate prices without prior
judgments or concerns. Even the mosque in Patterson County, New
Jersey used to be a synagogue in a Jewish neighborhood. The area
was overrun in recent years by Arab immigrants, especially
Palestinians and Jordanians and prices went down so the property
was bought and transformed into a mosque. Then the halls around
it were expanded for use as classrooms for teaching Arabic and
the Qur'an. Women were given their own wing for their
activities.
Today, Ibrahim lives alone in a small studio apartment like
any other American young man of his age. He works as an
assistant at a legal firm to defend the detainees in Guantanamo
Bay. He has come to know them and their stories through their
files specially that some of them are Yemenis. He doesn't
distinguish between the innocent and the guilty among them, as
he is only interested in the fact that the "prison of shame", as
he calls it, is in violation of the American constitution and
the very spirit of all the laws of the country. Defending the
detainees is akin to defending the real meaning of America, not
the detainees as individuals because, as he puts it, this is the
"task of the civil courts".
While Ibrahim was talking enthusiastically about his work
and his family, a tall blond bearded young man with a shaved
moustache entered the "Happy Yemen" Restaurant. Ibrahim waved to
him from afar and whispered "the Jew is here" while the young
newcomer raised his voice a bit and said "Salam Alaykom" [May
Peace be Upon You] in broken Arabic then sat in a corner which
seemed to be his. The new hungry mouth who came to be fed by
Ahmad is a Jew who converted to Islam and took an Arab name like
most of the converts. After coming to the restaurant for a while
and building a number of friendships and hearing tales about
Yemen, he decided to travel and visit that faraway land. But
upon his return, the police arrested him for a few weeks and he
was interrogated and accused of training in Al-Qa'ida camps,
studied Arabic and visited, it seems, the [Iman] University run
by Sheikh Al-Zindani. But he was later released because there
was insufficient evidence against him. "God knows" says Ibrahim
who cannot accuse anyone of such a charge. He adds: "We never
saw anything bad from him. He is a quiet and introverted person
and we keep seeing him in the restaurant and in the mosque
praying, especially on Fridays". Ibrahime adds in a low voice:
"he gets really annoyed when we joke with him and call him the
Jew because he is now a Muslim and he takes it seriously,
sometimes too seriously… But in the end, it is not our task to
watch him". Ibrahim is not that different from other second
generation Muslim immigrants to the United States who were
raised in middle class families seeking a better future for
their children. The fathers who came here with small businesses
or scientific degrees worked sometimes with salaries higher than
the average income of American citizens, thus they helped
provide a solid base for their children who became economically
assimilated and involved in the system more than their parents.
They found a niche for themselves without necessarily abandoning
the main components of their culture or their religion. Those
who did, did so out of personal desire and not as a precondition
to assimilate in the general environment. The social traditions
in this country are largely conservative and religiousness is a
widely accepted social characteristic whether one observes his
religion in a church, a synagogue or a mosque or any other house
of worship. That is why Ibrahim or any other son of immigrants
do not feel compelled to abandon his religion and adopt
secularism as a key to full citizenship or as a precondition to
become part of the social fabric, as is the case in Europe.
Assimilation here isn't imposed as part of a government plan or
special program and ideologies concocted by specialized
ministries for the immigrants to observe to the last detail.
Here, no one can be asked about religion when applying for
immigration papers and it cannot be put on Identification Cards.
One of the perks of this approach is that there is no
discrimination between people based on their religion and there
are no preconceived judgments waiting for anyone, or so the
theory goes. But this makes the task of ascertaining the number
of Muslim Americans, for example, impossible. Some government
sources say that their number is around 2.5 million while civil
society organizations and the imams of mosques put the number at
7.5 million. The gap between the two numbers is large and there
is no way to prove or disprove it.
The second identity, after the American nationality,
remained for a long time linked to the country or geographical
region of origin from which the Americans hailed, be they Latin
Americans, Asians, or Middle Easterners. The Islamic religious
identity is a new one and didn't gain prominence until after the
September 11 attacks when it emerged as an identity that
transcends geography and is linked to religious beliefs. That
new religious identity doesn't include African Americans even if
they are Muslims, because their prevalent identity is linked to
race and not to religion. Based on this equation, identity
became a gelatinous concept. For example, "Middle Eastern" came
to signify, after the September 11 attacks, religion as well,
despite the knowledge that the first waves of immigrants from
the Middle East were mostly Christians. As a result of this new
identity, the official approach to that segment came to be based
on their religious identity, which pushed them to act based on
that identity following the principle "if you want to treat us
like Muslims first and citizens second then we too shall act
like Muslims". So the media witnessed a proliferation of terms
concerning the "Muslim Community" and some restaurants,
especially McDonald's, started serving "Halal Meals" [kosher
food for Muslims]. Even the billboards in the airports started
showing "Faces from America" to welcome the travelers that
include some young women wearing the hijab. In some official
departments and police stations, large pictures were hung up on
the walls to identify the "head dresses common among Muslim
Americans".
One of the reasons behind this is that most of the
manifestations of Islam in America today came from Middle
Easterners and immigrants from the Arabian Gulf who built mainly
Salafi mosques, religious centers, religious schools, and
charities which witnessed an unprecedented spike in activity in
the mid-1980s. For example, a study about mosques in America
carried out by the Pew Research Center points out that 70% of
Mosque Imams in America are "Salafis" while another 21% are
"extremists".
But Islam, as a religion, is not new to the United States
and it was not brought here by the latest wave of Middle Eastern
immigrants, as it was already present with the African Americans
who consider themselves the first Muslims on this continent and
who left their own mark on their religion. You often see here an
African American woman wearing the Hijab but revealing her arms
in the summer without counting this as a violation of her
religion. In a party held by the municipality of New York to
celebrate the Al-Fitr Holiday, where some participants called
for considering this an official holiday like the rest of the
holidays, a group of African American men and women presented
religious songs accompanied by clapping of hands and dance
movements similar to that performed by African American Church
Choirs.
The reality is that the Muslim African Americans fought
their own social "Jihad" to win their civil rights as,
primarily, an ethnic group. They don't consider the Arab Muslims
as more righteous than themselves.
The first generation of Muslim Arab immigrants was not
overly religious or committed like the children who grew up
during the revival of the religious identity. Most of the second
generation immigrants focused on learning about their religion
in the latter years of adolescence, and involved themselves in
evening classes to memorize the Qur'an and learn Arabic.
Ibrahime is one of them. He started fasting and praying
regularly only a few years ago and he also started visiting
Yemen whenever he had the chance. According to the study carried
out by Pew Research Center in 2007, 45% of Muslims between the
ages of 18 and 35 pray 5 times a day while a study issued in
2000 by Harvard showed that one third of Muslims "don't belong"
to a specific mosque and don't pray in general or, if they do
pray, then they do so at home. The same study revealed that
Arabs come in third place among Muslims who visit Mosques
regularly after African Americans and immigrants hailing from
South East Asia like the Pakistanis, Indians, Bengalis, and
Afghanis. These numbers are not insignificant. They are the
first sign that shows that Muslims in America are similar to
America itself. They are diverse, different, and similar all at
once. Here, there really is no difference between an Arab and a
foreigner among Muslims. They are all Muslims, and they are all
Americans.
Because the American government is not a welfare state, and
it doesn't cater for the immigrants by providing them with a
monthly salary and social services for no return so that they
can remain unemployed for as long as they wish, the immigrants
are forced to enter the production cycle from the day they
arrive. If they don't work, they can easily find themselves
homeless. As soon as an immigrant starts working, he is forced
to find common ground with others which makes assimilation a
spontaneous and natural result of human interaction. It is
primarily economic assimilation but it results in social
assimilation for the second and third generations, but little
political assimilation so far. The Muslim immigrants have yet to
prove that they are an important voting force like the Jewish or
Latino voters, despite their strong participation in the latest
elections. But they are present and active on the local levels.
They are strongly present in municipalities, neighborhood
committees, and schools where they sometimes have the final say
or influential positions. In this sense, they don't feel that
they are socially marginalized because they contribute directly
to the decisions that concern their daily lives.
Even though the Yemeni neighborhood in Brooklyn is known by
this name, it is not similar to the stereotypes of closed
"ghettoes" in England or France where the immigrants gather
together generation after generation until some of them
losing the need to learn the local language. While their shops
and stores carry signs with Arabic words, this is because they,
like other immigrants, added their American experience to the
experiences that they had before and didn't forget the past.
While it is true that mosques are divided by ethnicity, public
occasions unite Muslims from various backgrounds and ethnicities
and the mosques turn into real gathering grounds with ethnic
groups mixing together including African Americans, Asians,
Arabs, and Albanians so cultures mix along with the various
religious practices.
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