Target: Islam

By Jim Oliphant
Legal Times
September 9, 2002

I have been in jail since Oct. 31 '01 waiting to go to trial. I entered the U.S. on a F1 student visa in Aug. '97. The INS claims I am here illegally and wants to deport me. I want to finish my college degree. The FBI issues charges 4 months after detention with allegations of making a fake ID.
I was assaulted twice in jail. I was badly hurt and I have 4 broken upper teeth. I'm very tired of waiting and I'm praying to Allah to plan for the best. I do want to finish my education and get out of jail. I seek any help and advice please.
Respectfully,
Yasir Khatib

Today, there are three letters waiting for him. Three Muslim men, writing him from cramped jail cells in America. Sometimes, Hasan Jalisi takes the letters home and reads them with his wife. Sometimes, he reads them again and again in his small office, the bottom half of a well-worn building on Chase Street in downtown Baltimore. Sometimes, as he reads the pleas from the detained men, he thinks about his brothers, all doctors from Pakistan, like himself, or his two children. Sometimes he thinks, I didn't ask for this job. Sometimes he is afraid.

"People are scared," Jalisi says. "People are worried. Everyone feels their loyalty has been challenged. Everyone feels it could happen to them. It doesn't matter whether you are a guy off the street or a doctor. They're all Muslims or Arabs who look like me."

Jalisi is 36. He came from Pakistan 11 years ago to finish his medical training at Johns Hopkins University. He interned at Harvard University and the Cleveland Clinic. Five years ago, he started his own profitable commercial real estate business. He is eligible for U.S. citizenship and plans to apply as soon as he has the chance. As a good Muslim, he concentrated on doing well financially and supporting his family and community.

He never foresaw that he would spend days reading letters from inmates, or raising money for lawyers, or conferring with civil rights organizations. But as for many people, Sept. 11 was a day on which plans for the future vaporized.

"You can't live in a cocoon," he says.

Now, Jalisi runs a Muslim charity, a nonprofit corporation that collects donations to help those detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service find legal help. It also assists the families left behind with covering expenses.

Last fall, when the federal government began rounding up and jailing Arabs and Muslims, Jalisi called around to other local Islamic agencies, wondering what they were planning to do for the detainees. The answer, he says, was nothing. So Jalisi found some lawyers and organized a seminar in January to help inform Muslims of their legal rights. "I thought that would be it," he says.

But that night, 600 people showed up. And they ended up giving Jalisi $45,000. With the help of the Islamic Society of Baltimore, he set up the nonprofit and set out to get that money to detainees.

That wasn't easy. The Justice Department refused to release the names of any detainees. Jalisi couldn't contact them; he didn't know who they were or where they were. He tried contacting the embassies of Islamic countries, but they were of slight help.

Desperately, Jalisi began to place large ads entitled "Islamophobia" in magazines such as Islamic Horizons that are available in prisons, and encouraged inmates to write to him. That was when the letters began to arrive. They spoke of loneliness, of inhumane treatment by guards, of confusion, of severed families and threats of deportation.

"It's just overwhelming," he says. "It's just sad. I can't imagine being alone for such a long time for no reason."

The detainees told Jalisi that they were held in five-foot by eight-foot cells with the windows blacked out. Jalisi couldn't conceptualize it. So he measured his king-size bed at home.

"It was 42 square feet," Jalisi says, his astonishment still registering. "These cells are smaller than the size of my bed."

My husband was detained three months ago from home. Now he is in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. I have four kids and I have no source of income. I can not do job because I don't have Social Security card and my kids are under age. So to meet with daily expenses I need your help.
Uzma Naheed

They arrive together, but soon they separate. Men and women, some men in traditional dress, some women in hijab, the headdress, others in business suits or casual clothes, their SUVs and Saabs and Accords snaking down the driveway and lined up on New Hampshire Avenue, all of them coming to pray.

The women disappear first, descending into a basement beneath the mosque. The men enter the anteroom to the prayer hall and remove their shoes. There is little talking. There will be none inside, where the men assume positions, facing east. Some sit, some kneel, some stand.

The Middle Eastern features of the Muslim Community Center, a squat building north of Silver Spring, Md., look misplaced when compared with the surrounding suburban sprawl. The building, with its jutting minaret, seems somehow too noticeable, too visible -- an artifact of a more optimistic time.

After a hot, dry summer, this Friday afternoon is surprisingly gray and overcast. A steady rain falls. But that's fitting. Today, clouds above a mosque seem right.

Never has it been harder to be a Muslim in America.

Nineteen men did this. Nineteen Muslims who killed thousands of others a year ago this week. Nineteen who guaranteed a thousand more would see the inside of a federal prison and who left millions of other Muslims in America scrambling, wondering what to do next and how to explain who they are.

Ask Sabir Rahman, president of the center, about whether he has seen attitudes harden against Muslims, and he'll demur. He'll talk about how, instead, the people have come together in his community, not apart.

But ask him about the federal government and it's different. "I came to this country on August 15, 1964," the former Pakistan resident says. "Even in those days, I was never scared to be in this country. Now, I have never been so scared. What happened to the Japanese is going to happen to me."

Rahman blames the media for distorting Islam and creating a negative picture of Muslims. He says he can no longer bear to read the newspaper. And what frustrates him as much is the inability of American Muslims to contradict the media-driven image of the Muslim as terrorist.

"We have a lack of a profile in prominent places," he laments. Part of the reason for that, he says, is because Muslims largely came to this country to build better lives. They didn't live in ethnic neighborhoods; they spread out and kept to themselves.

"They don't want to disturb their comfort level," Rahman says. " 'Let's keep quiet. Let's not say anything.' "

The need for Muslims to take a higher profile was a rallying cry of the Muslim-Americans who gathered at the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, held in Washington over Labor Day weekend.

"On the media every night, there is someone to defame Islam and Muslims," Omar Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told the convention crowd. "We have to deliver the right message. What worked in the past will not work in the future. We must change. We must use PR techniques. We must get involved in the political system. We must get involved in the social system."

I am a college teacher and I have been made to feel uncomfortable at work since 9/11. I have been denied an interview for a full-time tenure position while others with lesser degrees had interviews. I believe it is Islamophobia and I am very upset over my poor treatment and the idea of being without money to live.
Nora Qudus

One unlikely messenger is Enver Masud, a soft-spoken engineering management consultant who doesn't resemble anyone's Muslim stereotype this evening at a bookstore in Bethesda. In his navy blazer, pinstriped oxford shirt, and khaki pants, he looks more like the actor Barry Bostwick.

But he's stirring up the crowd anyway, promoting his book, The War On Islam. Masud also runs a Web site called The Wisdom Fund from his Arlington home, dedicated, he says, to correcting the myths surrounding Islam.

"We are the designated enemy following the collapse of the Soviet Union," Masud tells the 50 or so people gathered on the top floor of the store. He talks about his book, which was written before Sept. 11 and is largely dedicated to poking holes in American policy on Iraq.

But in the question-and-answer session, things turn ugly. At least for a suburban chain store and coffee bar. Attitudes and arguments come from all sides. Pro-Israel. Pro-India. Pro-Pakistan. Anti-Islam. "There's a cult of holy war out there," cries one man. Another demands, "Where is democracy today? Tell me where democracy is!"

At one point, Masud, looking like a beleaguered referee trying to break up a fight on a basketball court, says, "I'm an engineer, not a lawyer. I just got started doing this."

Finally, near the end, a 40-ish woman asks to speak. She talks about the image of the airliners piercing the World Trade Center. She talks about the faces of the hijackers. "Muslims, to me, personally, have become scary." She is Caucasian, with brown hair. She's dressed in black cropped pants and a black sweater. "I see what they do to their women. I see what they do to their children. I say to myself, 'I wish these people would just get the hell out of my country. I want to live in my United States of America.'"

A dark-haired young Muslim woman is enraged. "I was born here. I was the valedictorian of my class. I'm going to be a doctor. I'm going to go to business school," she says. "The Muslims you see on TV, that's not me."

The lecture, mercifully, is over. Masud signs copies of his book.

"I think that went pretty well," he says.

Dear Brothers, I have to inform you that when I went to court last month on the 23 of July and unfortunately I found myself in a bad predicament and the immigration judge deported, though he asked me if I would like to appeal, but I rejected because I had no one on the outside to support me and I felt alone.
I have been incarcerated for over 9 months and it has been a hardship. Plus I got a wife back in Yemen that is awaiting for me and I can't wait to see her. So I think I just better go back to my country and start all new.
Yazakam Allahu-Khan

One year later, just how bad is it? Have the 7 million Muslims in the United States become relegated to second-class citizens, forever to be kicked off airplanes and arrested for petty crimes? Or, as with most things, have hype and media attention overtaken the truth?

There are numbers on all sides. The Justice Department says it has investigated 380 anti-Arab and -Muslim incidents since Sept. 11. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says that Muslim-related job discrimination complaints have doubled in the past year. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee claims it has reports of 700 hate crimes committed in the past year, and says it has documented 100 separate incidents when Muslims were not allowed to fly on airplanes.

"They're not just going after Osama bin Laden, they're going after Islam. That's something new," says Ibrahim Hooper, the communications director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, from his office on Capitol Hill. "The ice has been broken. They're setting up a civilizational conflict, one where you start a downward spiral of hate. There's no going back."

He reads aloud a Christian-themed piece of electronic hate mail that he has received just that day. "As far as the average American is concerned, no Muslim is safe," the e-mail says.

The council last month released a survey claiming that a majority (57 percent) of American Muslims say they experienced bias or discrimination since the Sept. 11 attacks, and that almost all respondents (87 percent) said they knew of a fellow Muslim who experienced discrimination. The survey was based on about 1,000 responses to an e-mail poll.

But James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute, the largest Arab and Muslim advocacy group in Washington, dismisses those numbers. "I'm not in the business of alarming," Zogby says from his spacious K Street office. "I'm in the business of informing. If we are in the danger zone, I would want everyone to know it."

Zogby points to the spike and then rapid decline in the numbers of Arab- and Muslim-related hate crimes in the aftermath of Sept. 11. While he says that discrimination has taken place in the employment arena, he doesn't perceive a wide-scale American shift in attitude toward American Muslims. Nor does he believe the government will continue to detain Arabs and Muslims indiscriminately.

"There is no possibility that there will be a repeat of the Japanese-American situation," he says. "It is wrong to my community and wrong to my country to suggest that."

But Zogby has felt the sting of the backlash. The following day, he was to travel to Boston to attend the sentencing hearing of a man, Zachary Rolnik, who telephoned Zogby on Sept. 12 and threatened to kill him and his children. Zogby had been concerned that Rolnik would receive probation; he ultimately received two months in jail.

And optimism aside, Zogby's outlook grows clouded when pressed on the Justice Department's activities since Sept. 11, the detentions, the thousands of interviews, the eavesdropping on conversations between inmates and lawyers, and the demand that all aliens register their address or face imprisonment. The White House's drumbeating for war with Iraq troubles him as well.

"It feels like there is this current that is so strong that is moving against us," he finally says. "You wonder somehow what they're doing, what they think. Do they really want the clash of civilizations? Do they want a war with all Arabs and Muslims? It certainly seems that way."

I stay in America long time ago and I have a Green Card and I have a family here. Four kids. Ali is 12 years and Umar is 10 years and Kateja is 8 years and Abdul-Lehman is 3 years. Please Doctor Hassan give me Answers of my Request. I appreciated very well if you send money here under my name.
Said Abdel Malek
York County Prison

The phone rings in Hasan Jalisi's office. A collect call from the jail in York County, Pa. The call, at jail rates, will cost Jalisi $5.80 a minute, even though it comes from a neighboring state. It is Said Malek.

"How are you doing, brother?" Jalisi says to the inmate. They talk about his case, about how Jalisi is going to get the man $1,000 so that his lawyer can file a habeas corpus petition. "We are going to help you," Jalisi says. "And then you are going to help other people, right?"

After the call, Jalisi says that Malek also sent his letter in Arabic. He receives many letters that way. "I don't read Arabic," he says.

A recent detainee, a 25-year-old Tunisian man released just last month after nine months of incarceration in federal and state prisons, says that when Jalisi came to visit him in response to his letter, it was "like seeing the sun after a long, dark day."

It all has been an education for Jalisi, one that takes more and more of his time and money. His goal is to give 100 percent of the funds to the detainees and their families. To that end, he says, he takes no salary and pays for the office space and expenses out of his pocket.

He estimates that, to date, his fund has collected and disbursed about $70,000 and has freed about 80 people. He says he has 100 active files. He solicits funds through an e-mail newsletter, one which now reaches, he says, more than 10,000 people. Donors can select specific detainees to support with their money and use the Internet transactional service PayPal to donate.

"This last year has matured me a lot -- much more than the last 35," he says. "For the past few years, my thing was making sure that the buildings [I owned] were clean. Before that, as a doctor, I was an ear, nose, and throat man. I didn't see this kind of thing. It has changed my life. This is much more fulfilling."

He says he is planning to help open two free medical clinics in Baltimore later this year to help Muslims.

"I think there's an activist in all of us," he says.

The federal government says that out of the 1,200 Arab and Muslim individuals detained in the wake of Sept. 11, only about 75 remain in custody. Jalisi does not believe those figures to be accurate. He says that in mid-August, he traveled to the jail in York County and determined that 200 people were still being held there in connection with Sept. 11.

He produces a list of men with Muslim names and inmate numbers that he claims was smuggled out of the York County prison via a fax machine. The date on the fax is Aug. 26, 2002. The list contains the names of 73 men and 3 women.

He also believes that many more have been deported than is known. He charges that detainees are being forced to plead guilty to immigration charges and are then deported or, if they refuse, kept locked up.

It saddens him. And it makes him feel betrayed.

"People came here from all over the world thinking that this was the best place to live," Jalisi says. "It's sad that 19 people have been able to change 250 million people to such an extent. If I were one of those 19 people, I would be thinking that I just got 250 million people to alter the basic principles on which this country was built."