Triangle Muslims are defined by their faith, but no less American
Around her 16th birthday, Nadeem Iqbal’s older daughter, Naveen, sat down with him to announce a decision. “I want to put on a scarf,” she told him – a hijab, the cloth head covering some women wear that both guards their modesty and instantly reveals to the world that they’re Muslim.
Iqbal, a native of Pakistan who moved to North Carolina in 1982 to get his doctoral degree, had spent decades trying to fit in in his adopted home while staying true to his faith.
This choice by his daughter, who was born and lived her whole life in Cary, “made me extremely jittery,” Iqbal said. He asked her: “ ‘Do you know the possible consequences of taking the hijab?’
“She said she is an American. She has the right to do things differently if it is not going to hurt anybody.”
This week, Muslims across the Triangle and beyond have felt acutely the ways in which they stand out. They may be conspicuous for their dress, their skin color and, if they moved here from an Arabic-speaking country, for their accented speech. But an event such as the one this week, when three young Muslim students were shot dead at home in Chapel Hill, singles them out further.
At a time when they say they should feel united with their neighbors in a sense of outrage over an act of such violence, they instead feel pressed to somehow demonstrate whether they’re more loyal to their religion or their country – Islam or America? – in a way that followers of no other faith are required to do in this country. It’s as if, they say, they cannot be both American and Muslim.
“We are all against violence,” said Mohammad ElGamal, chairman of the Islamic Association of Raleigh, which conducted the funeral and burial services this week for Deah Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her 19-year-old sister, Razan Abu-Salha, who were killed Tuesday. “We do not feel this is a Muslim issue. It’s an American issue, it’s an issue for the international community. The violence is against humanity.”
Division over the shootings seems to stem in part from demands by some members of the victims’ family and faith community for law enforcement to investigate the incident as a possible hate crime. Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, who has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths, used his Facebook page to deride organized religion, and Mohammad Abu-Salha, father of the two sisters, said one of the young women had told him Hicks seemed to hate them “for who we are and how we look.”
Chapel Hill police Chief Chris Blue has said his investigators so far believe the shooting was motivated by an ongoing dispute over parking spaces at the condominium complex where Hicks, Barakat and Yusor Abu-Salha lived.
The FBI has said it will conduct a preliminary, parallel investigation into whether the killings violated federal laws. FBI crime statistics indicate that with regard to religious bias, hate-crime charges can be brought whether the crime is against a specific religion or multiple religions.
On anti-Islamic websites, commenters seized on the hate crime claim, saying it was hypocritical and citing violent incidents in recent years in which Muslims have been arrested but not charged with hate crimes. Some of those offenders, commenters said, should have been charged with terrorism.
On some of those sites, commenters have gone further, suggesting that all followers of Islam are terrorists or potential terrorists, and even applauding the killings of Barakat and the Abu-Salha sisters regardless of the shooter’s motivation. The sites share items from Barakat’s Twitter account in which he used the hashtag #FreePalestine or was critical of Zionism. “Good riddance,” several posters said.
Such comments come as studies find a spreading “Islamaphobia,” and a growing fear that Islam is less a religion than a system of political beliefs whose goal is world domination and especially the destruction of America.
Discrimination and support
There are an estimated 35,000 Muslims living in the Triangle area, many of them born here to parents who came 20 or 30 years ago from India, Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt and other countries to study or work. They have built mosques and formed college campus groups that sponsor food drives and blanket collections, English language classes, lecture series and concerts. They hold cultural festivals where they share food and music. They celebrate weddings and births and mourn at funerals.
The local Muslim community has spoken out against violence by international groups claiming to be followers of Islam, and has condemned killings by the Islamic State, including those of a journalist and a humanitarian aid worker.
In their daily lives, Muslims in the Triangle say they have experienced discrimination and sensed the anger and fear some feel toward followers of their faith.
Nadeem Iqbal, who lives in Cary, said in his career as a scientist he has felt more than once that his resume was passed over in favor of ones bearing more American-sounding names. Employers, he thinks, fear the unknown. After 9/11, a colleague in a lab where he worked told him the terrorist attacks were his fault.
But Iqbal and others say they also have felt compassion and support, including in the wake of Tuesday’s shootings, which some said seemed especially shocking for having occurred in Chapel Hill, the state’s cradle of liberalism.
On Thursday, Zainab Shah, a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill who now works in the university’s provost office, saw the good and the bad within seconds of one another.
“I was sitting at the bus stop,” said Shah, who wears a hijab, “and this lady honked the horn at me and gave me the finger. Then this other lady who was sitting at the bus stop with me turned and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
Shah was among a large crowd of students and others who gathered in the brickyard at N.C. State University Thursday evening for a vigil for the shooting victims. Muslims and non-Muslims were in the group and among the speakers.
Shah was there with three friends from UNC, including Naveen Aqbal, the one who had told her father she wanted to start wearing a scarf as a form of self-expression.
Joining them were Mohammad Junaid, who works in UNC’s disbursement office, and Sadia Aslam, a senior in biology. All four said they had experienced slights and insults but agreed when Junaid said, “There are more good people than bad.”
Aslam said that after the killings, her mother wanted her to come home to High Point where she grew up. Aslam told her she was staying; she still feels safe in Chapel Hill.
Though they did not know the shooting victims personally, the friends attended the funeral service for them earlier in the day.
Ahsan Shaikh and Uma Hussain traveled from Chicago to attend the funeral, which drew 5,500 people to the Method Road Soccer Complex at NCSU, most, but not all, Muslims. Shaikh, a lawyer, and Hussain, a pharmacist, are friends of the Barakat family. Both are native-born Americans.
In this country, Shaikh said, there always seems to be a minority group that is out of favor: Irish immigrants, African-Americans.
“Right now,” he said, “it’s our turn to be the most-hated community in America. It’s difficult.”
‘Want to be treated equally’
According to the website IslamiCity.com, Muslims believe in one God whose revelations were brought to mankind through certain prophets, including Jesus, the last of whom was Muhammad. Muslims believe in a day of judgment and accountability, in God’s authority over human destiny and in life after death. Islamic life is guided by five pillars: faith, prayer, concern for the needy, self-purification and a pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.
Frustrating for many Muslims is that they see themselves as very much like their non-Muslim neighbors who have complicated lives and many identities. Shaikh said other people may be known by their occupations; whether they pull for the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox; whether they drive a Prius or an old pickup truck; and maybe whether they’re Protestant or Jewish.
“For Muslims, our identity is our faith,” he said. “But it doesn’t make us any less American.”
When the Chapel Hill shootings happened, Adeel Zeb, the new Muslim chaplain at Duke University, was still dealing with the disappointment and confusion among students on his campus resulting from a January incident over the Muslim call to prayer. Duke Chapel staff announced that it had invited the university’s Muslim community – about 700 people, a tenth of whom attend weekly Friday prayers – to recite the Friday call to prayer from the bell tower. The idea came from the associate dean for religious life at the chapel; Muslim students have been allowed to pray in the chapel’s basement for some 20 years.
But the invitation was followed by an appeal by Franklin Graham, son of respected Baptist evangelist Billy Graham, for donors to withhold their gifts to the school. The campus Center for Muslim Life received threats of violence. Duke’s administration rescinded the offer and said the call could be made from the chapel steps.
In a story about it, a writer for The Guardian said the flap raised questions that the U.S. as a whole must address.
“Muslims have been immigrating to America in significant numbers since the 1960s,” the writer said. “But in a post-9/11-America, where do they fit into its society? And are Americans – Muslim and non-Muslim – willing to accept that freedom of religion means what it says, for everyone?”
The answer is clear to Zeb, who said that recent events have had the effect of drawing the local Muslim community closer as they seek support. What they hope to see, he said, is a broader understanding of their experience and of the things they share in common with their neighbors.
“I think at the end of the day most Muslim Americans want to live normal, healthy lives with their families, want to be wonderful contributors to society and want to be treated equally with any other American, whether they are wearing the beard or the clothes or have different colored skin or Islamic-sounding names.
“They want to be treated like everybody else.”
This story was originally published February 14, 2015 at 8:14 PM with the headline "Triangle Muslims are defined by their faith, but no less American."