UNCIVIL LIBERTIES Black Muslims face 9-11 backlash BY CHIP BENSON

Every Sunday, roughly two million Muslims in the US go to their local mosque to worship. This subculture within a largely Christian nation has come under predictably heavy scrutiny from the FBI and Justice Department. Yet despite John Ashcroft’s post 9-11 reassurance that there wouldn’t be a backlash, a tide of special registrations, detentions, and political posturing has the American Muslim community very much under the whip. Most of them find this all too familiar, because the largest group of American Muslims is black, not Arab. Every year 40,000 African-Americans convert to Islam, making it the fastest growing religion in America, according to professor Larry Mimaya of Vassar College, co-author of a report entitled, "The Mosque Study Project 2000."

In Rhode Island, there are roughly 6000 Muslims, with three main mosques in Providence. They are a small but vocal group, visible recently at the Cornel Young Jr. legal proceedings, through the outspoken presence of Everett Muhammad, the local Nation of Islam representative. According to Cliff Montiero, president of the Providence NAACP, local Muslims face the "manic reaction" common after 9-11. He cites as an example the Amtrak train stopped shortly after September 11 because of a "terrorist threat" that turned out to be a Sikh man traveling, as is customary for his faith, with a small ceremonial dagger. Montiero points out that the Oklahoma City bombing and Columbine shootings could be considered terrorist acts, but that Muslims are demonized, not white Christians from the American heartland. It’s this kind of disparity, he says, that leads to overly zealous reactions from law enforcement, where minorities are often under-represented

Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation in Washington, DC, calls Ashcroft’s Patriot Act "same soup, different bowl," for black Americans of a certain age. "We’ve seen this before, in the South in the ’60s — state-run apparatus with other agendas," he says. Bray cites a recent internal audit by the inspector general, which found no terrorists among 1000 US Muslims detained by the Justice Department for a year after 9-11. "Who are we fooling," he asks, "in this overblown war on terror?"

As many as 150,000 Pakistanis have left the US for Canada "because of pressure from the FBI," Mimaya says. But although some US Muslims have faced humiliation, the African-American element of this community isn’t going anywhere, Bray says. In immigrant Muslim communities, the feeling is "You want to be an American," he says, so that means flying a flag "on your taxi cab, on your house — flags everywhere, flags, flags, flags."

Americans Muslims aren’t typically flag-wavers, though, because of their past treatment by "patriotic" Americans. "I have a vested interest in this country," Bray says, without bitterness. "My slave ancestors worked for free to build this country. My grandfather fought in World War II. I grew up under an American apartheid, and I have a stake." When it comes to political protest by blacks in the US, "It’s as American to us as apple pie. We got our rights through protesting, and we stopped a war [Vietnam] through protest."

Weekly vigils by US Muslims outside the Justice Department have not captured popular opinion, and people like Bray are still just a fly in the ointment of the Bush administration. Only here, though, could he turn to former slaveholder Benjamin Franklin for inspiration, nothing that those who give up liberty for the sake of security get neither.