Still Living in the Shadow of a September Day

Late one weeknight in the middle of last summer, Khalid Khan, a stalwart among Las Vegas Muslims, sat in his living room with his daughter, a law student, discussing Islam in America, clashes between culture and religion, and the tensions large and small stirred by the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11.

As president of the Islamic Society of Nevada, it was Khan’s task to maintain contact with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, to build their trust and talk them down should they overreact to dubious tips about specific Muslims.

“They have been honest with me,” he said of his FBI contacts. “They told me: ‘Mr. Khan, try to understand our situation. Before 9/11, our job was to solve a crime. When there was a crime committed, we would be assigned to solve it. Now they are saying to us, there might be a crime that might be committed, and you go find it.’ ”

On first impression, Khan had seemed a stern, humorless fellow. His textile company supplies sheets to large hotels on the Strip, and in an introductory interview a few months earlier he had been asked, in a feeble attempt at jocularity, if he ever thought about what transpired on all that linen.

“That,” he had replied with a frown, “is something we never think about.”

Now, though, as his visitor stood to leave, the interview completed, Khan gestured to the sofa and said, “Wait, I have to tell you a joke.”

Everybody sat back down. Khan leaned forward, eyes bright, voice low, almost a whisper.

“You know,” he began, deadpan, “that in Islam we believe in angels. We believe that, after death, the person has to go into the ground and an angel comes and asks three questions. Who was your God? Who was your prophet? And what was your book? The right answers are: There is only one God, Muhammad is the prophet, and the book is the Koran.

“So then this Muslim died. And the angel came and said, ‘Who is your God?’ And the Muslim answered, ‘President Bush.’ ‘Who is your prophet?’ ‘John Ashcroft.’ ‘What is your book?’ ‘The Patriot Act.’ The angel was really confused by these answers. He went back to God and said, ‘Look, I found one person who has some really strange answers I have never heard.’ And God said: ‘Bring him to me. I’ll ask him the questions.’ ”

Now, standing before the obviously true God -- Allah, in Arabic -- the Muslim answered the questions again, this time giving the proper Islamic responses. But why, God wanted to know, hadn’t the fellow done this the first time, why all this business about Bush, Ashcroft and the Patriot Act?

Khan paused a beat, smiling in anticipation of the punch line:

“Because, Allah, I thought the angel was an FBI agent.”

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Las Vegas Muslims have lasting memories of Sept. 11, as do all Americans. They can recall the horror they experienced watching the towers crumble, their short-lived hope that the perpetrators might turn out to be, as one young man put it, not terrorists touting Islam, but “Timothy McVeigh’s brother, or someone like that.”

The Sept. 11 stories they tell, however, are not confined to the past tense, not limited to recollections of a singularly bad day in American history. Instead, nearly three years after the event, their narratives are still unfolding. It’s as though the very ground shifted beneath them that day, and they have yet to regain balance.

“Sept. 11, of course, touched everybody and all lives,” said Diba Hadi, an executive with a private social services agency. “Yes, we were questioned. We were harassed, on and off. We were pulled over. But it happens, you know. Unfortunately, I think that before Sept. 11 people were much more receptive to the Muslim community. And it is very unfortunate that that has changed.

“Right now,” she said, “any time the TV is on and you hear of a bombing or whatever, you’re like: ‘Oh, God. There goes Muhammad or Ahmed or Abdul.’... The same way that blacks or African Americans did many years ago: ‘Please God, don’t let it be an African American who’s raping or who’s committing murders, whatever.’ We are feeling the same way now: ‘Oh God, please don’t let it be a Muslim.’ ”

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, there were a number of relatively small-bore incidents involving Las Vegas Muslims, or people mistaken for Muslims. Police officials told reporters that they had responded to about 15 hate crimes, some verbal, others physical, in the first week after Sept. 11. Punches were thrown at an Arab-looking tourist on the Strip. A teenage girl was taunted at a soccer game and pelted with ice cubes.

“Go back to Afghanistan!” her tormentors shouted.

The girl was from India -- a Hindu, not a Muslim.

Within hours of the Sept. 11 strikes, a young man described by witnesses as looking like a skinhead marched onto the campus of a private Islamic grade school here, brandishing cans of spray paint. The handsome, tan-and-green facility had opened, with some fanfare, only the day before. The intruder was hustled away by authorities but vowed to return and “reclaim the neighborhood.”

A few of these encounters made it into the Las Vegas newspapers; others were passed along through mosque grapevines. Several Muslims, for example, volunteered the story of how one family’s hajj party, celebrating their pilgrimage to Mecca, was crashed by a cadre of FBI agents.

As the government began to take a skeptical look at Muslim immigrants and visitors, the mosques buzzed with stories of detainments and deportations. Recalled Ismael Banks, a taxi driver: “Every weekend we’d hear about something.... ‘They came and they took so and so. We haven’t seen so and so in a month.’ It went unreported, but a lot of these people, we still don’t know what happened to them. It’s a here today, gone tomorrow type of thing.”

No hard figures are available, but it is believed that a number of immigrant families returned to their native countries after Sept. 11, fearing what a war on terrorism might portend for Muslims in general and Middle Easterners in particular.

Many of those who stayed have made adjustments to their everyday lives, seeking to avoid notice or provoke confrontation. They might shy away from the mosque, or alter or even drop obviously Islamic names.

Muhammad Khan, a 36-year-old security guard from Pakistan, entered a Starbucks one morning before work and ordered a hot chocolate. The server asked him his name, in order to print it on the drink cup. In keeping with the caffeinated friendliness of such establishments, most customers in line had given first names -- Karen, Tom, Pete. Not so Muhammad.

“Khan,” he said softly. “Only Khan. That’s all.”

At a table outside, he explained: “After 9/11, I stopped using Muhammad. It causes too much trouble. It’s the most common name in the world, but people hear it and it makes them uncomfortable. They look at you like you are from Mars or something -- like, ‘Oh no, are you a terrorist?’ I don’t want to get those looks. It’s too much trouble. So I just use Khan. Only Khan.”

He said this with a smile and a sigh, as if the notion that someone might need to bury his own name -- the name of Islam’s essential prophet at that -- was but one more loony marker of a strange time. His dark eyes, though, reflected something other than mirth.

After Sept. 11, Muslim women who wore their head scarves, or hijabs, in public became easily recognizable targets for harassment. The question of whether to persist in going about covered, as Muslims phrase it, was not a simple one; even the imams offered conflicting advice. For Fatiha Rahane, a 40-year-old immigrant from Morocco, the dilemma was freighted with spiritual significance.

Rahane opened a clothing store last spring that offered traditional Islamic wear. Though her shop was well-stocked with hijabs -- “Some like square ones,” she explained, “some like rectangles, some like long ones. That’s why I carry variety” -- Rahane covered her head only at prayers and religious festivals. She considered donning a scarf full time a symbol of a deep, religious commitment that, once made, should not be retracted.

“You can’t do it and then take it off,” she said. “See, it’s like you practice your praying and then you stop praying. Then it’s like you don’t believe in your religion anymore.”

She had been listening to taped Islamic lectures, reading the Koran -- trying to prepare herself, as she put it, for the hijab.

How would she know she was ready?

“It’s in your heart,” she said. “It will come in time. I’m looking forward to the comfort.

“If I’m wearing hijab,” she said, “I will not care who is next to me, because I believe in it.... Let’s say someone kills me and I’m wearing my hijab: I get something great. In paradise I will be rewarded for that.

“But if I was wearing hijab, and I take it off because I want to please others, that doesn’t make sense. See, now when I’m ready, I’m ready to fight for it, to let no one say nothing about it, to say this is me. You either accept me with my hijab or not.”

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Most of the Muslims of Las Vegas seem to have encountered some form of hostility -- a stare-down at the gas station, anti-Muslim epithets at work, uttered just loud enough for them to hear -- and yet many of them are quick to point out that matters could have been much worse.

Unlike Japanese Americans in World War II, they note, Muslim Americans were not rounded up and railed out to internment camps at some distant Manzanar. And for every threatening call made to the mosques, they say, there have been dozens more expressing support.

On Sept. 11, neighbors brought flowers to a few Muslim families, anticipating they might be in for an ordeal. FBI agents and leaders of local law enforcement have made appearances at Friday prayers and mosque events, promising to protect Las Vegas Muslims against hate crimes.

Dr. Saleha Baig, originally from Pakistan, is a psychiatrist who conducts her business wearing a scarf and gown. She described the reaction she received from non-Muslim patients as “the opposite of what I expected. For me it was like: ‘Oh, Dr. Baig, are you OK? Is your family OK?’ They were sending me cards. They are asking: ‘Can I have a hug? We don’t want you to go.’ ”

Such demonstrations of support provide solace, but they cannot erase the sense among many Muslims that they are to be considered suspicious until proven innocent. They assume that telephones are tapped, that charitable and political contributions are under scrutiny. They grumble about provisions of the Patriot Act, about a program of re-registration for lawful immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries.

As a Muslim professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas put it: “Every nation has a right to know who is within its borders and keep track of these people. But it would be fairer and better, from a security point of view, to have it for every nationality and not just for people from Islamic countries.”

On another level, though, Las Vegas Muslims applaud the heightened diligence by anti-terrorism investigators, airport security personnel and the like. The most commonly expressed fear is that a second major terrorist strike will occur on U.S. soil -- unleashing far more severe repercussions.

“If it happens again,” one Muslim leader said he was told by a lawyer in town, “we won’t be nice.”

Muhammad Ali, a Chevrolet salesman originally from Pakistan, a veteran who served in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War, said he had no problem with extra scrutiny. “Let’s say they profile me as a Muslim, and they want to check me out some. I would have no qualms about it. I have nothing to hide. It’s only human nature. If you are bitten by a snake, you are going to be afraid of a rope.”

After the terrorist strikes, Ali was approached by a sales manager. There were Chevy buyers who in the heated aftermath of Sept. 11 might react with something less than compassion toward a salesman with a name tag that identified him as Muhammad.

The sales manager had a suggestion.

“From now on,” he told Ali, “why don’t we call you Bob?”

Ali declined. He continued to wear his name tag, continued to say his prayers in a little cafeteria off the showroom floor, and continued to sell Chevrolets. Over time, he said, the tensions abated -- to the point where his cohorts on the lot now banter with customers about his Islamic background.

“We have a joke,” he said. “They say, ‘Muhammad, if this guy doesn’t buy a car, just light your shoe.’ ”

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An odd and unwitting conspiracy of silence has developed between the Muslims of Las Vegas and the government investigators toiling in their midst. Albert J. Pisterzi, the FBI agent in charge of a joint anti-terrorism task force here, played it coy when asked how much poking about his 25 investigators had been doing within the Islamic community.

Prohibited by policy from discussing active investigations, the agent said only that the in-basket on his desk is filled every morning with new tips passed along by “informants” and “concerned citizens.” And that by the end of each day, it is empty.

In turn, while most Las Vegas Muslims seem to know somebody who has been questioned, few will admit to having been put through the paces themselves.

“I get the sense,” said Ahmed Monib, a 30-year-old engineer whose parents emigrated from Egypt when he was an infant, “that people are ashamed to come forward with it. They are worried about the stigma attached to it.

“I’ve heard of a guy here that, at 4 in the morning, seven agents come knocking at his door to ask him questions and he is, naturally, very unsettled by that. But he didn’t tell anybody. He only told a couple of guys, and I found out in confidence.”

Monib was headed for a weekend visit with his wife, a pediatrician who is completing her residency at a Dallas hospital. As he waited for his flight, Monib sat in a Mexican restaurant and described his own tangled and ultimately frustrating quest for an adequate response to the emotions he felt after Sept. 11:

“That was a pretty disturbing event in my life, and I wanted to do something significant to help out. I was angry at the terrorists, and I was angry at people who were reacting negatively to Islam and Muslims in general, and I was angry at myself for not being more proactive in the community.”

Among Muslims, he said, “I definitely was not tolerant anymore of angry rhetoric. Usually, before, I’d just walk away from it. Now I was confrontational about it. If someone got into those conspiratorial theories” -- 9/11 was a Jewish plot, for example -- “I’d just kind of start by telling them that I think that is crap, and wake up, you know.”

At the same time, an incident took place at his gym that made Monib grasp how quickly anger can slip out of control. He was working out with a friend when he overheard a well-muscled weightlifter spewing “some pretty racial stuff -- ‘Man, I don’t see why we don’t kick all of the Muslims out of the country right now. Screw them.’ That kind of thing. He was getting angry because of what had happened on 9/11, understandably....

“And I’m listening to him, and I’m getting angry too. I’m getting angry at him. He’s 6-foot-5 and benching 400 pounds, and I’m ready to go hit him.”

Monib concluded there must be a better way to channel this free-floating anger and make a positive expression of his loyalty to America without abandoning his Islamic heritage. His first inclination was to enlist in the Army Reserves. He visited a recruiting office. It was not a fruitful excursion.

“I’m 30 years old and the guy I’m talking to is 19,” Monib recalled, “and he is spelling my place of birth, Cairo, K-A-R-O. So I thought, maybe the Army isn’t the thing for me.”

Someone suggested the FBI. It seemed a long shot, but Monib made his way by computer to the bureau website for what he thought would be a quick look. Three hours later he was still clicking away on an electronic application.

He was quickly steered deeper into the process. A series of tests followed, first in Las Vegas, then in Phoenix. A background check was launched. Old friends, college advisors, his current supervisors -- all were interviewed.

Agents he met along the way kept offering encouragement. He was told at one point that his application had been placed on the fastest of tracks. He passed a polygraph test, an experience he found, upon reflection, to be excellent preparation for the final tallying up of good deeds and bad that Muslims believe awaits them on Judgment Day.

At last Monib cleared all the hurdles and was given a date, Feb. 12, 2003, to begin training at FBI headquarters. He gave two weeks’ notice at the engineering firm where he worked, placed his belongings in storage and arranged for travel to Quantico, Va. And then, on the Thursday before the Monday he was to report, a call came from the FBI office in Las Vegas. He recalls the conversation verbatim.

“I’m very sorry,” he remembers the agent telling him, “but we’re going to rescind the offer, pending some further inquiries.”

“But I quit my job,” he said.

“We’re very sorry. We don’t know what happened.”

“I quit my job. What’s going on? What is it?”

“We don’t know. We’re just as frustrated as you are. We’ll get back to you in a week.”

“But I quit my job.”

Nobody got back to him in a week. About two weeks later, he called his FBI contacts in Las Vegas. Nothing. He then started making calls to Virginia. He tracked down the appropriate functionary, but was told that the matter could not be discussed over the telephone. Monib volunteered to fly back east. Hang tight, he was told. It has nothing to do with you. It will be cleared up in no time.

Monib said he could only guess what the snag could be. Did the problem have something to do with distant cousins in Egypt? He was assured by FBI contacts that it did not. He solicited support from Nevada politicians, and eventually received a letter from FBI headquarters informing him that officials were going to “look into” his case.

The letter was dated sometime in March. Yet it did not wend its way out of the bureaucratic thicket and into Monib’s mailbox until May. The delay seemed to Monib more important than the letter’s message. It convinced him that he was no longer riding the fast track to the FBI. His “dream,” as he described it, was dead.

To this day, he does not know why.

Monib was able to reclaim his old job. And looking back on the matter, he is more frustrated than bitter. He recalls that, during the background checks, one particular agent had persisted in asking his friends about his religious practices, as if being a devout Muslim might have “something to do with whether I would be a terrorist or not.”

“That saddens me. It shows a level of ignorance concerning Islam, and that leads to frustration. I think I really could have contributed in educating agents in that regard.”

With that, the would-be FBI agent was off to navigate the gantlet of airport security -- an unpleasant passage for anybody in these times, but especially so for bearded men in Islamic garb named Muhammad or Abdul or Ahmed.

*

Imam Mujahid Ramadan has watched what has happened to the Muslims of Las Vegas from what he considers a peculiarly well-suited vantage point. A native of this city who speaks frequently at its mosques, who ministers to Muslims in prison and who remains active in a Muslim political advocacy organization, Ramadan happens to be black.

“In America, as a Muslim, I’m an invisible man,” he said. “If you look at me and I don’t tell you my name, you wouldn’t even have the slightest idea that I’m a Muslim. As a matter of fact, if I end up saying I’m a Muslim, you say, ‘You are?’ Because what you see first is this.”

He pointed a finger to the skin on his cheek.

This invisibility, Ramadan said, has allowed him to observe undetected the second glances and subtle slights that Muslims stir as they move about in public. He described watching seven Pakistanis board a flight together, oblivious to the glares from other passengers that followed them to their seats and lingered until landing. Ramadan says Muslims often miss the tensions that have infiltrated their lives, a process he compares to the cooking of a frog.

“If you want to boil a frog,” he said, “you don’t toss it into hot water. You put it in cold water and slowly turn up the heat.... They might not recognize it, but people are still being psychologically affected. Even when it is not fear, it simmers in anxiety. You can see it in anxiety.”

One tool to counter the anxiety, Ramadan suggested, is humor. He has converted his typical airport experience into a comic turn that he repeats in talks and interviews. A thin, dapper man with a neatly trimmed beard, Ramadan believes that modern Muslims need not dress themselves in traditional gowns or headwear that date to Islam’s 7th century desert origins. The prophet Muhammad, he argues, wore the garb of his time, so why shouldn’t Muslims today do the same?

So it is not Ramadan’s finely tailored business suits, nor his skin color, that cause trouble when he flies about the country. The problem is his name.

“Ramadan,” he said, launching into his bit, “is like Smith in most Muslim countries. Somebody with that name, from what I have heard, is on the terrorism watch list. So every time Mujahid Ramadan goes to the airport and they type in R-A-M-A-D-A-N at America West, this look comes over the attendant’s face.”

He threw up his hands and feigned an expression of alarm.

“And I say: ‘Don’t worry, settle down.

“ ‘Go over and talk to the lady in the orange jacket.

“ ‘The lady in the orange jacket is going to call the Police Department.

“ ‘The Police Department is going to call the FBI.

“ ‘And inside of 12 minutes, you’re going to have this cleared up, and they’re going to tell you I can board the plane.

“ ‘But,’ ” -- and here he winked -- “ ‘if you take 15 minutes, I want first class.’ ”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Muslim views

A private survey conducted shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, documented some concerns of U.S. Muslims:

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Q: What do you consider to be the most important issue facing the Muslim American community today?

Stereotyping, prejudice, profiling and racism: 21%

American and Muslim relations and image: 15%

Other: 14%

Ignorance, misunderstanding and discrimination: 12%

Terrorism, Sept. 11 backlash, war and crime: 11%

Not sure: 8%

Acceptance, accountability, tolerance and civil rights: 7%

U.S. climate, unity and issues: 6%

Morals, religion and values: 5%

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Q: Do you consider yourself more patriotic, less patriotic or the same as before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks?

The same: 52%

More patriotic: 41%

Less patriotic: 5%

Not sure: 3%

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Q: Have any individuals, businesses or religious organizations in your community experienced anti-Muslim discrimination since the Sept. 11 attacks?

Yes: 52%

No: 41%

Not sure: 6%

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Q: Which of the following best describes anti-Muslim discrimination that you have experienced personally or that has been experienced in your community?

I am not aware of any discrimination: 39%

Verbal abuse: 25%

Racial profiling by police in a stop, search or arrest: 8%

Combination of above choices: 7%

Physical abuse or assault: 6%

Destruction of property: 6%

Not sure: 4%

Denial of employment: 3%

Boycott of Muslim- or Arab-operated businesses: 2%

Other: 2%

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Note: 1,781 people who were 18 or older and identified themselves as Muslims were surveyed in a nationwide telephone poll conducted Nov. 8-19, 2001. Margin of error is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points. Figures may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

Source: Zogby International survey conducted for Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

U.S. public’s attitudes

A 2002 Los Angeles Times poll asked Americans about U.S. Muslims and Islam:

Q: What is your impression of the Islamic faith?

Favorable: 28%

Unfavorable: 37%

Do not know/not aware: 35%

Q: What is your impression of American Muslims?

Favorable: 39%

Unfavorable: 26%

Do not know/not aware: 35%

Note: 1,372 people were interviewed Aug. 22-26, 2002. Margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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About This Series

In an effort to depict the lives of American Muslims in an extraordinary time, staff writer Peter H. King and staff photographer Genaro Molina spent a year among the Islamic community of one U.S. city -- Las Vegas. From April 2003 to April 2004, they periodically visited the city’s mosques and Muslim homes, workplaces and social events.

SUNDAY: Living in Las Vegas. The challenges -- and anticipated rewards -- in trying to stay on the straight path.

MONDAY: The faith. What Las Vegas Muslims believe and how they sometimes disagree among themselves.

TODAY: After Sept. 11. How the events of that day and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq altered lives.

WEDNESDAY: The path to Las Vegas. Two Muslims, born a world apart, and their remarkably similar journeys.

THURSDAY: From April to April. The twists life can bring in a single year.