Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, North America

IRAQ: When ‘Orange’ is ‘Black’ – U.S. Muslims Brace for Backlash

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Mar 19 2003 (IPS) - It is another ”orange” day here in Washington. But for 25-year-old Walid Khidr, an Arab American born and raised in California, it is the first of many "black" days to come.

Khidr, who now lives in northern Virginia, is one of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Arab descent, along with many Muslim and Arab visitors in the United States, who have, since the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on this country, grown accustomed to automatically interpreting the colour codes used by the Homeland Security Department to assign levels of terrorism alerts, as coded calls of discrimination against them.

The level was raised to orange – second highest – immediately after President George W. Bush issued an ultimatum Monday to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to leave his country or face an attack.

With the U.S. invasion a near certainty now, many here fear that the war climate could create a backlash against them – a feeling that is sending even more jitters through communities still on edge from the fallout of 9/11.

Immediately after Bush ended last weekend’s summit with his allies in the Azores and announced that diplomacy was over in the Iraq crisis, leading Arab groups began sending out messages urging Arabs and Muslims to use the U.S. emergency telephone number – 911 – when and if threatened.

The Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said it issued the Mar. 17 advisory "in light of the historic pattern of hate crimes, abuse and discrimination faced by the Arab-American and Muslim communities during the 1991 Gulf War and in the aftermath of the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks".

Another Islamic civil rights and advocacy group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said it would distribute a nine-page emergency kit to advise readers what to do if they are victims of abuse and hate crimes. "Hand it out to friends, mosques and libraries," said CAIR’s statement.

But while one would expect the booklet to contain sections on physical protection and paragraphs that sound more like civil defence manuals, it also contains a segment on "how to deal with the FBI" – an indication that many Muslim Americans feel discriminated against by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a body that is supposed to protect them.

The seven million Muslims in the United States, according to CAIR, have been dealing with suspicions and racial profiling from the U.S. Justice Department, the FBI and, now, the new department of Homeland Security.

Little wonder that Arab Americans, says Ibrahim Hooper, communications director with CAIR, are "very apprehensive".

"You have the war on top of all this anti-Muslim rhetoric and the hysteria around that," he said.

In February, Attorney General John Ashcroft raised the national terror alert from yellow to orange to coincide with the annual Muslim pilgrimage or ‘Hajj’, an act that many people saw as an attempt to link the important religious event with terrorism.

The "unnecessary linkage" served to promote the "growing perception in the Muslim world that the war on terrorism is in reality an attack on Islam", said CAIR Director Nihad Awad.

The administration has also linked other Islamic religious observances to terrorism, issuing similar government alerts during the month-long Ramadan fast, for instance.

Earlier this year, the Department of Justice issued a directive to have FBI field officers develop ”demographic profiles” of their regions, including the number of local mosques, and set specific goals for the numbers of investigations and wiretaps in each area.

"This policy makes about as much sense as counting Catholic churches in America in order to initiate an investigation of the Mafia, or as claiming the number of African Methodist Episcopal churches in a given area is indicative of the level of criminal activity," said Awad.

Earlier this month, Muslim students at a California university were threatened in expletive-laden graffiti scribbled at locations around the campus that said: "Muslims will be shot on San Jose State University campus on Mar. 10, 2003." No attacks have been reported since then.

The rising tensions come in the midst of an immigration ”re-registration” programme under which hundreds of Muslim, Arab and Asian men have been detained, some deported and many fingerprinted and photographed.

Muslim community leaders and immigration rights activists charge that the programme is based on religious and ethnic profiling, a "law enforcement tactic that is being heavily promoted by right-wing pundits".

In January, a right wing, pro-Israel commentator and frequent guest on talk shows here, suggested that all Muslims in the country be placed under surveillance.

"Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military, and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism, as do Muslim chaplains in prisons and the armed forces," Daniel Pipes wrote in the ‘Jerusalem Post’.

"Muslim visitors and immigrants must undergo additional background checks. Mosques require a scrutiny beyond that applied to churches, synagogues and temples," he added.

With the country already on orange alert, Muslims fear that such sweeping calls could find even more fertile ground in a country fighting a war.

Khidr admits that he has not faced discrimination or physical abuse but says that he has heard many stories of other Arab Americans who were either fired from their jobs or verbally insulted because of stereotyping. He says he has also been rattled by "hate-talk" on TV networks and in other media.

"This could be a double whammy for us," said Khidr. "We have to deal with terrorism; you know, we may get hit too. And we also have to deal with this non-stop suspicion … Things don’t look good for us here."