Prejudice Against Muslims and Arabs in the Aftermath of 9/11 (2001)

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held a similar meeting with Senate Majority Leader Tom Dashel. The high-profile events came in the wake of some 700 reported crimes against Sikhs and Muslims since September 11. This mosque in Columbus, Ohio was rammed by a car. This one in Austin, Texas was set on fire. The FBI is investigating 40 specific events as possible hate crimes. In Central Arizona Saturday, a Sikh gas station owner was allegedly gunned down by a suspect who later told police he stood by America all the way. People understand we have determined we have the bills. We have like a Muslim country. Of them, it's unwells and we not have anything to do with this. And we are from India. Middle Easterners say they've been targeted in other settings as well. Since September 11, at least 100 Arabs attending U.S. colleges have left the country to go home. Two elderly Iranians in their 70s allegedly received death threats during a morning stroll in California.

And in Cleveland, this mosque received this phone message. I am not going to stop until I have executed at least 10 Muslims. You have no right to be in this country. This are members of a religion which is over 500 years old. They believe. As part of its response, the Sikh community is airing commercials like these. The police for tolerance have legal implications as well. As the airline industry begins to tighten security, Arab Americans and other dark-skinned passengers have increasingly become targets of suspicion. Last Thursday, this Iraqi-born man and two others were denied seats on a commercial flight when other passengers complained. The measures come up to us so we cannot take in the airplane because the customers refuse to go on the airplane if you go. Because they were scared of you. That's right. As I'm Arab, I make it. Now, religious and civil rights leaders

are warning against the rise of racial profiling as a legal tool in the war on terrorism. Attorney General Ashcroft has said ethnicity will not be the only factor used to identify suspects. But investigators and lawmakers are calling for racial tolerance on one hand, while also wrestling with a question of whether racial profiling should ever be acceptable. So, as what we've been seeing, racial profiling are reasonable investigation. We ask four people who specialize in civil rights, terrorism, and the law. Juliet Kayam is executive director of the domestic preparedness session at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Frank Wu is a professor at Howard University Law School. He is the author of Yellow, Race in America, Beyond Black and White. Stuart Taylor is a columnist for the National Journal and Newsweek and Gail Harriott is a law professor at the University of California at San Diego. Juliet Kayam, you are an Arab American woman.

Do you believe at any time that racial profiling can be acceptable? The easy answer to your question is no. It can't be. And it's not just simply for the legal issues that we'll probably get into or the ethical issues. As a person in the terrorism business, I think it's completely ineffective. It's ineffective with the specific problem we're dealing with here. I mean, we have the al-Qaeda group. We know that there are in 40 countries from Malaysia, the Philippines, to Latin America. So, Arab-looking people won't satisfy, you know, we're trying to get these guys. If you look for Arabs, you're not going to satisfy it. But, secondly, I think it's ineffective because we have a huge problem in law enforcement and intelligence right now. And that is simply we have no one to translate any of the information that we have. We have, we're starting to hear hints that we knew something was going on at least a few weeks before this and we're still trying to translate some of that information. If we continue to sort of intimidate and interrogate an entire community, and I should point out that most Arab Americans are Christians not Muslims in America,

we will not get the kind of cooperation we need. Stewart Taylor, when can racial profiling ever be acceptable? I think what a form of racial profiling, depending on how you define it, at airports, people getting on airplanes, giving special scrutiny to people who look Arab. For a limited time, may be a gestifiable exception to the general rule I would apply against racial profiling. As a general matter, I deploy racial profiling. I think people getting on airliners are a very special case. Unless you can thoroughly search everyone, which would be great, but I think it would take hours and hours and hours. It makes sense to search with special care those people who look like all of the mass murder suicide hijackers who did the deeds on September 11th. The fact is that although obviously many people might be hijackers, the only mass movement in the world that we know of

that includes a number of numerous people who are interested in mass murder in Americans by hijacking airplanes and crashing them and committing suicide in the process are adherence to this perversion of Islam that centers in the Middle East. Frank, what about that? Special cases should be allowed here? Well, once you're allowed in one instance, you start sliding down that slippery slope. Civil rights shouldn't be a matter of cost-benefit analysis. I think it's clear. We have to fight back, but when we fight back, we shouldn't lash out at ourselves. And that's what Arab Americans are. They're part of our society. They live here, they're part of our way of life. And who could be better to help us in this war than individuals who understand the cultural background that we're contending with during World War II. Japanese Americans formed the intelligence units that did the translation and did much of the intelligence work behind our effort to fight Japan because there you had a group. But even though it was interned, proved itself loyal

and aided the US War effort. I would add, too, that Stuart Taylor commits a classic logical flaw. Even if every single terrorist involved is of Arab ancestry, that doesn't mean everyone of Arab ancestry is a terrorist. Even if we were to take an absurd number, let's say a thousand people of Arab descent living in the United States are terrorists. That's still a fraction of 1% of the Arab population. The other 99% are law-biting citizens, like you or me, having racial profiling sweeps too broadly using race. It's simply wrong.

Prejudice Against Muslims and Arabs in the Aftermath of 9/11 (2001)

As shown in this report of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the weeks after September 11 featured a spate of hate crimes perpetrated against people who appeared ethnically similar to the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks. Americans harassed Arabs on the street, vandalized mosques, and one man even murdered a Sikh gas station owner. The panel discussion in the clip shows how many people – including law professors and mainstream political figures – openly called for “profiling” at airports, in which Arabs and Muslims would be subject to additional searches before boarding flights. To be sure, there was also a concerted effort to push back against these impulses. Members of churches and synagogues made a point of demonstrating solidarity with members of nearby mosques, and commentators emphasized that America was a nation of all colors and creeds. In a September 17, 2001, speech, President Bush asserted that the terrorists did not represent the “true faith of Islam,” and urged that Muslim Americans “need to be treated with respect.” Nevertheless, even these explicit statements of tolerance provide evidence that Americans felt it was necessary to push back against a rising tide of suspicion of Muslims, Arabs, and indeed, people whose appearance associated them with the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer | NewsHour Productions | September 26, 2001 This video clip and associated transcript appear from 15:43 - 22:22 in the full record.

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