M. Junaid Levesque-Alam blogs about America and Islam at Crossing the Crescent (http://www.crossingthecrescent.com) and writes about American Muslim identity for WireTap magazine. Co-founder of Left Hook, a youth journal that ran from Nov. 2003 to March 2006, he works as a communications coordinator for an anti-domestic violence agency in the NYC area. He can be reached at: junaidalam1 AT gmail.com. This article was originally published in counterpunch and is republished in full with the author’s permission.

For some, Barack Obama’s stature as a man of the left has fallen precipitously, like late autumn leaves shed by branches bowing to the will of winter.

Disappointment has often been self-inflicted. Supporters have dipped their pens deeply into the inkwell of Obama’s inspiring story and written their own lines on Afghanistan, oil drilling, or the death penalty - only to see these wishful words unceremoniously erased by presidential politics or the senator’s own views.

But for American Muslims and progressive allies, both eager to see an end to the vilification of Arabs and Muslims in the United States, Obama’s mantra of hope and change barely set in before it expired.

First we witnessed the embarrassing spectacle of micro-level ethnic cleansing when two Arab women with headscarves were whisked offstage ahead of a campaign photo-op in Detroit. Then we heard Obama call false claims about his purportedly Muslim identity “smears” – as if he was accused not of belonging to an Abrahamic faith observed by more than 1.2 billion people, but of slinking out of Congress to visit a brothel. Soon after we saw the senator genuflect before AIPAC and call for a permanently Israeli Jerusalem - a vision the Jewish state has assiduously tried to realize by macro-level ethnic cleansing, purging its Arab residents.

A more recent political maneuver also turned out to be a purge: the Obama campaign’s Muslim outreach coordinator, Mazen Asbahi, “resigned” this month after a brief stint of several days. The event went almost unnoticed.

But two sharply different responses to this episode - and the standing afforded to the authors of these responses - reveal that the senator is not alone in failing to stanch America’s anti-Islamic miasma. Rather, the shortcoming is a collective one, shared by many liberals whose prejudice against Muslims and Arab-Americans is surpassed only by an apparent disinterest in correcting it.

One response to the resignation came from James Zogby. An Arab-American Christian, Zogby’s credentials as a man rooted in his community are matchless. He helped found the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He led non-sectarian campaigns to assist war victims in Palestine and Lebanon. And he serves as president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank.

Yet despite 30 years of community advocacy and experience, his views on Arab and Muslim issues appear in just two popular non-ethnic publications. One is The Huffington Post. The other is in Egypt.

Commenting on Asbahi’s short tenure, Zogby writes, “In the brief time he held his position we spoke almost daily. He learned so much and did so much to make Arab Americans and American Muslims feel included in the campaign.”

“Then,” Zogby observes, “it happened.” One of the many websites “monitoring” Muslims in America discovered that eight years ago Asbahi served on a board which included a controversial imam. Asbahi resigned from the board after two weeks.

Like vultures eyeing a wounded gazelle, the usual assortment of right-wing bloggers descended on Asbahi. They vilified him as a closet fundamentalist for once belonging to the Muslim Student Association, a well-established mainstream group with branches on dozens of college campuses across the U.S. and Canada.

Not to be outdone, the Wall Street Journal threatened to amplify the echo chamber, the walls of which reverberate with the hysterics of its associates in the right-wing “blogosphere.”

Faced with mounting pressure and bereft of support from any quarter, Asbahi and the campaign “agreed” he would relinquish his post.

This sequence of events comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with neoconservative methods. It is but a reenactment of previous attacks: the mendacious 2005 campaign to oust Columbia University professors who used Israel’s own archives to dismantle pleasant fictions about its history; the dissemination of e-mails containing crude anti-Semitic nonsense sent out in professors’ names to destroy their credibility; and the ongoing efforts to publicly intimidate universities into denying academics employment or tenure.

But amid the past few years of attacks, outrages, and, yes, smears, hurled at Muslims and Arabs in this country, one Muslim figure stands curiously unsullied: Irshad Manji. She, too, wrote about Asbahi’s dismissal, though we would do well to acquaint ourselves with the author first.

Unlike most of her coreligionists, Manji has been lavished with attention and awards by mainstream and liberal America. She garnered Oprah Winfrey’s first “Chutzpah” award, Ms. Magazine’s “Feminist for the 21st Century” seal of approval, New York University’s Wagner School “Moral Courage Project,” a column in The Huffington Post, production of a PBS documentary, and the list goes on.

In an era when Muslims find themselves boxed in by political attacks here and military assaults abroad, one wonders: what is Manji’s secret to success?

She wrote a book - and not just any book. Titled The Trouble With Islam Today, hers won applause not only from liberals but other, more interesting quarters. The Wall Street Journal praised it as “refreshingly provocative” and “deserv[ing] of the attention it is receiving.” Daniel Pipes declared, “Manji - a practicing Muslim - brings real insight to her subject.” Phyillis Chesler beamed, “Manji has written a bold, sane, passionate, compelling book.” And Alan Dershowitz announced, “Manji is a fresh, new and intriguing voice of Islamic reform.”

A fine example of damning with loud praise.

What could a Muslim have written that would delight supporters of bombing and torturing Muslims? What sweet words could have moved Daniel Pipes - who specializes in hyping anti-Islamic hysteria on Fox News and elsewhere - to welcome into his generous bosom the ideas of a “practicing Muslim?” What might motivate Alan Dershowitz, better known for backing the torture of Muslims than for reading their books, to plug Manji’s effort?

The answer lies in the content. The Trouble With Islam Today is an unhinged polemic that derides Muslims and demeans their faith. Examining a few of the book’s points should reveal what has caught the fancy of neoconservatives and liberals alike.

The author devotes two pages to comparing Osama bin Laden to Prophet Muhammad. “Is it mere happenstance,” Manji rhetorically asks, “that bin Laden spends so much time in caves, like the meditating [Prophet] did?” With penetrating and piercing logic - in the sense that one must penetrate one’s skull and pierce the cortex to succumb to it - she goes on in this vein, declaring “camel saddles” and “online transactions” twin evils. The “parallels” between Osama, the man who blesses the murder of innocent people, and Muhammad, the man who forgave the murderers of his closest companions, “continue to proliferate,” Manji insists, much to the delight of the Muslim-haters behind the curtains.

A good portion of the book is also dedicated to attacking the Quran (and the Quran alone), which the intrepid author does without any background in religious studies or a single footnote. But no matter. This book, Manji intones, is “profoundly at war with itself.” Religious texts should apparently read like do-it-yourself plumbing guides, bereft of subtlety or layers of meaning, particularly if you are trying to flush the whole thing down the toilet to boost your celebrity status among Islamophobes.

Manji’s fans must especially enjoy her excoriation of Muslims as fake victims. Muslims wallow in their “screaming self-pity,” she snickers,  as though one ought to see the fuselage of cruise missiles as half-full rather than half-empty as they fly en route to the nearest wedding celebration or apartment building.

Manji’s attacks on Muslims appear almost kind next to the beating she doles out to logic itself. She surmises that since Muslims have been more harmed by Muslims than non-Muslims (based on what data or criteria, we dare not guess), there is little reason to complain about atrocities authored under the “war on terror.” She does not add whether she also ordered families of Sept. 11th victims to get over themselves when the casualties were surpassed by that year’s domestic homicides - a case of “Americans having been more harmed by Americans than non-Americans.”

Finally, Manji enjoys ridiculing dispossessed Palestinians. Ignoring over two decades of work by Jewish scholars and human rights groups on Israeli ethnic cleansing and massacres, she neatly eliminates the Palestinians altogether by dubbing them Jordanians and hails Israel for its “compassion.” It must have been precisely this “compassion” that moved 23 ANC veterans, several of them Jewish, to compare the Israeli occupation with South African apartheid during a recent visit.

Now well-acquainted with America’s favorite Muslim, let us turn to her article on the departure of Obama’s former coordinator, Mazen Asbahi.

In a Huffington Post piece, she demonstrates no concern about the vilification enabled Asbahi’s dismissal. Indeed, she fails to mention it even once. Is this because Manji is too busy contributing to the problem to pause and reflect? Or is it because this would upset her core base - the neoconservatives who mount these smear campaigns?

Whatever the case, Manji performs her predictable pre-programmed attack routine, observing contemptuously, “…Mazen Asbahi has just resigned. I can’t say I’m disheartened. He’d been embraced by groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America, renowned for their conservative politics and ‘moderate’ double-speak.”

Writing a piece occasioned by attacks on one Muslim, Manji manages to magnify the insult by attacking thousands of other Muslims.

According to her politics, anyone who does not dance to the detonation of cluster bombs is already suspect. So her invective aimed at groups representing thousands of American Muslims, which she never bothers to back up with arguments, is understandable.

Not yet satisfied with herself, she goes on to pant about “most” American Muslims being stuck in a 7th century - or perhaps 10th century, depending on her mood - “time warp.” Serving as 21st century America’s doctors, teachers, engineers, shopkeepers, and plant workers, Muslims have been too busy to notice this worrisome defect.
Concluding with a few shopworn words about “moral courage” and “revolutionary ethos,” Manji polishes off her attacks on the community by invoking vague platitudes about Muslim “reform.”
This is Manji’s sole gimmick: disingenuous calls for Muslims to move forward belied by support for those pulling America backward.

What does the liberal adulation of a professional Islamophobe - one openly adored by neoconservatives, no less - say about the state of American liberalism? Will liberals come to respect and support genuine Muslim and Arab voices, like Zogby and countless unrecognized figures? Or will they continue to lazily rely on self-professed stand-ins like Irshad Manji?

If liberalism persists on its present path, it will not only alienate a targeted community in America but pave the way for further persecution.

Perfectly illustrating this point is The New York Times’ fawning characterization of  Manji as “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare.” This is very far from the truth.

For years, many Muslim and non-Muslim voices have said bin Laden’s ideology is a freak phenomenon, fashioned in the ghoulish laboratory of Cold War politics and fed on a steady diet of American –Israeli assaults in the Middle East. At odds with more than 1,300 years of Muslim thought and history, these voices have insisted, bin Laden is a perversion of genuine Islam.

But Manji argues the opposite: bin Laden is a genuine product of Islam, which is itself perverted. Osama, we will recall, is for Manji the new Muhammad.

In showering attention and accolades on Manji, many liberals thus validate and promote the idea that extremist Islam is Islam itself. Could bin Laden dream of a greater gift? Could the neoconservatives?

Perhaps liberals find Manji’s message appealing because ascribing extremism to some innate feature of Islam “disappears” from view the consequences of American foreign policy. Invasion and occupation disappear. Torture and abuse disappear. Corpses of slaughtered civilians and carrions of neutralized nations disappear.

The desire to own a clear conscience, even one obtained through the muddiest logic, should never be underestimated.

There may be other answers: a fear of questioning the dominant narrative; of criticizing Israel; of discovering Islamic perspectives; of engaging the Other, who is often harangued but rarely heard.

Whatever the reason, American liberals would do well to stop glorifying anti-Muslim celebrities and start building relationships with honest Arab and Muslim voices.

We are waiting.

Sorry for the silence on this site. It is currently undergoing some rethinking. I’ll be posting more soon insha’Allah once a few kinks are ironed out.

For now, please take a look at the following review of Traitor over on Racialicious. The movie is fraught with Muslim characters, some of whom even look like “us”. Beware of spoilers.

Fatemeh of Muslimah Media Watch gives the blog rundown on Mazen Asbahi’s resignation.

One young woman’s experience with being Arab in America post 9/11. She and her family were detained. The writer starts out a bit melodramatic, but he gets the telling right as he focuses more on her and less on his words.

An upcoming conference on Contemporary Muslim Consumer Cultures. Check it out. You’ll be interested in a flash.

One blogger asks why no one else is asking, “What if Obama is a Muslim?” This is a response to PUMA. Please check it out.

I was hoping I’d have time to fully examine these articles for the site. I still may in the future. Feel free to comment. I’m open to dialogue. Speaking of which, an IOMS article was picked up by Racialicious. The response was both gratifying and frustrating.  But for the most part, it was gratifying. Please see what readers had to say. Thanks to Racialicious for covering this blog.

Over at the Huffington Post, Sumbul Ali-Karamali writes about the incorrect presumption that Obama is a Muslim and asks why it would be so bad if he were:

 I do understand, as a troubling number of Americans do not, that Barack Obama has never been Muslim. Merely living in Indonesia does not cause metamorphosis Islamica, some (imaginary) loathsome disease to be contracted from environmental contact. Wearing Somali dress in a laudable attempt to show multicultural respect is not proof of religious convictions. Attending a madrasa as a child does not a Muslim make, since madrasa is simply the Arabic word for school and, as such, can be applied to Harvard Law School with as much accuracy as it can be applied to a Taliban religious school.

What I love about this article is that Ali-Karamali discusses why these fears are both unreasonable via a comparison I find to be strikingly astute (”. . . al-Qaeda is no more representative of Islam than the Ku Klux Klan is representative of Christianity”)

and  why these fears are confusing:

So even if Obama were a Muslim, he wouldn’t be any less American or any less intelligent or any less competent. . . Yet the thought of Obama attending both Islamic and Catholic schools in Indonesia strikes fear into some hearts. Instead, it should give us hope that finally we might just have a president who would know how to communicate with the leaders of both Muslim and Christian countries.

She also addresses how these phobias and misunderstanding have been applied to her, “an Indian-American, Muslim, female, corporate lawyer and author.”

What’s more, she ties Islamophobia today to the anti Japanese-American sentiment of World War II:

During World War II, Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps because they were presumed to be loyal to Japan (no matter how many generations their families had lived in America). The destruction of the World Trade Towers was a type of Pearl Harbor, casting suspicion on American Muslims this time instead of Japanese Americans.

But, points out, “The Pew Research Center notes that [Muslims] are ‘decidedly American in [our] outlook, values, and attitudes.’”

As an American Muslim who practices what the media would call moderate Islam, I can’t see why it would be such a bad thing to have a Muslim as president. I can, however, identify the source of some political fears. If the U.S. had a Muslim president, our policy towards Israel would have to change. So, if there are any American citizens who were only going to vote for the other guy because he is White and therefore cannot possibly be Muslim (take a look at what Ali-Karamali has to say regarding assumptions of race and Islamic identity), or because he’s never known anything but his father’s faith and a narrow slice of America, just take a gander at Obama’s declaration of friendship with Israel at the AIPAC conference and rest easy.

Irritation about the U.S.-Israel sleeping arrangements aside, the man says he’s not a Muslim. Just because he isn’t aggressively anti-Muslim doesn’t make him a follower of Islam. You don’t have to slander people of another faith to not be one of them.

This is too disturbing for me to do more than quote and link to:

 So, yes, there is something to be said for incompetence in the ranks of our federal law enforcement agencies. Or is it the desire to keep finding pawns in the “war against terrorism”? And consequently to keep alive the funding for the witch-hunt against Muslims in America?

• one of her kidneys had been removed while in captivity;
• her teeth had been removed;
• her nose had been broken, and improperly reset;
  that her recent gun-shot wound had been incompetently dressed, was oozing blood, leaving her clothes soaked with blood

Read more of her story and America’s shameful conduct.

Some links from the last week or so:

From the Wall Street Journal, reflections on the culture of fear surrounding all things Islam by a Muslimah.

Frome Reuters, a story on the decision to pull the book.

From CAIR, Ahmed Rehab discusses how the resignation of Obama’s Muslim liason is a slight to Muslims, but still concludes that Obama is better than McCain.

Naomi Wolf at the Khaleej Times Online encourages friends of America to stage and intervention because not even Obama can save America after the damage done by the George W. Bush administration. She calls for

Izzy Mo, an American Muslim sister who has recently begun her life anew in the Middle East, had an interesting encounter with an Iraqi woman who led her to some interesting conclusions.

Whether we realize it or not, America enjoys the love and mercy of many people around the world.  While I have met people who will go on and on about America’s jacked-up foreign policy, I have yet to hear anyone condemn the American people.  I haven’t encountered any seething hatred or raging Moozlimz.

I find this very interesting because the American sentiment toward the people of the Middle East is definitely not reciprocated.

Izzy Mo draws tells a tale worth reading, and from it draws some interesting conclusions. Please review her most recent blog post to see what else she has to say on the perceptions of American people in the Middle East.

In a recent article on the Huffington Post, Steve Clemons sounds off on Obama’s latest religious gaffe: his failure to stand against the resignation of Mazen Asbahi, his Muslim-outreach coordinator. Once again, the reasons for a Muslim’s career coming to a halt has to do with tenuous ties to an extremist way back in the history of his history.

Why is this allowed to happen? Brushing shoulders with someone on the street should not be grounds for suspected terrorism. Briefly serving on a committee with an extremist and then never having anything to do with that person ever again should not be grounds for suspected terrorist ties. Clemons says:

 Obama is a Christian. I get that. I’m a secularist hard core — but I won’t stand by to watch more good people be flushed down the political drain because they are Muslims trying to work for a balanced and level playing field in America.

Clemons reviews Obama’s series of campaign (non)moves that have frustrated Muslims hoping for a more equal playing field in the U.S. Read the rest of the article here.

For more details on Asbahi and his supposed extremist ties, read this article by Michelle Malkin.

***

As an aside, why even cover this issue? After all, unless Obama starts actively spouting hate-speech and paints himself as a avid racist and islamophobe, he will always be the better candidate for Muslims in America as compared to John McCain.

The issue here is really that, as Muslims, we should expect more. Not just from Obama, who certainly has the exposure to outside cultures and faiths, as well as his own mixed heritage, to recognize racism when it rears its ugly head. We should expect more from the entire system. A system which is heavily Christian-oriented. Where is the separation of church and state? That doesn’t exist here. What does exist is a separation of mosque and state, and Muslims are expected to both accept and understand that.

I once had an email exchange with a commenter on an old blog post who expressed that she believes the random searches at airports are necessary even if they were not random. She said that as a non-Muslim, non-Arab, she felt better knowing that people who looked suspect to her  were being searched. After all, her own family members (also non and non) were searched. What I gleaned from the exchange, though, was that she believed Arab-looking men were probably Muslim, and if so, much more likely than any other man in this country to commit an act of terrorism. However, according to FBI statistics, Black men are more likely to commit or be the victim of homicide within their group than any other group. And who comes next? White men. Now compare the number of White men to Black men in this country, extend the stats through our entire population, and think about what that means in terms of who is most likely to commit a violent crime in this country. Hint, it’s not Arab-Muslims. (Click through the site for info on other groups and crime.)

So why are Muslim-looking people all we’re screening? Simple. The media in cahoots with the government is telling us to by providing coverage of these acts in ways that play into our deepest fears as sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.  We’ve known that for awhile. Who is that scary man in the background? The image is dated:  As he steps out of the shadows, his features become clear. What do we see? A beard. Darker skin. A thobe. And, gasp!, a kufi. That religious signifier, just bigger than a yarmulke, is terrifying!

For multiple reasons, I’ve decided to extend the submission deadline until January 1, 2009. I hope that new readers will consider posting, and old readers will continue or decide to complete essays.

A note to ex-pats: if you spent time in the U.S. post 9/11, do consider writing about that time whether or not it influenced your relocation.

As always, you can contact me with questions and concerns at submission(at)islamonmyside(dot)com.

Submission guidelines here.

This is an old post I’ve pulled out of the Islam on My Side archives, originally posted with the title “Give Me an Unbigoted Break.” It’s a bit more personal than I’ve been inclined to post on this blog, but as personal essays come in from contributors (deadline August 1st, so get to it!), I feel inclined to share a bit of my own experience–the roots of this blog and anthology, if you will.

****

As I thumbed my way through some favorite blogs this morning, I was inspired to touch on a hot topic in the Muslim blogosphere: bigotry. Islamo-Facism Week has encouraged the debasement of Islamic ideals stemming from a bigoted hardline against Muslims. I’ve grown used to being lumped into unfriendly categories. It often happens by friendly people who are misinformed by Horowitz-like others or simply ignorant to world affairs. I’m often tolerant of said lumping.

I spent six years in Oklahoma, three years in Texas, and another six years in Arkansas prior to the eleven I’ve spent in Indiana. For those of you trying to do the math, that makes me twenty-six years old. When I lived in Arkansas, I was the object of some pretty serious hate. My family was the only Muslim family in the tiny town we lived in. I started there in fifth grade. I remember my first day of school clearly. I’d changed schools a number of times as my dad moved up in the job world. I’d gotten pretty good at identifying who the kids I wanted to get in with were from day one. I was thrilled when one of the girls disengaged herself from the medium-popularity clique and offered to be my tour-guide. She never got to guide me though. I was handed off before that first period ended to a girl with wildly red hair who was clearly not as well-to-do or well-looked upon. This girl became my best friend for several years, mostly due to her honesty when I asked her why the other girl had ditched me.

She nodded when she said it, “The teacher says you’re part of a cult.”

It took awhile for the implications of this to sink in. My fifth-grade homeroom/English teacher had discouraged another student from being my handler because she somehow knew my family was Muslim. Or maybe it was because I entered the classroom with a wicked tan, the same type of tan my younger sister sported when we were on the local swim team and another teacher’s daughter came up to her and asked, “Do you take pills to be Black?” or something like that.

Interestingly enough, the Black members of this town were made welcome, and barriers were broken down to give them at least marginal acceptance because they were churchgoers, and perhaps more importantly, they were really good at basketball (or football, or track) and those were this Bible-belt town’s lifeline.

Anyway, I spent the rest of this day following that brave red-head–she’d shrugged off the cult thing–around the school trying not to cry. Give me a break. I was an eleven year old girl clearly being shunned by peers who shifted away and whispered when I walked past. I was the object of a lot of pointing and narrowed eyes. It turns out that my younger sister did better because she was only seven, and the community believed she could still be saved from our heathen household.

I’d like to say that this kind of behavior was temporary, that people opened their eyes and hearts to my family and accepted us. We kept to ourselves. We didn’t make a big thing out of our difference of faith. We never criticized what the other members of our community believed. But the truth is, while some of the kids I attended classes with and was teammates with for volleyball, basketball, track, or swimming did relax a little around me, it was extremely rare that I got an invite to do anything other than attend youth group or go to church, both of which I did because I would take what I could get. I was even saved under a big tent one summer. Afterward, one mom welcomed me into her life, promising to give me a Bible (which I was thrilled at the prospect of even though I already owned one and had read it). But her interest in me came to screeching halt when she said she’d pick me up for church every Sunday. By this time, my parents had decided they no longer wanted to humor the efforts of these families to try and convert me–not because they were afraid I would convert, but because it was a blatant and hateful attack on our beliefs and their parenting. I was confused by the offer of a ride to church. “I’m not going to church,” I said.

The woman looked at me, as confused as I was. “But you were just saved.”

“Yeah, but I’m a Muslim.” It hadn’t occurred to me that saving wouldn’t work if I was constantly correcting the our “Lord Jesus” to our Prophet Jesus in my head, or if I prayed just to God instead of “Lord Jesus God.” I was truly repentant. I wanted my sins forgiven.

She ushered her daughters and husband away from me, looking back once over her shoulder with those eyes that said, “Well, I can’t believe it! What in the world!” Her older daughter later told me she’d pray for my soul that I could accept Jesus Christ and go to heaven with her. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “But we want to be surrounded by all our friends in Heaven” from girls who otherwise wouldn’t talk to me.

During these years, my family was party to pleas for my sisters and I to attend church. When that stopped happening, and after the whole “saved” event, the ugliness that initiated my unwelcome in Arkansas became less underhanded and more aggressive. My older sister’s instructors repeatedly tried to evict her from the school system. She was sassy, but not a bad student, like many teens in the town. Yet her teachers argued with her and went over and above to find fault with her. My younger sister was stood up two years in a row at birthday parties. Each year, a popular girl would schedule a party at the same time and invite the same people. (One girl did show up for a few minutes and give my sister a present, and I still love that girl for it.) I was an “A” student, good at sports, and quiet to boot, but I was regularly ostracized. I remember being greeted by my peers with ethnic epithets that often had nothing to do with my heritage, and were even more hurtful because of it. One lunch, one of my classmates attempted to strangle me. (Another jumped in and stopped him, thank God, but I still had to go to the hospital.) Despite witnesses, bruising on my neck, and other violent transgressions by the same kid, my parents had to threaten to sue to get him suspended. My father, as he had for years, received death threats and threatening phone calls.

There were ups mingled in these downs. My History teachers often called on me to correct the definition of Islam in our History books. The books read: Muslims, or Mohammedans, worship Mohammed who wrote the Koran. I was allowed to say, “Muslims worship God,” and it was often added that our god’s name is Allah. Sometimes I was allowed to illuminate the main difference between Christianity and Islam; “Muslims do not believe Jesus was God or the son of God. Jesus was a man and a prophet.” Then I was left to answer questions about how that was possible and whether or not Jesus died on the cross.

Another instructor invited my dad to come and speak to our class when it was discovered that he was an immigrant and again after we watched Not Without My Daughter. My dad told stories of his days as a boy scout in Lebanon (which incidentally inspired a boy scout story in my thesis collection). It helped a lot that my dad is a natural storyteller, he included fart jokes, and he was really funny. Never been prouder. My dad has a way of making Arab Muslim men seem human in a way I wish the rest of the world could take note of.

Those years in the Bible-belt were infused with an intolerance I thought I’d left behind when we moved to Indiana. Midwesterners were much less bent out of shape by my father’s non-White appearance. No one took much notice that we were Muslim. In fact, I was able to start an MSU at my high school with barely any trouble, and only a couple of my friends were regularly asked if they had bombs in their backpacks.

But then there was 9/11, attacks on women in hijab on the IU campus where I was attending, the Patriot Acts, a news story on how some member of our community was part of a sleeper cell and an implication that my husband was tied to this guy (who we never met), my local mosque being defaced, fire-bombed, another known attempt at defacement, and the constant awareness that wherever I go, my face gives me away as “one of those Arabs” and someone might make a hateful assumption, like those perpetrating Islamo-Facism Week, that I am someone less than worthy or some kind of victim that needs to be saved according to their rules.

The only help I need is a hand in the dissemination of this information: There’s no switch to be flipped. I choose to believe in Islam and live my life as a Muslim. I am not repressed, not angry, not violent. I am a woman, a mom, and a writer. I am a Muslim living life day to day.