Muslim Americans and the Impact of September 11th

9/11 changed the world -- especially in the U.S. in terms of Muslim-American relations and the way the word "terror" and "terrorist" is used to identify or refer to a group of people.[footnoteRef:1] The issue of Islamaphobia became more pronounced and anti-Muslim immigration policies began to be discussed as a matter of national security.[footnoteRef:2] As -- has shown, the media has been complicit in both demonizing the Muslim community in America and promoting a view of American immigration policy that is anti-Muslim.[footnoteRef:3] This paper will show that the changes in U.S. immigration policy post 9-11 have negatively affected American Muslims in several ways as a result of inherently racist legislation specifically targeting all Muslims regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens or not. [1: Jigyasu, R. "Defining the Definition for Addressing the 'Reality'," in What is a Disaster?: New Answers to Old Questions, Ed. Ronald W. Perry & E.L. Quarantelli. International Research Committee on Disasters, 2005.] [2: Sheridan, L. (2006). Islamophobia pre- and post-September 11th, 2001. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 21(3): 317-336.] [3: Britton, N. (2005). Dog or Demon? What is a Disaster? Philadelphia: Xlibris; Steuter, E., Wills, D. (2009). Discourses of Dehumanization: Enemy Construction and Canadian Media Complicity in the Framing of the War on Terror. Global Media Journal, 2(2): 7-24.]

John F. Kennedy had described America as a "nation of immigrants" in the mid-20th century, yet events unfolded that propelled America away from this identity to police state wherein security and safety become more important than the idea espoused by Kennedy.[footnoteRef:4] Following 9/11 immigrants groups were targeted by legislators, policy makers, and pundits: rather than the heart and soul -- the foundation -- of America they became public enemy no. 1. Detecting and preventing "terrorist" activity became the paramount objective of post-9/11 America. [4: John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants (NY: Harper, 2008), 1.]

The attacks of September 11, 2001, impacted the whole world, in fact: it altered the outlook of universal security, the topography of citizenship and belonging; Arab and Muslim societies around the world became suspect -- not just in the United States.[footnoteRef:5] Wars erupted in the Middle East, refugees flooded Europe; violence escalated there -- and more terror attacks occurred -- in France, Germany, Brussels, Boston, California, Orlando, Ohio. The relationship between the West and the Arab world was full of tension. America, being the leader of the free world, was partly responsible for this course of events. Having suffered the greatest attack on its soil in history on 9/11, it responded with aggression and a ramping up of security measures that changed America from the welcoming "nation of immigrants" it had been half a century earlier to the borders-closing, protectionist state that is now setting a nationalist example for other states throughout the world. [5: Ciftci, S. (2012). Islamophobia and threat perceptions: Explaining anti-Muslim sentiment in the West. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 32(3): 292-309.]

The Muslim population in America is not large -- at just 1% of the population, according to Pew Research, followers of Islam make up a rather insignificant portion of American society.[footnoteRef:6] Yet they have become the extreme focus of American rhetoric, politics, security forces, and ideologues. One of the reasons for this is the oversimplification of 9/11 and the factors that both led to and arose from it. Instead of focusing on the geopolitical variables that led to and arose from 9/11, the mainstream media in America whipped up anti-Islam furor -- showing clips of celebrating Muslims in the wake of 9/11 that were entirely unrelated to what was going on in America and waging a PR war against leaders like Hussein in Iraq and Assad in Syria-based wholly on fabricated intelligence. The "enemy" responsible for 9/11 was never substantially identified: even the role of White House favorites in Saudi Arabia was not divulged for years because the "28" pages of material redacted from the 9/11 Commission's Report were barred from being seen by the American public.[footnoteRef:7] There was a deliberate effort on the part of the Establishment to whitewash the investigation and deceive the American public about the role of geopolitics in the Middle East and how American leaders were aiding and abetting terrorist cells in the Middle East to promote regime change.[footnoteRef:8] The double standard was rife with hypocrisy and American Muslims paid the price: their sense of being "welcome" in America was suddenly threatened by the idea that radical Islamic terror was all their fault. [6: Besheer Mohamed, A new estimate of the U.S. Muslim population. Pew Research, 6 Jan 2016. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/06/a-new-estimate-of-the-u-s-muslim-population/] [7: Paul Jaeger, Information policy, information access, and democratic participation: The national and international implications of the Bush administration's information politics. Government Information Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 4 (2007): 840-859.] [8: David Mednicoff, Compromising toward confusion: The 9/11 Commission Report and American policy in the Middle East. Contemporary Sociology, vol. 34, no. 2 (2005): 107-115.]

Instead of misleading the American public, the Bush administration could have profited more by cultivating a better relationship with Muslims both in America and abroad, according to the research of Mantri (2011), who notes that "the biggest secret weapon in the U.S. arsenal is its large, prosperous, well-integrated moderate Muslim population" for two reasons: they can help both to identify the "criminals, misfits, and murderers" actually responsible for causing violence and to improve Muslim-American relations by showing their support for a nation attempting to right a wrong.[footnoteRef:9] The point that Mantri makes is that rather than fueling Islamaphobia, American leaders should have turned to Muslim Americans to help calm the situation, find a solution, and rebuild the nation's identity as a "nation of immigrants." American leaders failed to do this: instead they chose to go to war, using 9/11 as a pre-text for regime change in the Middle East and for the ultra-privacy invading policies enacted into law with the ready-to-go on the day of the attack Patriot Act -- rushed through Congress with reckless abandon. [9: G. Mantri, Homegrown Terrorism. Harvard International Review, 33(1): 94.]

National security became the foremost important issue in America following 9/11. Hafetz (2012) points out that since the terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, "several areas of overlap between immigration and national security law" have occurred.[footnoteRef:10] Towards identifying the purveyors of violence against Americans, legislators and leaders in American politics have adopted "narratives that pit the rights of others (whether defined as immigrants of terrorism suspects) against the public safety...and the use of security as a proxy for other agendas."[footnoteRef:11] The ironic twist here is that in spite of the pro-immigrant words of Kennedy in the mid-20th century, the fact is that American history is full of anti-immigrant legislation. The Chinese Exclusion Act promoted xenophobic, racist attitudes towards Asians in the 19th century and was passed to lay "the groundwork for other racially motivated laws that followed."[footnoteRef:12] WWI and WW2 served to whip up anti-German sentiment in America (as well as more anti-Asian sentiment). Today's "war on terrorism" is really just an extension of these narratives -- and Kennedy's "nation of immigrants" ideation was more of a political talking/rallying point than a reflection of reality. Indeed, the idea of Manifest Destination was born of a distinctly racist view of America's place in the world: devised by WASPs (White-Anglo-Saxon Protestants), the ideology of Manifest Destiny was that American had the God-given duty to expand its borders, taking lands from natives to the south and west (and once this was accomplished to look even beyond the seas to lands all over the world). [10: J. Hafetz, Immigration and national security law: Converging approaches to state power, individual rights, and judicial review. ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law, 18(3) (2012): 627.] [11: J. Hafetz, Immigration and national security law: Converging approaches to state power, individual rights, and judicial review. ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law, 18(3) (2012): 627.] [12: J. Hafetz, Immigration and national security law: Converging approaches to state power, individual rights, and judicial review. ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law, 18(3) (2012): 628.]

The origins of immigration law in the U.S. were inspired by the WASP ideology. Prior to the 19th century, immigration was not really an issue. The colonies that survived were mainly British settlements (the Catholic French and Spanish in the north, west and south had essentially lost sovereignty through war and geopolitical factors) and thus the ideology that formed the basis of American legislation was steeped in Protestant English sentiment. The 1790 Act allow persons to be naturalized who were "free white persons" -- and blacks were included in this only after Lincoln came to power. It would be another century before Asians would be included in the naturalization law.[footnoteRef:13] [13: Jeffrey Schultz, Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics (NY: Onyx, 2002), 284.]

The power of WASPs in American politics has led to a number of racist doctrines in American history, including the eugenics movement in the 20th century that was sponsored by Margaret Sanger and other birth control proponents (birth control was originally designed to be used to curb the populations of undesirables like blacks and Catholics). American immigrants such as these have always faced difficulties, conflicts and hurdles in coming to the New World. The Irish Catholics, the Japanese, the Chinese, they all had to get their share of difficulty before they got respect. The Immigration Act of 1882 and the Chinese Exclusion Act were just the beginning. The Immigration Act of 1914, 1917 and 1924 all showed the propensity of American doctrine to be racist against non-Protestant groups of people. Potocky-Tripodi (2002) note that "the laws of the 1880s introduced three major new elements into our immigration policies: (a) restrictions based on personal characteristics, (b) restrictions based on national origin, and (c) protection of American labor." Furthermore, during the first World War and in between the two wars, "the United States Immigration Commission in 1911 considered people of Irish, Italian, Polish, and English descent to be distinct "races," and the 1924 Immigration Act passed by Congress restricted immigration of what were termed "inferior races" from Southern and Eastern Europe."[footnoteRef:14] American laws were being propped up by WASP sensibilities as this group essentially made up the political establishment. The social effects of these policies were racism against Irish, Germans, Eastern Europeans and Asians -- any immigrant who was not a WASP in other words. Kennedy (from an Irish Catholic family) attempted to remind America that indeed its roots were in immigration in what was meant to be a denunciation of racism and hostility -- but Kennedy's assassination proved that such a mindset was incompatible with the American spirit, which continued to be led by a racist Manifest Destiny. [14: Potocky-Tripodi, M. (2002). Best Practices for Social Work with Refugees and Immigrants. New York: Columbia University Press.]

9/11 prompted this narrative to be taken to a new extreme -- and against a new group of people: Muslim Americans. Islam and its adherents had never been targeted as a body in American politics prior to 9/11. With the whirlwind that led to the passing of the Patriot Act, a whole new type of xenophobia known as Islamaphobia was inspired and Muslims in America felt threatened to a degree they had never before experienced. America's enemies were given a new face: in the 19th century they had been natives, in the 20th century they had been Germans and Asians. In the 21st century, they would be Muslim Americans and Arabs.

President Clinton's Administration sought to reform immigration policy in the 1990s. Clinton attempted to echo Kennedy by saying that "the United States has always been energized by its immigrant populations,"[footnoteRef:15] yet the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform did not recommend an increase in the number of immigrants permitted into the States on an annual basis -- instead, it recommended that the States decrease the number by 40%. Nonetheless, just shy of 1 million legal immigrants were allowed into the U.S. in 1996.[footnoteRef:16] Still, Clinton's immigration laws were tied to economic prosperity and the notion that America was thriving as a culture and a place where immigrants could find employment. The notion of immigration was not tied to security or to threats against American safety. It was united to the notion that immigrants helped make America a better place. [15: Mary Williams, Immigration (CT: Greenhaven, 2004), 69.] [16: Plummer Alston Jones, Still Struggling for Equality (CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2004), 153.]

In 2001, that notion underwent a major and sweeping change as immigration was suddenly tied to ideas of terrorism. No new immigration policies have been created separate from terrorism policies since 9/11. This is a striking feature and characteristic of immigration policies in the 21st century. It shows that the idea of Kennedy and Clinton that immigration was the backbone of America was now completely lost in the wake of the terror attacks on 9/11. What emerged was a xenophobic, aggressive attitude towards an "enemy" conceived by the mainstream media, political pundits, and national leaders who could serve as the pretext for waging war and regime change in the Middle East. In the homeland, there were dire consequences for Muslim Americans, who now had to face waves of Islamaphobia, much like Asians had to face racism during WW2 (especially in California) and German immigrants faced attacks at the same time.

The U.S. Patriot Act was the first major blow in this direction: it allowed federal agencies to collect data on American citizens in a sweeping measure that obliterated what was left of the American Constitutional right to privacy. It especially targeted communities that might be affiliated with terrorism -- i.e., Mulsim American communities, mosques, etc. It was quickly followed by the Homeland Security Act of 2002: it was aimed at bolstering America's security forces and protecting American borders and ports from illegal immigration, the movement of weapons of mass destruction, and from attacks. A heightened sense of danger was promulgated in nearly every airport, with color codes used to describe a permanent state of tension, alarm, and alert for travelers. Lines through the TSA stretched for hours as every airline passenger had to be screened. A sense of not if but when the next terror attack would occur was inculcated in the public.

The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act followed in May 2002 and then the creation of the behemoth entity the Department of Homeland Security in January 2003. The Department of Justice acquired jurisdiction over the Executive Office for Immigration Review soon thereafter and the total war-like takeover of immigration policy by the police-state, security-state, and military complex was complete.

The main driver of these policies has been the neo-conservative establishment in politics led by men like John Bolton and William Kristol, whose behind-the-scenes work has promoted war in the Middle East and heightened surveillance and security of the homeland. Anti-Muslim immigration policy has been foisted on the American public as part of the planned-hysteria needed to support the wars in the Middle East, which have favored to a large extent the aims of Greater Israel.[footnoteRef:17] [17: John Davis. Presidential Policies and the Road to the Second Iraq War. (VT: Ashgate, 2006), 51. ]

Policy papers like Rebuilding America's Defenses published by the Project For a New American Century think-tank (PNAC) propagated the idea that Arab communities could be used to serve as a reason for American military to enter into the Middle East as part of a hegemonic initiative to ensure American influence in the region in the coming century.[footnoteRef:18] [18: John Davis. Presidential Policies and the Road to the Second Iraq War. (VT: Ashgate, 2006), 58.]

As the Independent Task Force on Immigration Policy in the U.S. stated in its research into American Immigration Policy, these events are tied to globalization -- a new type of Manifest Destination and one which the election of the Trump Administration is decidedly committed to stopping (even as it promises to toughen immigration policies and strengthen borders). The Task Force notes that "immigration's emergence as a foreign policy issue coincides with the increasing reach of globalization."[footnoteRef:19] This notion that immigration -- a distinctly domestic affair -- was now to be viewed as a foreign policy issue underlines the relationship between what the American military and neo-conservative think-tank PNAC was promoting the in the Middle East and the policies on immigration and security being devised on the domestic front. The two concepts were now inextricably linked -- just as the placing of Asians in concentration camps in California during WW2 was inextricably linked with America's war against Japan at that time. Domestic policy and foreign policy have always been tied at the hip in wartimes in America -- and 9/11 was the start of a new permanent kind of war in multiple countries in the United States. This war would feature proxy regimes, armed, trained and aided by satellite stations and allies of the U.S. The objective had already been spelled out by PNAC in its policy papers -- and now in the U.S. Muslim Americans were discovering what that policy had in store for them. [19: Jeb Bush, Thomas Mclarty, U.S. Immigration Policy (Council on Foreign Relations, 2009), ix.]