Posted on 10/07/2001 5:15:59 AM PDT by sarcasm
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 Andrea Mohin/The New York Times From left, Fariah Amin, Salam Said and Andira Abudayeh, are juniors at Al Noor School, a private Islamic academy in Brooklyn. |
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 Andrea Mohin/The New York Times Fami Fozi, 17, left, would not fight against a Muslim country. Mazen Kased, also 17, is not convinced that Muslims attacked the trade center. |
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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."
A major purpose of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is to protect minorities against the tyranny of the majority. If a Muslim government oppresses non-Muslims, it is the right and duty of the oppressed to protect themselves — by force and violence if necessary! For instance, if an Afghan woman unhappy about being forced to wear the burka were to blow out Mullah Omar's brains, she should be regarded as a hero, not a criminal.
After working with a number of Muslims I have to agree with this statement. I know some nice ones and somme rabidly anti-american ones. Funny thing was that some of the most anti-american ones I know were also the ones that got the massive citizenship giveaway Clinton expedited. Their hate for jews is inbred and a part of their core.
If what he's saying is true, then no-one who distrusts Muslims is doing so without logical cause. In fact, those who would deny the hostility are living an insanity.
...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.
...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.
...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.
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.
Fifth column, anyone?
Muslim education does not preach tolerance. The girls are taught nothing and the educational standards for males inferior. The males look at jews and christians with better education and jobs and are jealous. A typical victim mentality.
Yes, I agree. It's called mind control, just the opposite of American value system. Why do their parents come here? It is not good when any group of people come to our country and do not wish to assimilate. They need to get rid of their foreign gear and become Americans or go home. We citizens need to take a stand. Enough is enough
He hung American flags in the house even though my mother spoke little English and he had a heavy accent. However, my parents were Christians.
For some reason, this reminds me of the old bumper sticker, "I survived Catholic School." Well, the nuns don't have anything on the mullahs. These kids will grow up and have to integrate with American society on a daily basis as they go through college and get jobs. Then they'll find out the truth.
Providing we don't let immigration get out of control, Arabs are likely to assimilate faster in US society than any other ethnic group, for the simple reason that their Old Ways are so out of whack.
The only thing that could spoil this would be for a Timothy McVeigh clone to go out and kill a bunch of Muslims. God help us, let's hope the FBI can prevent that.
We're finally understanding what's happening around us. Maybe our citizens will finally wake up. It's hard to accept people who come to this country and don't wish to assimilate.
I think Americans have been awakened to a very dark truth that underlies these attacks-These attacks may have been the work of an active few, but they are cheered by a very large world-wide group - many within our own borders and claiming to be American citizens.
This realization is good because before we can defeat an enemy, we must identify them.
There is no reason to mince words. Anyone who cheers the mass slaughter of innocents is not fit to cohabit a civilized world with people of peace and should be marked for destruction. If Muslims proclaim they cannot peacefully coexist in a world occupied by those of other faiths, they have condemned themselves by their own word as did Pharoah in the time of Moses. If they live by the sword, they shall die by it.
If you claim America as your home, and yet you will not fight against a "muslim" nation, then in my view, you should leave.
Send the whole lot of them back to the tent they came from.
A small step in the right direction.
Yes it is up to Muslims now to make some serious reforms in that religion. Other religions have split apart over far far less. As it stand right now, bin Laden and the mass murderers are every bit as Muslim as the ones claiming to be peace-loving and tolerant. They can say the extremists aren't "true" Muslim but in reality they are.
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