The 2 Worlds of Muslim-American Teenagers

hey are Americans who feel duty- bound by Islam to obey American laws. But some of them say that if their country called them to war against a Muslim army, they might refuse to fight. They cannot be shaken from the conviction that America is intrinsically anti-Muslim. Yet they see it as the one place where Muslims are free to be themselves.

To be young and Muslim in the United States today, to hear students at Al Noor School in Brooklyn tell it, is to be both outsider and insider, to revel in both roles but see neither as the ideal. It is to be consumed by causes abroad and removed from politics at home, to feel righteous and also confused, to alternate between gratitude and resentment toward the world outside their classrooms.

As any parent knows, this is the paradoxical planet inhabited by many teenagers, whether they are Muslim or not. But in a country wounded by terrorists and preparing for war, young Muslim Americans are finding that real life has raised especially acute questions for them about competing values of allegiance and faith.

"We have a burden on us," said Andira Abudayeh, who is 16 and attends Al Noor. "We're Muslims, and we feel like other Muslims around the world do. And we're Americans."

In extended conversations last week, high school students at Al Noor spoke of their empathy for the young Muslims around the world who profess hatred for America and Americans, saying the hostility is an outgrowth of American support for Israel.

They said they did not believe that the hatred extended to them. "Muslims are all one," said Fariah Amin, who is also 16. "They kind of think of us as just living in America."

The students complained that the United States threw its weight around too much in the world, but that it also was not active enough in support of what they called freedom-seeking Muslims in Chechnya and the "true" Muslims who oppose the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

"Isn't it ironic that the interests of America are always against what Muslims want?" said Fami Fozi, a 17-year-old student who said he would rather go to jail than fight in the United States Army against Muslims.

The students also said the Koran, which Muslims consider the literal word of God, provides a perfect blueprint for their lives. Their ideal society would follow Islamic law and make no separation between religion and state.

In the meantime, they said, they want to become doctors and lawyers and teachers in the United States. Even though the American government uses taxes to finance things that are un-Islamic — licensing the sale of alcoholic beverages, for example — they said Muslims here should pay taxes and accept the judgments of secular American courts.

"If you want to survive in freedom, I guess you just have to pay taxes to get the benefits from America," said Ahmad Odetalla, 14. "You know you're not going to be the one who buys alcohol. So as long as you stay away from what is forbidden in religion, I guess we have to pay taxes."

The students at Al Noor may not be a scientific sampling of Muslim American youth. But their comments are similar to those posted by Muslim Americans on the numerous Internet chat rooms and message boards about Islam, and their outlook is similar in some ways to that of other newcomers.

Immigrants and their children often feel the strain between the adopted and the native culture. Their political interests may focus on the topics and debates in their homeland. In the case of these Al Noor students, they are children of immigrants from places like Pakistan, Egypt, the occupied Palestinian territories and Yemen, which have been preoccupied for years by the efforts of Islamic fundamentalist movements to gain power through violence or the ballot box.

Still, some of their comments reflect what they have been reading and exposed to in the United States, where some Muslim clerics say openly what is said underground in Muslim countries: that the United States is to blame for the ills of the Muslim world through its support of more secular Muslim rulers.

Some of the students, for example, said they would support any leader who they decided was fighting for Islam. Among those who do not fit that definition, they said, are the rulers of just about every Arab and Muslim country.

Mr. Fozi, for instance, said that he would support any leader he determined to be an observant Muslim who is fighting for an Islamic cause, and that he would do so even if it meant abandoning the United States. "I would support him with my life," he said. How would he know who is a true Muslim? "I use my understanding of Islam and see what the person is doing," Mr. Fozi said.

Several of the young men said they could fight against a Muslim if they were convinced that the Muslim had committed a crime. They all said they were not convinced that Osama bin Laden — or any Muslim, for that matter — was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, attacks that they condemned as violating all precepts of Islam.

"It comes down to the proof," said Mazen Kased, 17. "If you prove a Muslim did it, that's a different story."

Another 17-year-old student, Ammar Arif, agreed. "If you prove it's Osama bin Laden and I was in the Army, I would go to fight," he said. "That's my duty to my country and my religion as well."

The students at Al Noor are reluctant to accept that the terror attacks were carried out by anyone of their religion. They draw on their deeply felt belief that Americans are biased against Islam and Muslims and that Muslims are victims of a prejudiced news media. Like many Muslim Americans, they said they believed that non-Muslims did not understand them and their choices.

These are also children whose parents made a conscious decision by sending them to a private Islamic school to shield them, at least during the school day, from the secularism of their adopted American culture. Girls at Al Noor must wear a loose- fitting robe and a tight-fitting scarf to cover their hair and necks. Except for the youngest children, boys and girls are separated during the school day.

They feel their separateness keenly. Since Sept. 11, rumors have raced through the school that Muslims have been shot and beaten in Brooklyn, and that it is not safe to walk the streets because of revenge attacks by Americans against Muslims.

They believe the rumors — which have not proven true — because they said it fits with their experience of seeing negative images of Islam in films and articles that they find disrespectful of Islam.

"A lot of newspapers write negative things, and we get so upset," said Mona Widdi, 16.

But few students said they thought that newspapers should be forbidden to write things about Islam, the prophet Muhammad or the Koran, topics that writers in most of the Muslim world stay away from out of fear of offending Muslim clerics.

"America does have freedom of speech, and it's one of the basic things," Miss Amin said. "I was taught about it since kindergarten. You can't tell someone that they can't write that. But if they can't prove it, they shouldn't put it in the paper as some kind of hatred against us."

None of the students said they had experienced any harassment since Sept. 11. Their school has received offers of guidance counselors from local hospitals, visits of support from state education officials, offers of interfaith exchanges from nearby Catholic schools and a constant stream of calls offering assistance from political figures in Brooklyn.

The principal, Nidal Abuasi, acknowledged that the students' assumption of a backlash might be misplaced.

"Maybe," he said, after recounting the number of calls from the neighborhood expressing good will, "we are too paranoid."

The way religious folk get along in the US is to relegate the more difficult parts of their faith to the background. This is particularly important for Christians who are obligated to take their faith into all the world. Else, we'd have 'em lined up at our doors 10 deep every day.

One day in a discussion with a couple of mullahs, one gentleman asked me how it is that Christian missionaries will go anywhere and everywhere, but Moslem missionaries don't go to the worst places.

I told him it was that prohibition on Moslems living or working in places with legal systems incompatible with Islamic principles. After all, the places that need the missionaries, if not their religion, the most, barely have law, to say nothing of having law compatible with a high order of civilization.

You will notice that Moslems live in the United States. That is because our system of laws is compatible with Islam. That was determined first by the Ullema in Cairo, and by others later. With 5 million or so Moslems, that actually makes us pretty much one of the major Islamic states in the world.

All is not as it seems, eh?!

"Their ideal society would follow Islamic law and make no separation between religion and state. In the meantime, they said, they want to become doctors and lawyers and teachers in the United States. Even though the American government uses taxes to finance things that are un-Islamic..."

These young miscreants should be labeled MUSLIM "WHORES" because that's what they're espousing - living a lifestyle they believe is wrong solely for the money.

The sooner they are back where they belong, the better for all involved.

There is a medical term that mostly describes what you are talking about. In the human body it's a cancer.

Early detection and treatment, we are told, are crucial if one is to survive cancer. This country, I am afraid, is in deep, deep denial as to the diagnosis.

Truly an amazing point of view. Medieval Spain, where the Moslems never constituted an overwhelming majority, was considered possibly the best place to live at the time by everyone who'd heard of it.

Under the Umayyads it was certainly an excellent piece of civilization. Under later regimes where the central power had been broken up, and a federalism prevailed, you could find a community in Spain that satisfied your own personal attitudes toward law, religion and style of community.

Can't say we have yet attained that in the US. At the moment it looks like a single standard imposed from the top that forces us all into an uncomfortable conformity is the rage.

So, what was that you were saying about how Moslems will do it when they try to "take over"? Is that what they did in Spain? Is that going to be worse than a system where we have a bunch of perverts in a Supreme Court telling the rest of us we have to put up with baby killers?

I've defended Muslims and Islam on this forum from unwarranted and downright bigoted attacks, but I've begun to come to the conclusion that the American ideal and Islam are just not compatible.

Jews and Christians seem to be able to live the American way and obey American laws with no threat to their religious values, but it seems there is conflict when it comes to Islam. This might make sense, considering that while the Founding Fathers intended for all religions to be free and welcome in the US, they founded the US on Judeo-Christian, Western values.

They seem to be on the level of Nazis. We don't need this kind of immigrant to the US. I remember just until a few weeks ago, the Jews in this town were free to worship without harassment, now every synagogue must hire security guards for their services and people are finding their flags ripped down and burned.

They really should not mind being sent back to Islamic countries which need their skills because we sure don't.

Good points. If you are talking about a MUslim majority trying to bend America towards a theocratic rule, I agree with you, although the Constitution does allow, on a local level, people to basically govern themselves as they please, and religion plays a role in it (look at Utah). However, if you're talking about other countries, the Constitution, though it is my ideal, is not binding on anyone else. If Muslims as a majority religion want to rule using Islamic law, then that's what they are going to do. I don't think its neccessarily right, but that is the way the world works.

They'll tell us that this worldview is shared by only a minority of Moslems and that Islam means peace.

This view is very often held by non-Arab converts to Islam.Yet they fail to explain why the majority of interviews and the actions (or non-action) of the Islamic community does not mesh with the definition of peaceful. I have been saying since 91101; there are only two sides.....I jumped for joy when GWB said basically the same thing.

This article clearly points out were these peoples sympathies lie.

When I see American Muslims purging and denouncing their own extremists and staging large protests against the slaughter of innocents by their brethren, I might think differently than I do now.

On September 11th, a group of Muslims working in a computer manufacturing plant in my U.S. city, rejoiced and cheered over the carnage in New York, thereby starting a fist-fight with fellow workers.

They cannot be shaken from the conviction that America is intrinsically anti-Muslim.

Let me ask you this, carpet rider: how many churches do you have in Saudi Arabia? How many mosques do we have in America? Now WHO are the bigots???!!!!

Maybe America is "anti-Muslim" because Islam has shown itself to be anti-Western. Or, maybe America isn't anti-Muslim at all. Maybe that is just a convenient fiction behind which to hide a murderous agenda, and speciously justify the slaughter of 7,000 innocents.

Sura 9, verse 5: Then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them. And seize them, beleaguer them and lie in wait for them, in every strategem [of war]."

This is what Islam teaches. "Nice," eh?

People read the Koran. Don't let those who embraced it tell you about it. Learn what's it all about from the source.

We're being used by people such as this who have no appreciation for this country, its history or traditions (I'm not saying that about all Muslims, but this bunch certainly fits it). All the supposed "anti-Muslim activity" of the US armed forces during the past decade?: 1) freeing Kuwaiti Muslims from Iraqi domination in 1991; 2) in 1992/3, feeding 3 million Somali Muslims at a loss of 20 of our Rangers; 3) in 1995, garrisoning, feeding and supporting Muslim Bosnia against Serbs whose parents helped us in the fight against Hitler; 4) in 1999, bombing the tar out of our fellow Christians in Kosovo on behalf of Albanian Muslims. I could add paying billions a year to the Egyptian and Palestinian Authority governments but I know this bunch wouldn't care to hear it.

"...Islam has shown itself to be anti-Western."

Excellent point IronJack! With all the propoganda about America being "anti-Islam", we need to turn the tables and press home the point that America permits their mosques and the practice of Islam in this country. Can Muslim countries say the same about Christian churces and Jewish synagogues in their countries? The truth as you correctly point out is that Islam is anti-western, anti-anything but Islam. It is the epitome of intolerance and tyranny.

Who can argue this point? Step forward. Who in the media has the guts to ask these questions of Islamic Clerics and the liberal left?

So ... if the US Supreme Court rules that vouchers for private religious schools are constitutional, how do you all feel about this school getting tax money to spread anti-Americanism?

They already do in Milwaukee, and at least two of those schools are Islamic.

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