'Being a Muslim in the south is great, until you turn on the news'

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/17/chapel-hill-shooting-muslim-south

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Last Thursday, 5,000 people came from all over America to an athletic field at North Carolina State University to attend the Islamic funeral prayers of Deah Barakat, 23, his wife of six weeks, Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan, 19. The trio were killed by Craig Stephen Hicks, a self-described “gun-toting” atheist whose ex-wife said showed “no compassion at all” for other people.

The caskets were taken to a Muslim cemetery in Raleigh. Per religious custom, Muslim men took turns unburdening the family’s pain, lending their shoulders to carry the caskets to their burial ground. They finalized the process by contributing three fists of dirt and soil to fill the grave, reciting chapter 20, verse 55 from the Qur’an: “From the earth we created you, and into it we will return you, and from it we will extract you another time.”

Following the tragedy, President Obama remarked: “As we saw with the overwhelming presence at the funeral of these young Americans, we are all one American family.” But if we are one American family, many Muslims in the south feel like they are the unwanted relatives – feared, misunderstood, barely tolerated and rarely invited to the community barbecue.

“My awareness, my spidey sense, has become heightened [after the shooting],” admits Imam Adeel Zeb, the new Muslim chaplain and director of Muslim life at Duke University. “I’m more aware of how people are walking, how are they looking at me, if they’re angry or welcoming, or if there’s disapproval.”

Zeb’s apprehension is fueled by his role in a recent controversy: Duke retreated from its decision to allow the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, every Friday from their bell tower. This abrupt change followed a call from Christian leader Franklin Graham in a Facebook post. Graham, the son of evangelical icon Billy, has called Islam “a very evil and wicked religion”.

Graham is part of what some call the Islamophobia network, which has promoted anti-Muslim sentiment since 9/11, insinuating that sharia law would eventually supplant the US constitution. More than 32 states have introduced “anti-sharia” legislation created by members of this network, even though the ACLU has labeled it a “mythical” threat that “clearly seeks to ride the recent wave of anti-Muslim bias in this country”. (North Carolina passed its anti-sharia bill two years ago.)

Adding fuel to the fire, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal referred to Muslim immigration as an “invasion” that could create “no-go zones” for non-Muslims. Texas state senator Molly White told her Muslim constituents on Facebook they must renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly pledge allegiance to America.

These recent incidents “seem to have pushed people over the edge”, according to Hyder Khan from Houston, who describes himself as a “native Texan who grew up like other American kids: being a Boy Scout, playing dungeons and dragons, going to the rodeo [while] maintaining my Islamic identity.”

He might be right. Last Friday, arson was suspected at Quba Islamic Institute in Houston, burning down one building. It should not be surprising that anti-Muslim hate crimes are currently five times higher than the pre 9/11 rate.

“I’m disappointed in what’s happening right now,” admits Omid Safi, a proud southerner and the director of Duke Islamic Studies Center, who has been fielding international media since the Chapel Hill shooting. “But you can only be disappointed in what you love a lot,” Safi continues. “I love this place, but I love it enough to hurt for it, enough to be disappointed for it, and enough to fight for it to be better.”

“Being a Muslim in the south is great, until you turn on the news,” says Alana Raybon, a Tennessee educator, whose life consists of mundane activities: “Being a mom, a teacher and a wife, bustling to and fro from work, gymnastics and soccer.” Ironically, Raybon also has a book coming out under a division of the same company that prints Billy Graham’s books. Her everyday American life would never trigger a protest or a trending headline.

But that probably does not matter to Tennessee Freedom Coalition, which has led a sustained, orchestrated opposition to the construction of a mosque in the town of Murfreesboro. The coalition believes Islam is not a religion, but a political movement promoting sedition. The organization was supported by Vanderbilt professor Carol Swain, who wrote in a controversial January essay in The Tennessean: “Islam will never understand the freedoms that we live and die to preserve.”

“It would make great satire if they weren’t serious,” says Raybon’s husband, Paul Galloway, the executive director of American Center for Outreach. “Sadly, these people also claim to be patriots who love the constitution,” he adds.

However, life in the south for Muslims is actually quite pleasant, says Galloway. He cites the Islamic Parochial School in Nashville as an example of an institution where a significant portion of the staff are not Muslim, but who engage with local churches, synagogues and other schools without incident.

Kasar Abdulla, a graduate student from Lipscomb University – a private, Christian school in Nashville – agrees. Despite wearing the hijab, Abdulla says she never felt isolated or harassed because of her religious background and attire. She said Christians, Jews, atheists and Muslims came together to protest against Swain’s essay, and held vigils to honor the victims of the Chapel Hill shooting.

The Rev Cameron Trimble, a southerner, mother, and the CEO of the Center for Progressive Renewal in Atlanta, believes supporting Muslims in the current climate reflects the best of her Christian values. “As a pastor, I know that if we are serious about practising our faith, we must stand in solidarity together with our Muslim neighbors, now more than ever,” she said.

However, news reports about Isis beheadings and violent extremist attacks still inform much of the discourse on Islam – and exact a psychological toll on Muslims. Nearly 25% of Americans and 50% of senior Protestant pastors say Isis is the true representation of Islam, according to new LifeWay Research surveys.

“I know there are haters out there, and so I’m careful of what neighborhoods I go to. I know that wearing a hijab makes me an easy target,” says Sabina Mohyuddin, the daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants who came to America in the 1960s. She lives in the small Tennessee town of Tullahoma, which she says is 90% white. She says she was probably “the first hijabi in the Nashville public schools,” and now her three daughters in college all wear the hijab.

Can Islam survive and thrive in the south? Tariq Nelson, a Muslim community activist and writer from Virginia, believes it might be the ideal environment for Muslims. “The funny thing is, many Muslims actually have what one would call ‘southern values’: belief in strong families, nearly identical moral codes, friendliness towards strangers, being charitable,” says Nelson.

Indeed, every Muslim I interviewed proudly identified as a southerner, and was offended by the suggestion that a “Muslim southerner” was somehow mutually exclusive or an oxymoron. “I’ve never considered myself as anything but a Tennessean … ‘Y’all’ is a permanent part of my vocabulary,” says Sabina Mohyuddin.

Imam Adeel Zeb believes his Muslim students are such southern loyalists that their allegiance to their college basketball teams takes precedence over all other activities. “I have to schedule all my talks around games … my own wedding is scheduled around basketball games. Their priorities are: basketball, Islam, then their chaplain’s wedding,” says Zeb.

As a grieving nation tries to heal after the Chapel Hill shootings, Imam Abdullah Antepli, the chief representative of Muslim affairs at Duke, wants to build bridges and challenge stereotypes that still dominate the imagination of many. “Even in the most biased people, I know there is good in them,” he says. “I should appeal to the better side of people, and work with them to reveal the best of them, not the worst.”

“When people refer to southerners, why does the image of a white person come to mind?” asks Sabina Mohyuddin. “We have to challenge that notion of a southern belle being a white aristocrat, and accept that it could be a brown-skinned hijabi girl.”

The deaths of three young students forces an increasingly majority-minority America to confront the fault lines and fissures from that stem from fear, ignorance and hysteria. Will America widen and expand its boundaries and definitions to include and celebrate the many Muslim faces that exist and thrive within its southern borders? Is it capable of doing so?

Yusor Abu-Salha believed so. This is what she said in her final interview about growing up Muslim in America:

“And that’s the beautiful thing here: it doesn’t matter where you come from. There’s so many different people from so many different places, of different backgrounds and religions – but here we’re all one, one culture. And it’s beautiful to see people of different areas interacting, and being family. Being, you know, one community.”