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Yeminis, Muslims Fear Backlash
The terrorist attempt on Christmas Day is the latest incident making American Muslims cringe, fearing that one errant individual will again cast suspicion on the whole religious community.
In the days since the failed bombing on a Detroit-bound airliner, conversations among Muslims have taken on a tenor of disdain at the incident and frustration that their religion is again under the microscope.
“He’s ruining our reputation,” said Moad Taleb, a Yemeni Muslim living in Dearborn, referring to the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to detonate a bomb on a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands.
“It’s a sad thing that we’re being pointed at because of one person.”
Since a Yemen-based al-Qaida group claimed responsibility for the Christmas Day attack, some Yemenis in the community of about 40,000 in Metro Detroit, have feared their religion and country could be blamed.
Most Yemenis in Michigan are Muslim.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American Muslims and Arabs have more frequently become targets of discrimination and hate crimes. Such incidents have prompted Muslim organizations to launch defensive public relations campaigns after incidents like this.
Muslims in Michigan are from different continents and countries. Some are Arab, others African, African-American, Indian or Pakistani.
Abdau Secka, a Senegalese-born cook, has already heard the jokes from fellow cooks and waiters at his Novi restaurant: that Africans are now the new terrorists.
“I’m not calling him a Muslim,” said Secka, 24, while shopping at a Senegalese grocery store on Grand River. “I call him a gang member.”
He added, “If you’re 100 percent Muslim, you don’t do things like that.”
The expectation of reprisals prompted a press conference Tuesday in Southfield, where leaders from the local Arab and African Muslim communities convened to condemn terrorism and distance such acts from Islam.
“People in the community are just frustrated,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of Michigan’s Council on American-Islamic Relations.
He said that misinformation about Islam abounds after such incidents. Walid said that the vast majority of the 1.6 billion Muslims around the world do not support al-Qaida, and, in fact, make up most of the terrorist group’s casualties in places such as Pakistan and Iraq.
“Killing and targeting civilians is unacceptable in Islam,” he said.
He offered a distinction between Islamic concepts, condemning the incident as “irhab” (terrorism) and “hirabah” (unlawful warfare), and denying that the act constituted true “jihad,” or work on behalf of God.
“These people are not engaged in legitimate jihad, and we should not embolden them further by calling them ‘jihadis,’ ” Walid said.
On Sunday, a Nigerian man who remained in the lavatory on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit stirred suspicions among the flight crew, who called authorities to meet them upon landing. The man was cleared after authorities confirmed he had been sick.
Mahdi Ali of Detroit says he travels to Yemen every few years to visit cousins, aunts and uncles.
The engineer at General Motors now shudders at what could happen to him on a plane.
“I’d be afraid to go to the bathroom,” said Ali, a father of four. “I’d be afraid to move.”
Many Yemenis began settling in Michigan around the mid-1960s. Now their largest concentrations in Metro Detroit can be found in Southfield, Dearborn and Hamtramck.
“We came to this country for a better life, a better education.”
And members of the Nigerian community, totaling about 10,000 in the state, have taken great pains to publicly disavow any connection to suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab or his family.
Imam Kazeem Agboola, head of the Muslim Community Center in Detroit, says he has led his congregation, most of them Nigerians, in prayer for peace and for strength to deal with whatever backlash may come.
“Patience is the key,” Agboola said. “People will come to understand.”
Catherine Jun
The Detroit News