Do We Look Like Terrorists To You?

It was a perfectly normal day in Plano, Texas. Standing in a checkout line at Walmart, 18-year-old Irum Ali heard a woman behind her speaking to a friend. Irum, who is Muslim, experienced a familiar sinking feeling. The woman was talking about her. “At first I heard kind of snickering,” says Irum. “Then she started talking about how I should leave the country.” 

Irum has heard it all before. Those people don’t belong here. Why don’t they go home? For most of her life, Irum says, she has never felt out of place in Plano, a city of more than 270,000 with a diverse population. But a few years ago, she decided to start wearing the hijab to “get closer to my religion,” she explains. (It’s a personal choice, Irum says. Her sister and her mother, who was born in Pakistan, don’t wear it.) Suddenly, people started treating Irum differently. In public places, they would sometimes look away, not return her smile, or glance crossly at her. Or even act with hostility, like that time at Walmart.

“When I realized it was about me, I tried to pretend that I wasn’t listening,” Irum says. “But she was talking about me a lot.” Finally, Irum turned around to defend herself: “This is my home,” she said. “I was born and raised here. Where am I supposed to go?”

For Muslims living in the U.S., situations like this are not uncommon. Once invisible in most areas of the country, Muslims are now a fast-growing group. According to estimates by the Pew Forum on Religious Life, there were about 1.3 million Muslim adults in the U.S. in 2010, almost 1 percent of the population. By 2020, that figure may more than double, to 3.9 million. 

Yet despite their increasing presence, Muslim-Americans are deeply concerned by a sense that other Americans view them negatively due to stereotypes and suspicions. One poll released last year by the Arab American Institute found that just 27 percent of Americans view Muslim-Americans favorably.

Indeed, “for many Americans, Islam is only a religion of violence,” says Islamic scholar Haroon Moghul of Columbia University in New York City. This perception is fueled by daily media reports of attacks by ISIS, the civil war in Syria, and other Middle East horrors—as well as the memory of the September 11, 2001, attacks by Al Qaeda, which killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. 

Anti-Muslim sentiment can take many forms. Muslim-Americans might be stopped at airports on suspicion of being connected with Middle Eastern terrorists. More often, they may be denied common courtesy in public. In the most extreme cases, their lives are threatened. In February, for example, a North Carolina man murdered three promising Muslim-American college students. Their offense was nothing more than their dress and faith—their differentness. 

Changing the negative perception of Islam in America is no easy task, but it’s certainly not impossible. According to the authors of the Arab American Institute report, “Education about and greater exposure to . . . American Muslims are the keys both to greater understanding of these growing communities of American citizens and to ensuring that their rights are secured.”

For Muslim-Americans, it can be hard just getting past appearances. Simply looking “Arab” can be enough to trigger people’s negative stereotypes. (A majority of Arab-Americans are actually Christian, and less than a quarter of American Muslims are Arab.) And as Irum Ali can tell you, people are often unsettled by the sight of a woman with her head covered. (See “Dress Codes,” below.) 

Soumaya Khalifa of Atlanta, Georgia, is also used to the stares. She knows people see her head scarf and immediately make assumptions about her. “They think that I’m not American,” she says. “They assume I’m not educated—and that I’m oppressed.” 

Muslims—and Muslim women in particular—are often stereotyped in this way. (See “Is Islam Biased Against Women?,” below.) But in fact, Khalifa, like Irum, chose to wear the head scarf. A lifelong Muslim, she was already in her 30s when she made the decision as “part of a spiritual journey.” She insists that, far from feeling that it’s oppressive, many women find the hijab to be liberating.

Moreover, Khalifa—who was born in Egypt and grew up in Texas—has two college degrees and is a successful consultant to major corporations. She’s hardly alone in her achievements. According to a 2009 study, Muslim-American women are better educated than the average American—and U.S. Muslims as a group also have a higher median income than Americans as a whole.

Perhaps the myth that’s hardest to dispel is that Islam promotes terrorism. In the U.S., while acts of homegrown extremists like the Boston Marathon bombers generate widespread outrage, terrorist violence by Muslims is extremely rare. Muslim-Americans are confused and hurt when they are associated with extremists here or overseas, says Haroon Moghul.

“American Muslims are American,” he insists. Muslim victims died in the 9/11 attacks and many Islamic leaders have consistently denounced terrorist acts.“We can’t understand why people assume we have any responsibility for events on the other side of the world,” Moghul says. 

Muslims anywhere who say they are killing in the name of Islam are distorting religion by looking for a reason for violence that’s not in the Koran, Moghul says. “The sad fact is [that] when people want to use violence, they find whatever justification they need to.”

Just how different are Muslims from other Americans? Not much, if at all, say many American Muslims. For her part, Irum Ali stresses her utter normality. “I’m totally normal. I go to school and I work and I live in Texas—and I have my entire life,” she says. 

Anna Bigelow teaches religious studies at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. In important ways, she says, American Muslims today are like the waves of Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrants who came to the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries. “Historically, it has taken a long time for minority populations to become familiar and accepted in U.S. society,” she points out. 

But Bigelow is encouraged by the growing numbers of non-Muslim students taking her courses on Islam. “They have Muslim friends, neighbors, or co-workers and have become curious to learn more than what they see in the media. For me, this is very hopeful.”

Meanwhile, Soumaya Khalifa sees progress toward acceptance of Islam in America in a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision. The Court ruled that an Abercrombie & Fitch store in Colorado had discriminated when it refused to hire a young Muslim woman who was wearing a hijab. “Personal and religious freedom—this is a clear case of what this country is all about,” she says.

Still, according to Moghul, there is work ahead: Muslims and non-Muslims must continue to discover their common values. “We need to hear each other in order to respect each other,” he explains. Islam, he says, is a faith of peace and inclusion. “We believe in improving the world, not destroying it.”