Paranoid America threatens Muslims - Through the looking glass

Report Suspicious Activity. Call 1-800-492-TIPS." This message, courtesy of the Homeland Security Department, was emblazoned on a billboard near I-95, just before the highway roars into Washington, D.C. On a whim I decided to call the number and air some technical reservations. The man who picked up had a warm, folksy drawl reminiscent of Mayberry; "Detective Taylor here."

"I have to say, I am really confused by the word "suspicious,'" I said. "Well, there's no textbook definition of what "suspicious is," he explained. "It's when you see anything going on which doesn't look normal, or raises the hair on the back of your neck." Suspicious equals not normal. Uh-oh.

"I'm a little nervous by all this," I told Taylor, "isn't it possible for someone to make a mistake about "suspicious activity" and inform on some innocent person?" "Sure can," he patiently explained, "but that's what we're here for. We decide if something is suspicious or not." "How can you tell?" "Ma'am, after you've been a cop for 22 years, it comes naturally if someone is being suspicious or not."

But perhaps it doesn't come as naturally as Taylor thinks it does. As any veteran of the civil rights struggle in the South can tell you, cops were often on back-slapping terms with Klansmen. The FBI's campaign to neutralize Martin Luther King as an effective civil rights leader under COINTELPRO included attempts to blackmail him into committing suicide. The state has a less than spotless record in discriminating between the guilty and the innocent when certain groups are broadly perceived as dangerous and threatening, such as its actions regarding the Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Post-Sept. 11, we fear Muslims. While President Bush's rhetoric has distinguished between terrorists and law-abiding patriots, his policies have tarred all with a wide brush. The Justice Department detained and expelled 13,000 Arabs and other American Muslims overstaying their visas, after they voluntarily turned themselves in. Not all absconders were seen as equally illegal, though. Only recently, Bush courted the Latino bloc by offering temporary green cards to illegal Hispanic immigrants in the nation. Apparently, the White House believes Hispanic farm laborers and hotel maids are less dangerous than Arab cab drivers.

But this was perhaps the least damaging of their security measures. Passenger profiling has become widespread. A young Muslim woman named Sarah Kaukab was recently pulled off a flight, and was invasively searched by airport security officials, who made her take off her headscarf, unzipped her pants, and pulled at her underclothes. The Texas Civil Rights Project reports mass raids by the FBI on Muslim homes and businesses, citing examples of police taking extreme liberties with Muslims' civil rights. The tension has spread to every arena of civil society. At school, work and public places, Muslims face discrimination and outright harrasment.

The reason why this state of affairs is so disastrous is because it humiliates and frightens an entire community integrated into the fiber of mainstream America. The American Muslim community is an example of the diversity celebrated by this country: a rich panorama of groups and cultures that encompasses not only Arabs and South Asians, but also a significant percentage of Caucasians, African-Americans and Hispanics.

Has our current paranoia made "American Muslim" an oxymoron? Perhaps not, says Tamara Wittes, a scholar at the Brookings Institute's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "When a country faces the kind of situation [we've faced after 9-11], it goes through a process of reconfiguring the balance between openness and security," she notes, referring to the previous cycles of backlash against immigrant groups in America. Ordinarily, we could take comfort that, Americans will eventually reexamine their past and reject their hatred. Usually, this takes place long after a conflict has ended and a new generation has arisen to examine its parents' sins.

However, what makes the current situation different is the very nature of the war on terror. As a conflict which continues for an indefinite length of time, when will we ever feel safe enough to repudiate the past and break down stereotypes? Or will we go on being irrationally suspicious?

Zainab Cheema's column appears every two weeks.