Posted on 10/07/2001 5:15:59 AM PDT by sarcasm
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 Andrea Mohin/The New York Times From left, Fariah Amin, Salam Said and Andira Abudayeh, are juniors at Al Noor School, a private Islamic academy in Brooklyn. |
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 Andrea Mohin/The New York Times Fami Fozi, 17, left, would not fight against a Muslim country. Mazen Kased, also 17, is not convinced that Muslims attacked the trade center. |
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hey are Americans who feel duty- bound by Islam to obey American laws. But some of them say that if their country called them to war against a Muslim army, they might refuse to fight. They cannot be shaken from the conviction that America is intrinsically anti-Muslim. Yet they see it as the one place where Muslims are free to be themselves.
To be young and Muslim in the United States today, to hear students at Al Noor School in Brooklyn tell it, is to be both outsider and insider, to revel in both roles but see neither as the ideal. It is to be consumed by causes abroad and removed from politics at home, to feel righteous and also confused, to alternate between gratitude and resentment toward the world outside their classrooms.
As any parent knows, this is the paradoxical planet inhabited by many teenagers, whether they are Muslim or not. But in a country wounded by terrorists and preparing for war, young Muslim Americans are finding that real life has raised especially acute questions for them about competing values of allegiance and faith.
"We have a burden on us," said Andira Abudayeh, who is 16 and attends Al Noor. "We're Muslims, and we feel like other Muslims around the world do. And we're Americans."
In extended conversations last week, high school students at Al Noor spoke of their empathy for the young Muslims around the world who profess hatred for America and Americans, saying the hostility is an outgrowth of American support for Israel.
They said they did not believe that the hatred extended to them. "Muslims are all one," said Fariah Amin, who is also 16. "They kind of think of us as just living in America."
The students complained that the United States threw its weight around too much in the world, but that it also was not active enough in support of what they called freedom-seeking Muslims in Chechnya and the "true" Muslims who oppose the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
"Isn't it ironic that the interests of America are always against what Muslims want?" said Fami Fozi, a 17-year-old student who said he would rather go to jail than fight in the United States Army against Muslims.
The students also said the Koran, which Muslims consider the literal word of God, provides a perfect blueprint for their lives. Their ideal society would follow Islamic law and make no separation between religion and state.
In the meantime, they said, they want to become doctors and lawyers and teachers in the United States. Even though the American government uses taxes to finance things that are un-Islamic — licensing the sale of alcoholic beverages, for example — they said Muslims here should pay taxes and accept the judgments of secular American courts.
"If you want to survive in freedom, I guess you just have to pay taxes to get the benefits from America," said Ahmad Odetalla, 14. "You know you're not going to be the one who buys alcohol. So as long as you stay away from what is forbidden in religion, I guess we have to pay taxes."
The students at Al Noor may not be a scientific sampling of Muslim American youth. But their comments are similar to those posted by Muslim Americans on the numerous Internet chat rooms and message boards about Islam, and their outlook is similar in some ways to that of other newcomers.
Immigrants and their children often feel the strain between the adopted and the native culture. Their political interests may focus on the topics and debates in their homeland. In the case of these Al Noor students, they are children of immigrants from places like Pakistan, Egypt, the occupied Palestinian territories and Yemen, which have been preoccupied for years by the efforts of Islamic fundamentalist movements to gain power through violence or the ballot box.
Still, some of their comments reflect what they have been reading and exposed to in the United States, where some Muslim clerics say openly what is said underground in Muslim countries: that the United States is to blame for the ills of the Muslim world through its support of more secular Muslim rulers.
Some of the students, for example, said they would support any leader who they decided was fighting for Islam. Among those who do not fit that definition, they said, are the rulers of just about every Arab and Muslim country.
Mr. Fozi, for instance, said that he would support any leader he determined to be an observant Muslim who is fighting for an Islamic cause, and that he would do so even if it meant abandoning the United States. "I would support him with my life," he said. How would he know who is a true Muslim? "I use my understanding of Islam and see what the person is doing," Mr. Fozi said.
Several of the young men said they could fight against a Muslim if they were convinced that the Muslim had committed a crime. They all said they were not convinced that Osama bin Laden — or any Muslim, for that matter — was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, attacks that they condemned as violating all precepts of Islam.
"It comes down to the proof," said Mazen Kased, 17. "If you prove a Muslim did it, that's a different story."
Another 17-year-old student, Ammar Arif, agreed. "If you prove it's Osama bin Laden and I was in the Army, I would go to fight," he said. "That's my duty to my country and my religion as well."
The students at Al Noor are reluctant to accept that the terror attacks were carried out by anyone of their religion. They draw on their deeply felt belief that Americans are biased against Islam and Muslims and that Muslims are victims of a prejudiced news media. Like many Muslim Americans, they said they believed that non-Muslims did not understand them and their choices.
These are also children whose parents made a conscious decision by sending them to a private Islamic school to shield them, at least during the school day, from the secularism of their adopted American culture. Girls at Al Noor must wear a loose- fitting robe and a tight-fitting scarf to cover their hair and necks. Except for the youngest children, boys and girls are separated during the school day.
They feel their separateness keenly. Since Sept. 11, rumors have raced through the school that Muslims have been shot and beaten in Brooklyn, and that it is not safe to walk the streets because of revenge attacks by Americans against Muslims.
They believe the rumors — which have not proven true — because they said it fits with their experience of seeing negative images of Islam in films and articles that they find disrespectful of Islam.
"A lot of newspapers write negative things, and we get so upset," said Mona Widdi, 16.
But few students said they thought that newspapers should be forbidden to write things about Islam, the prophet Muhammad or the Koran, topics that writers in most of the Muslim world stay away from out of fear of offending Muslim clerics.
"America does have freedom of speech, and it's one of the basic things," Miss Amin said. "I was taught about it since kindergarten. You can't tell someone that they can't write that. But if they can't prove it, they shouldn't put it in the paper as some kind of hatred against us."
None of the students said they had experienced any harassment since Sept. 11. Their school has received offers of guidance counselors from local hospitals, visits of support from state education officials, offers of interfaith exchanges from nearby Catholic schools and a constant stream of calls offering assistance from political figures in Brooklyn.
The principal, Nidal Abuasi, acknowledged that the students' assumption of a backlash might be misplaced.
"Maybe," he said, after recounting the number of calls from the neighborhood expressing good will, "we are too paranoid."
These few sentences say it all. Divided loyalties like this are unacceptable. And it's not just these Muslim kids; there are plenty of "American" middle class kids who have always lived large, and probably share the same view as these Muslim kids for different reasons. The only way to solve this problem, it seems to me, is to make serving in the Armed Forces mandatory upon graduating from high school; war or no war, rich, middle class or poor. Those that don't agree can leave the incomparable USofA, post haste.
And on a final note, I'm a naturalized citizen, and there would be no way I would side with the country of my birth should a conflict between it and the USA occur. To take advantage of the undeniable bounty, and freedom to be who you want to be that this country offers, and not rush to its defense in its hour of need, is disgraceful and ungrateful (sp?) in the extreme. Being an immigrant myself I used to be quite liberal in my view towards immigration, not anymore. The caliber of immigrant we are allowing in now is no where near the caliber of my parents and my brothers and I, who emmigrated in 1958.
I can't put into words how much this article disgusts me
Islamofascists is what I've heard them called.
I believe that a majority of them support what's happened because of their feelings of inferiority(well-founded IMHO)and sense of entitlement.
"It comes down to the proof," said Mazen Kased, 17. "If you prove a Muslim did it, that's a different story."In context, this is meaningless sophistry because the Moslem community has set the evidentiary standard so high as to be realistically unattainable. They will not believe any proof offered because they have already made up their minds.Another 17-year-old student, Ammar Arif, agreed. "If you prove it's Osama bin Laden and I was in the Army, I would go to fight," he said. "That's my duty to my country and my religion as well."
It sounds as if most Islamic schools are involved in a conspiracy to commit treason, as well as to deprive their neighbors of basic civil rights. It is time to eliminate these hatcheries of domestic terrorists.
This has been the American immigrant experience for all but the last 40 years. The major difference is that immigration now just means a few hundred dollars and a few hours out of your schedule. Immigrants are not required to have a stake in American society and culture.
And why are they not? It should be an honor and privilege to come here - or to any of the western civilized nations for that matter. Did the leftists do this to us for votes for multiculturism, divesity? I sure wouldn't move to a country if my heart didn't accept their way of life.
This is simply the most sophomoric comment I've read today. Congratulations.
The President's comments addressed "terrorists". Your theft, and gross misinterpretation, of those comments is enlightening.
If they can't do that, let's pack them all up and send them out of this country. The surely do not deserve the freedom they are enjoying.
Exactly what is it you find so sophomoric?
Yes, they are. They are not Americans until they do.
Between Jesus telling the disciples to arm themselves just before the Crucifixion and Mohammad encouraging his disciples to battle pagans, there are world's of commentary.
BTW, if you are a pagan, Mo meant "you", not "me"; so, are you a pagan? Frankly, I believe paganism is incompatible with the American forms of law, just like the ACLU view of religion in life is equally incompatible with the American forms of law and our ancient customs.
One of the great mysteries is why the various Islamic councils in America do not speak up against the ACLU, a veritible heart of paganism. Possibly they don't quite understand that group. On the other hand, if Moslems in the US agree with the ACLU, that's probably a pretty good reason to depart them and outlaw the ACLU, eh?!
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