Said El-Dajani, raised Muslim in Fort Wayne, says modesty is a large part of Islam.
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Ibrahim Alburaithen was in a Fort Wayne bar, chatting with a friend who had spent time as a soldier in Iraq, when another man approached and struck up a conversation.
When the man, who appeared to be drunk, found out Alburaithen was from Saudi Arabia, he uttered some curse words and said: “What are you doing here? Go home. Go back to Saudi Arabia.”
The confrontation was another sign for Alburaithen of how things have changed in the United States after Sept. 11, 2001 – especially for Muslims.
It was then that many people started to think that Saudis and especially Arabs are all terrorists, he says.
Alburaithen was upset about the conversation with the drunken man, but he says he gets it.
“I felt bad, but it’s not that bad because it was from a drunk guy. He was drunk – I understand,” he says. But “I felt kind of bad because drunk people, they’re always honest.”
A September survey released by the Pew Forum for Religion & Public Life found that 58 percent of adult Americans say they believe Muslims are subject to a lot of discrimination in the U.S. Sixty-five percent of those surveyed also said they thought Islam was very or somewhat different from their own religions, despite the fact that Islam shares prophets and holy texts with Christianity and Judaism.
New statistics from the Pew Forum show 2.4 million Muslims live in the U.S., making up 0.8 percent of the U.S. population and 0.2 percent of the world Muslim population.
While there is not a complete count of how many Muslims live in northeast Indiana, the Muslim Alliance of Indiana – a state group that encourages civic involvement among Muslims – lists seven Islamic centers in Fort Wayne, which include other organizations as well as mosques.
Alburaithen, along with two other men, spoke about what it is like being Muslim in northeast Indiana.
Ibrahim Alburaithen
Alburaithen has been in the U.S. since August 2007. Although he is Saudi, he moved here from Egypt to get a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Trine University in Angola. He took English classes for a few years and is now in his second semester of the bachelor’s degree program.
He figures he might have a slightly easier time than most Muslims adjusting to American culture because he’s not a terribly religious person. He believes in God, he says, and he prays, but he doesn’t follow the religion strictly.
Part of the problem is that it can be difficult to perform prayers at the appropriate time – less because of outsiders’ comments and more because of cleanliness. To perform prayers, a Muslim puts his or her forehead and hands on the floor.
“In the public places, you wouldn’t find a clean carpet (where) you can do that,” Alburaithen says.
Another thing that can trip up foreign Muslims is clothing. Alburaithen says he dresses in jeans and T-shirts, the same way he dressed in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. However, some Muslims choose to wear a thobe, the long white dress for men, which might seem to clash with American dress for men.
“I think I know how to deal with culture,” he says. “I don’t know everything about the culture, but I think I’m fine. Some people have some problems.”
Said El-Dajani
El-Dajani was born in Chicago, but he has lived in Fort Wayne most of his life. His mother is Puerto Rican; his father, Palestinian.
He was raised Muslim, but he doesn’t really look the part, he says: He has a fair complexion, and people are more likely to mistake him for Hawaiian or Korean, he says.
He has a beard now, too. He says it’s more stereotypical of a Muslim.
“Isn’t that awful?” El-Dajani asks, laughing.
El-Dajani says he doesn’t face much discrimination, and he wonders whether it is because he doesn’t look Arab. Plus, he says, he surrounds himself with people who he believes wouldn’t discriminate, and he has no accent, although he is trilingual, fluent in Spanish and versed in Arabic.
Most discrimination he hears about secondhand.
“Besides what I see in the movies and besides what I see in the media and besides what I hear through the community, there’s a lot of stuff that comes through the grapevine,” he says. “Yeah, we do hear a lot of things, a lot of discrimination.”
He mentions a story of a woman in an Atlanta suburb who didn’t remove her head scarf, called a hijab, in court. She was jailed for contempt.
“I think it is a little bit harder for women than it is for men,” El-Dajani says. “There’s a lot more customs and discipline to the lifestyle of women that is demanded that’s harder to conform to in a Western society. Men don’t necessarily struggle with modesty, as compared to women.”
Modesty is a large part of Islam, El-Dajani says, and that can be the hardest thing to deal with: remaining modest, not letting go of one’s beliefs, but still conforming to American society.
Gokhan Karaatli
Karaatli was born in Turkey, but he has lived in the United States for nearly 17 years, currently residing in Fort Wayne. Up until the Sept. 11 attacks, he didn’t think about being Muslim, at least not in the sense of how others viewed him.
After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Karaatli started thinking about it. And he started watching what he said.
“Normally, I’m a person who would not necessarily behave certain ways because I’m so concerned about how the other people would think or react,” he says. “The interesting thing is I found myself, especially these more recent years, (feeling) that maybe I am a little more guarded than I have been in the past. I certainly feel that if people know that I belong to a certain faith, that may definitely incorrectly impact their view of me, and maybe would prevent them (from getting) to know me as a person, as who I am, as opposed to all those misperceptions.
“Maybe in previous years, that was something I never even thought about. Even the fact that that thought crossed my mind, I think that by itself says something.”
Karaatli has had to explain his religion to employers in the past. Bosses, for example, know not to set up meetings or interviews on Sunday. For Islam, however, Friday is a holy day. He has had events or meetings scheduled during mosque, and he has had to explain this to an employer, although he stresses he doesn’t feel discriminated against as far as his employers go. While it’s never been a problem, he says, he does feel as though at times he has to make the choice: work meeting or mosque?
Does he think Americans misunderstand Islam?
“Oh yeah, that’s an understatement,” he says. “I guess that’s the biggest reason (the Pew Forum) even conducted the survey: There is the big misunderstanding.”
Today – more so than pre-Sept. 11 – Americans have a lot of misinformation about Islam, Karaatli says. He says it also doesn’t help that people are consistently hearing “Muslim” or “Islam” next to “terrorist” in the media and other outlets.
That misunderstanding applies to Muslims, too, he says. Non-Muslims should be more reluctant to simply accept any rumor or “fact” they hear about Islam, while Muslims should be more willing to share their beliefs and educate others, Karaatli says. However, he senses that Muslims – like him – might be hesitant to speak out about their religion, fearful of being labeled or treated differently.
“One of my favorite quotes is, ‘Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts,’ ” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s a matter of lack of knowledge that contributed to discrimination.”
