Arabs target of the ‘McCarthyism of the new millennium’

By Lina Hashem
Copy Editor
The News Journal, Wilmington, Del.

Posted: Sept. 20, 2002

Maybe. Maybe Eunice Stone of Georgia really did hear what she thought she heard. Maybe the three Middle Eastern-looking men eating breakfast at a Shoney's in Georgia on the morning after the Sept. 11 anniversary really were discussing a repeat of the attacks. Maybe they really did say Americans "mourned on Sept. 11 and they are going to mourn again on Sept. 13."

Maybe that's how it happened. Or maybe, as the three men maintain, they said nothing of the sort -- they were just talking about the medical training program they were heading for in Miami.

Maybe the woman, over-anxious because of the Sept. 11 anniversary, picked up a few syllables here and there and her fears filled in the rest. Maybe the men were talking about their grocery list, and "September 13" was really "remember the beans."

Or maybe it was like the police said -- the men were joking. They saw the woman eyeing them suspiciously and they couldn't resist teasing her a little.

It's this last explanation that I tend to lean toward.

Because I can understand that temptation.

Now don't get me wrong -- if they were joking about Sept. 11, that was socially irresponsible and not funny.

But after a year of seeing suspicions run rampant, I can understand the temptation to tease a suspicious eavesdropper. Those people who are listening to you because you look Middle Eastern, or because, in my case, you're wearing a traditional Muslim scarf. Sometimes I feel just a little tiny bit like giving them a snippet of what they're listening for. Just a word or two. Just to make them a little nervous.

This is not a sentiment I would have ever thought I would understand. I have been a goody-two-shoes all my life. I never have been the type to bully or frighten people. Because of my ethnic and religious heritage, I was in fact the one being bullied and teased -- especially during those horrible middle-school years. (Yes, Jackie, I still remember you.)

But being constantly under suspicion can do funny things to someone.

I get tired of people looking at me as if, under my scarf, I might explode at any moment. I get tired of censoring my words for anything that might be misunderstood by a passer-by or a wire tap.

I get tired of hearing about people detained as "suspected terrorists" for having been, at one time in the past, a roommate with someone who 10 years later donated money to an organization the government now thinks may have financed a group suspected of being a possible al-Qaida cell.

These "suspicious" people can be detained for many months, often deprived of a lawyer, with no charges ever filed for the simple reason that there are no charges to file for the "crime" of somehow associating with the wrong person. Or with someone who associated with someone who associated with the wrong person.

It's a new game in the FBI and CIA -- six degrees of separation from Osama bin Laden.

It's the McCarthyism of the new millennium.

You can be branded a terrorist at the drop of a turban, and your life here is ruined. Those three medical students at the center of last Friday's media storm, who were detained in a van on Florida's Alligator Alley for 18 hours while local, state and federal law enforcement officials gave repeated "updates" to CNN, are "no longer welcome" at the medical program they were heading for even though they were released with no charges. Theirs was a case of being presumed guilty until proven innocent -- a decidedly un-American concept. And then, even when you are proven innocent, you never really can prove yourself innocent of vague suspicions of sympathizing with terrorists or of plotting an attack that never happened.

Even if no proof of any wrongdoing is ever found, people still can think you harbor these evil thoughts deep down inside.

This was all foreshadowed by the case of the Muslim family who stopped to get gas for their car on the night of the Sept. 11 attacks. Their timing for getting gas was unfortunate. Many more wimpy Muslims like me were hiding in our homes, afraid of a backlash. But this family ventured out, only to be met with police and publicly searched after 911 operators received a flurry of calls about "people in Arabian garb." The family didn't have to do anything besides wear "Arabian garb" to draw suspicion. And cops.

This kind of thing still is going wild. If two men shave on an airplane, I'd assume they're preparing for a business meeting. I could see my husband (who would have been running late for the airplane) doing that. But when two Arab men did it, they were deemed to be preparing for a hijacking and the plane they were on was diverted. Several more Muslims have been kicked off planes, even Greyhound buses, because their simple presence made people nervous.

And then there was that Florida man who was found with explosives and a list of 50 houses of worship ... oh, wait -- he wasn't Muslim. Or Arab. And his list was not churches or synagogues, but rather mosques and Islamic schools, so he's already been forgotten.

But even right after his plot was discovered, his story was buried in one-paragraph briefs or in the back pages of newspapers. He was described as a "mentally unstable doctor" rather than a terrorist or extremist. He was not seen as a real threat, because of his religion and ethnicity (which readers had to assume were Judeo-Christian, because that fact was not mentioned in the stories) and because of the religion of his targets. Just imagine how the stories would have been had he been Arab or Muslim.

This kind of selective paranoia is sanctioned by the U.S. government under its new policy of finding people who haven't yet committed any crimes. The impulse to want to find bad folks is understandable -- but the result is that all 6 million Muslims in the United States are all of a sudden suspect, and any measures to track us, spy on us and detain us in the six-degree game are seen as justified. There has got to be some balance.

I now have a new perspective on how African-Americans feel when people cross the street or lock their car doors as they pass by. This is how racial profiling really feels.

I'm almost glad for the lesson.

Now I'd really like to go back to feeling like a goody-two-shoes again.

Lina Hashem was a 1999 Scholar at The News Journal in Wilmington, Del. Reach her at lina_hashem@yahoo.com

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