Muslim American families struggle with identity issue
‘It’s like you have to say, I’m so American’
MIRVETTE Judeh began covering her hijab with a hoodie two weeks ago while in the car with her two children. Someone might want to hurt her, she told them, because the head scarf easily identifies her as Muslim.
“Now I have to have these conversations with my kids,” said Judeh, 39, who lives in southern California. “That’s what breaks my heart – to tell my kids that a choice I made to stand up for my religion could make me unsafe.”
As an anti-Muslim backlash swells across the US following the December 2 massacre in San Bernardino by a young Muslim couple inspired by Islamic State (IS), many Muslim families say they fear for their safety and are struggling with their American and Muslim identities.
Judeh said she had told her children that their actions may face extra scrutiny. She teaches her 8-year-old son to never utter the words “blow up” at school, regardless of the context, and to never pretend he is playing with guns.
Her son has asked if people hate him and his family, Judeh said, a question she finds difficult to answer after receiving hateful comments and threats because of her hijab.
The problems have gathered pace since gunmen loyal to IS killed 130 people in Paris on November 13.
But even before the Paris violence, anti-Muslim sentiment was on the rise, swept along by rhetoric from US presidential candidates, from Republican Ben Carson’s comment in September that Muslims were unfit for the presidency to billionaire Donald Trump’s recent call for a ban on Muslim immigration.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush, a Republican, has said the US should only allow in Syrian refugees who can prove they are Christian – a fraction of the millions driven from the war-struck country.
Some Muslim families say they fear a rising tide of hate crimes directed against their faith, such as when a pig’s head was found outside the door of a Philadelphia mosque on December 7.
Some discrimination goes largely unnoticed, such as when a woman threw hot coffee at a group of Muslims praying in a park in California on December 6.
The Council on AmericanIslamic Relations says the scale of vandalism, damage and intimidation at mosques this year is the worst in the six years they have kept records.
Many of the country’s 2.8 million Muslims say they fear such tensions could become uglier during the presidential race.
Some said they felt the need to prove how American they were to distance themselves from radicals.
Sara Haddad reminds people she watches football and listens to pop music. “I love the Dallas Cowboys. We have Thanksgiving with my parents. It’s almost like you have to do this thing where you say, ‘I’m so American’, but at the end of the day, what is American?” said Haddad, 27, a scientist in North Carolina.
She said she had not yet decided how to explain militant Islamists or anti-Muslim rhetoric to her daughter when she is older: “9/11 destroyed my childhood innocence.”
In Baltimore, Arif Khan said he does not want his son’s childhood defined by conversations about attacks.
He and his wife, who wears the hijab, take precautions when leaving the house, making sure no one is following them. They want their 1-month-old son to be vigilant but they hope to teach him his Muslim and American values are complementary.
“We don’t want his world to be focused on how we combat negative stereotypes against us,” said Khan, 29. “We want him to be a person indicative of what true Islamic and American values are.”
Jinan Al-Marayati, a 15year-old Muslim who attends a Catholic school in Los Angeles, said she often feels pressured to defend her religion when the IS comes up in class.
She sometimes tries to downplay her Palestinian background. “I feel like I have two identities. With my Muslim friends, I feel like I’m not Muslim enough. Around my non-Muslim friends, I don’t talk about stuff that’s going on because it’d make them uncomfortable.” – Reuters