Fear of 'the other'

DENVER – In January 2009, Najibullah Zazi moved to this Colorado city from New York, sustaining himself by running a small coffee cart business and driving an airport limousine.

The resident alien from Afghanistan, age 24 at the time, stayed out of trouble and kept his head down.

Nine months later, Zazi was under arrest, facing an indictment for conspiracy to blow up the New York subway. Within five months, he pleaded guilty to providing material support to al-Qaeda and conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction and commit murder in a foreign land. His plea saved him from the death penalty, but he faces life in prison.

His father Mohammed, whose home was one of two places where Zazi stayed in Denver, faces at least 10 years in prison for obstruction of justice.

Zazi’s immigrant Afghan accomplice also pleaded guilty in April 2010. A second accomplice, a Bosnian immigrant, still faces trial.

The three were apprehended just four days before the attack was supposed to be staged, using TATP, or triacetone triperoxide acetone peroxide – the same explosive used in the London subway bombing and by American “shoe bomber” Richard Reid.

What put the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Denver division on the trail of Zazi? Intel shared by Britain’s Scotland Yard. Plus the FBI was alerted to a closed-circuit video footage of Zazi taken in August 2009, pushing a supermarket cart laden with large bottles of hydrogen peroxide, whose concentrated form is a critical component of TATP.

Declassified records of the case show that when Zazi arrived in New York to stage the attack, he was tipped off that the FBI was onto him by an Afghan imam in Queens, Ahmad Wais Afzali.

When the quiet Muslim next door and the neighborhood imam are implicated in plots to commit mass murder by bombing the subway you take every day, avoiding religious stereotyping can be a challenge.

The challenge becomes tougher for people whose image of Muslims is shaped largely by mass media, which of course will highlight a foiled plot to blow up a busy subway in the heart of America. The religious Right, with individuals like the discredited Ted Haggard (accused of using methamphetamine, not cocaine as I previously wrote), reinforces negative perceptions of Islam.

The average non-Muslim has little understanding of Islam and will not spare the time to try to. Even the average Pinoy Catholic makes little effort to do so.

There are millions of law-abiding, peace-loving Muslims in the United States. But their stories as responsible citizens or immigrants trying to live the American dream are eclipsed by every Zazi who is arrested.

Americans value privacy and generally don’t like spying or being spied upon. But as responsible citizens, and for their own personal safety, they don’t need to be forced these days to be on the lookout for signs that someone might be trying to bring them grievous harm.

That someone, unfortunately for the immigrant Muslim community, often looks like Zazi. This image keeps getting in the way of continuing efforts in this country, intensified since the 9/11 attacks, to reach out to Muslims and understand Islam better. There is a significant segment of the US population that will agree with American security officials’ assessment of the terrorist threat: the United States is just one attack away from disaster.

Both non-Muslim Americans and leaders of the Muslim community in this country admit that stereotyping and religious discrimination continue.

I am near the end of a three-week seminar for senior journalists that the East-West Center in Honolulu has developed to find ways of improving America’s relations with the Muslim world. My fellow participants are from Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia and Pakistan – all countries with significant Muslim populations. All but two of us are Muslims; each of the Muslims has a different way of practicing Islam.

Also attending the seminar, which started in Honolulu, are several American journalists. They went to Asia; we went to the continental United States. We wrap up the seminar this week in Honolulu.

Aside from such programs, there are many inter-faith initiatives across the United States to promote religious harmony and make diversity an asset rather than a liability. But during my travels for this seminar, Americans admitted that 9/11, and subsequent terror plots foiled or made public, continue to reinforce their perceptions that today’s peaceful, friendly Muslim neighbor could be tomorrow’s suicide bomber out to murder Americans.

We fear the unknown or “the other” and often hate what we fear.

The silver living in this still prevalent fear of “the other” is that it could lead to a better understanding of Islam and improved inter-faith relations.

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Older generations of Jews and Catholics, who not too long ago also suffered discrimination by Protestant Christians in the US, understand the predicament of Muslims here. Jewish and Catholic groups are active in inter-faith outreach programs.

The US military is also actively promoting religious understanding. At the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, cadets are required to undergo a program, launched in April 2008, on religious respect. The academy has a policy of “religious accommodation” that responds to the needs of 11 faith groups including fringe beliefs. In a cadet population of thousands, the 10 or 12 self-identified Buddhists and a similar number of believers in “earth-centered spirituality” – Wiccans, Druids and pagans – have their own worship areas, although smaller and less elaborate than those of the Christians, Catholics and Jews.

We received an unconfirmed report that some cadets in the past felt that the academy was imposing Christianity on them. Maybe this encouraged the policy of religious accommodation; 9/11 surely intensified it.

The US government – and the Obama administration in particular – will want to improve its relations with the Islamic world.

A global study conducted from March 2008 to May 2010 by the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center showed approval of US leadership going down in the Middle East and North Africa since President Barack Obama’s “New Beginning” speech at Cairo University in Egypt in June 2009.

The decline is attributed to Obama’s failure to deliver on his promises, including the shutdown of the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay.

John F. Kennedy brought the Roman Catholic faith into the American religious mainstream. Jews have not only gone mainstream but are also among the most influential groups in this country.

Better understanding of “the other” erases fear and discrimination. Several Muslim leaders in the US told us that they hoped to see this happen to their faith, even if later rather than sooner.