9/11 10th Anniversary Perturbs American Muslims of Western Massachusetts

 9/11 10th anniversary: ‘Aroma of fear’ lingers for Western Massachusetts Muslim Americans

“I remember President George (W.) Bush at a Washington mosque saying right after 9/11 that the country had nothing against Islam but, at the grassroots level, this was not heard,” says Mohammad Saleem Bajwa, 66, a Holyoke-based internal medicine physician and pulmonologist. 

“The attacks on Islam have been constant. Defaming the religion, equating it with terrorism and putting all Muslims in one basket. It creates a poisonous environment and hurts a lot. Most of us have been living with that.” 

Among the several hundred Muslim families who live in the Pioneer Valley, an “aroma of fear” settled on their lives, some say, and in some respects evolved into an environment of hate dependent on events in the news.

“Before 9/11, there was criticism of Islam, but that would be with every religion,” said Bajwa recently. “But after 9/11, there is a more active campaign, not only in the print media but in everyday talk, with the radio talk shows the worst.” 

Sunday will mark 10 years since the attacks by Arab terrorists committed to killing Americans in the name of Islamic supremacy. Close to 3,000 were killed when hijacked airplanes were used to bomb New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

Passengers on a fourth plane, believed to have been bound for the U.S. Capitol, were killed after they staged a mutiny on the hijackers and the aircraft crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. 

Bajwa describes the 19 mostly Saudi-born hijackers as “animal-like people with no faith or with a faith that has nothing to do with mainstream religion.”

Muslims at work in the trade center and flying as passengers on the planes were killed in the attacks, and Bajwa notes a high number of Muslims who have been killed as the result of what has been the international terrorism of al Qaida.

According to a 2009 study from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the majority of those killed in al Qaida attacks against the West between 2004 and 2008 were Muslims. 

Saudi -born millionaire Osama bin Laden, opposed to U.S. policies in the Middle East, eventually took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks by members of his al Qaida organization of terrorist cells. 

Bajwa is a founding member of the Islamic Society of Western Massachusetts that has its mosque and center in West Springfield.

His sentiments are echoed by another society member, Dr. Kimat G. Khatak, of Holyoke. 

“Every year on the anniversary it is repeated over and over in the media that Muslims are evil,” Khatak said. “Images of a mosque and the call for prayers – prayers that are about God is great and that prayer is good for you – are shown and then images of fire and deaths.” 

“It gets in the subconscious that the call for prayer is a call for murder and that we are bad people and people think it is true,” Khatak added. “They look at you like you are a strange person.” 

The framers of the 9/11 attacks used the Islamic concept of “jihad,” an Arabic word which means “exerted effort” as in to improve oneself and fight oppression, to call for the murder of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Muslims here and abroad have denounced this use of the Koran and the language of jihad to justify terrorist acts. 

“There is no clash of civilizations. A jihad has not been fought in 500 years,” said the Pakistan-born Khatak, referring to the war against the Christian crusades. “I have been here 36 years, and all I do is take care of sick people in America. I love my patients and my patients love me.”

Naz Mohamed, 58, of Hadley, shares a similar reaction to 9/11 and its aftermath. 

“I was stunned something so horrific could have happened and embarrassed and sad that Islam and Muslims will be blamed for the acts of some fanatics who are ignorant of their own religion and felt justified to take innocent lives. This is not jihad,” said Mohamed, a former early childhood educator.

“Jihad in Islam is not against innocent people. It is a personal struggle to improve oneself and to improve your surroundings,” Mohamed said. “Nothing happens on that scale without a deep-rooted, long-term cause.” 

A native of Pakistan who came to the United States in 1977 to attend Mount Holyoke College and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mohamed said she received mostly support from friends and colleagues in the aftermath of 9/11. She also gave a number of talks about Islam.

Photo by MICHAEL BESWICKNaz Mohamed, one of the founders of the Hampshire Mosque in Amherst.

“Since then I think there are people who are trying to become more tolerant and then there are those who are becoming more and more intolerant to not just Muslims but to those who are different,” said Mohamed.

She is a member of the small, but steadily growing Hampshire Mosque that rents space in Amherst and has explored building in the area. 

Bajwa says the enactment of the U.S. Patriot Act, burnings of the Koran and congressional security meetings focused on American Muslims were felt by the estimated 500 Muslim families in Western Massachusetts. 

“We are always fearful,” he said. “Every now and then there have been physical assaults on the center. Our signs and entry posts have been defaced and stones thrown through the windows. There have also been assaults to individuals. These are sometimes physical and sometimes verbal slurs that create an environment of fear and hate.” 

His wife, and other women who wear the hijab scarf to cover their heads, have been subject to what he calls “people talking nonsense.”

“They go into stores and from a distance, someone says, ‘Those are the kind of people who are terrorists.’ People in the community love and respect my wife but for a stranger to hear that kind of slur, well, it does hurt your heart.” 

Bajwa estimates that about one third of the area population who practice Islam was born here; the rest, he said, are immigrants, mostly from the Indo-Pakistani region and the Middle East. There are also refugees from Laos who are Muslim, as well as recent arrivals from Somalia and Iraq. 

A large percentage of his mosque’s members are professionals and business owners who work “day and night,” Bajwa said. Some families have children serving in the U.S. military. 

“If you want to see a United Nations on a smaller scale,” Bajwa said, “come visit our center during our holidays. We have people all from all over the world who get along well. We try to create an environment of pluralism at our center.” 

While not all born into Muslim families practice the religion, Bajwa said he has always liked the daily prayer and practices of Islam. 

“I like its disciplines, following its basic principles and thinking about God all the time,” Bajwa said. Islam, he explained, stresses “taking care of family, being a hard worker, respecting the elderly, taking care of children and staying away from such evils as drugs.” 

Defacement of the center and attacks on its members are usually fueled by events in the news, according to Bajwa. 

“After the anniversary of 9/11 dies down, something else comes along and then it starts all over again,” Bajwa said.

“Right after 9/11 a few of the single guys who were in the process of settling here were apprehended, kept in secret and deported. They were never heard from until they were back in Pakistan. All it took was a little suspicion that was never proven.” 

The Islamic Center of Western Massachusetts has cooperated with the FBI in its investigations as its members, like all Americans, have fears about terrorism, according to Bajwa. 

“When the FBI came and sat with us after 9/11, we said, ‘You are worried about terrorists in the community and we are worried. We know how much suffering people have gone through. We don’t tolerate anything like that happening,’” Bajwa said. 

Bajwa came to the United States for post-graduate medical training in 1969 with the intent to return to his native Pakistan. Ironically, he recalls, it was at a time the Nixon administration had “opened up immigration for professionals, especially doctors.” 

“They would pick us up at the airport and give us the royal treatment,” he recalled. And, Bajwa said, he liked the opportunity he saw in America and worked hard to achieve its promise. 

He is proud of what he has given back to his adoptive country, both as a professional and as a devote Muslim and member of the Interfaith Council of Western Massachusetts. His sons, a lawyer and a neurologist, both live in the United States, while his daughter is a doctoral candidate studying Arabic in London. 

Since 9/11, Bajwa no longer travels abroad. 

“Coming off the plane, I would be told, “Come over here, sir.’ I would be taken to an exam room, told to sit and look straight ahead and not to make a phone call or touch my luggage. Of course, after a few hours of tension they would find nothing,” Bajwa said. “I don’t mind in that it is better to check, but if these are random checks why do they pick me up and why don’t they have a record of how many times they have checked me? Being picked up from the plane with the public watching, I don’t feel good about that.” 

Fellow physician Khatak, now 74, added that he, too, travels “as little as possible” now. 

“The immigration process is very insulting as I would sit hours while every little piece is gone over in my suitcase and in my checkbook,” said Khatak. “For a Muslim, they check you in every way just short of a rectal exam even if you have been through the airport 100 times.”

9/11 panel set at college

A faculty discussion panel, “9/11 Plus 10: Islam, the Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy,” will be held Monday at 7:30 p.m. in the main lecture hall of Franklin Patterson Hall at Hampshire College. The event is free to the public. 

President Jonathan Lash will make introductory remarks for the panel that is being chaired by Michael Klare, Five College professor of peace and world security studies. Panelists will include Hampshire College professors Omar Dahi, economics; Sayres Rudy, politics;and Falguni Sheth, philosophy and political theory. 

This event is sponsored by Hampshire’s School of Critical Social Inquiry and the Five College peace and security studies program.

Interfaith group supports Muslims

A statement developed by the Interfaith Opportunities Network deploring “anti-Islamic harassment” has been endorsed by more than a dozen Western Massachusetts religious congregations and organizations. 

“As people of faith, we voice our support for Muslims in our community and beyond. We deplore anti-Islamic harassment, prejudice, hate-speech, and hate-based-actions,” the statement reads. “We stand with our Muslim sisters and brothers and oppose any mistreatment or exclusion based on religion. We welcome opportunities to grow in our understanding of each other’s faiths, and to build relationships of mutual respect, trust, and friendship.” 

The network is a lay interfaith network based in Amherst and formed in 2005 to strengthen communication among participating religious congregations. 

In releasing the statement, the organization said it is intended as “a response to the fact that some of our local Muslims have at times felt unwelcome, stereotyped, and/or misrepresented, while nationally Muslims have been targeted by hate speech and action, encountered opposition to establishing mosques, and in some cases been accused of all being violent terrorists.” 

The groups endorsing the statement include: United Church of Christ churches First Congregational, South Congregational and North Congregational, Amherst, and North Hadley Congregational and First Congregational, Hadley; Grace Episcopal, Amherst; Immanuel Lutheran, Amherst; Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst; Jewish Community of Amherst; Wesley United Methodist, Hadley; First Baptist Church, Amherst; Hope Community Church, Amherst; Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is, Amherst; the Office of Religious Life at Amherst College; the Rev. Paul Sorrentino, director of religious life, Amherst College; Chris Clark, Catholic religious advisor, Amherst College and United Christian Foundation at UMass-Amherst. 

Network members include the Hampshire Mosque in Amherst, the Turkish Cultural Center and the Rumi Club of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. 

Representatives meet monthly for education and collaboration.  source