Diversity is no barrier to unity

Malaysia would seem to have nothing in common with Nashville but this city of country music has hit a high note on religious diversity in a case that would resonate in any multi-racial country.

ON a cold February day, a Nashville mosque was vandalised with a chilling message “Muslims Go Home” splayed out in red paint on its wall.
It was a hate crime that shattered the community which had so far faced little trouble in this Tennessee city known for its country music.
Hell did not break loose, though.
Instead, the Somali congregation found an outpouring of support from people of all stripes – from Nashville mayor Karl Dean to the Jewish community to a lorry driver who wanted to help clean up the graffiti.
“Our mayor literally dropped everything and rushed there,” said Kasar Abdullah, who is advocacy and education director of Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition.
That incident, she said, brought out the true face of the community.
“The reaction was fabulous,” she said.
“There was tremendous backing from native Nashvillians who support Muslims being here,” said Kasar, who was just six when her family fled Kurdistan and arrived in Nashville in 1996.
Nashville, which has a 600,000-strong population, has seen an influx ing of immigrants especially Muslims in the past decade. It also has the largest Kurdish community in the United States.
A graduate of Tennessee State University, Kasar who is married and has a two-year-old daughter spoke candidly to a group of Asian journalists during their visit to Nashville organised by the Honolulu-based East-West Center recently.
(The trip was part of a three-week seminar on “Bridging Gaps Between the United States and the Muslim World”.)
Kasar blamed the hate crimes on local leaders who used fear tactics, citing a politician who is running for Congress on an anti-Syariah platform and whose campaign focused on immigration and English as the official language.
Also, the media, in seeking high ratings, ran reports that caused tension among the people, she said.
“There have been numerous articles in the local media that are raising negative feelings.”
A TV channel, for instance, carried a broadcast about a Muslim community in Tennessee that was supposedly a terrorist training compound and dubbed it “Islamville”.
It subsequently found no such training camp “but the damage had been done,” said Kasar.
She also spoke about local hate groups which had held meetings and press conferences to accuse Islam of being a “religion of jihad”.
Still, Kasar loves being in the United States.
“I am glad to be here. This is where I learned what Islam really is instead of what I am expected to do by my culture,” she said.
She cited the Kurdish culture where women did not wear the hijab until they were married.
Kasar started wearing the veil after 9/11.
“There was a battle in my own family who did not want me to put it on. A lot of my Muslim friends took it off after 9/11.”
She persisted in covering her head, thinking: “I am a Muslim; I can be successful; there is freedom of choice in Islam.”
So who are the American Muslims?
Magali Rheault, Gallup Poll senior consultant, said they were the most racially diverse group in the United States.
Muslim converts
“African-Americans, mostly converts, form the biggest group (35%),” she said during a talk on “Muslim Americans: A National Portrait” in Washington DC.
The statistics were derived from a study by The Muslim West Facts Project released last year which interviewed 319,751 adults.
It found 70% of Muslim Americans reported being employed, out of which at least 30% had a professional job.
Most Muslim Americans are young, too, compared to believers of other faiths. They have the highest proportion of adults between the ages of 18 and 29.
“9/11 really put Islam on the radar screen of Americans,” Rheault said.
Asked about Muslim converts among American youths, she said: “I don’t have the research on this but I think Islam’s concept of peace and brotherhood appealed to a lot people.”
Still, an analysis on “Religious Perceptions in America” by the Gallup World Religion Survey found that 53% of Americans admitted that their opinion of Islam was either “not too favourable” or “not favourable at all”.
Most of them also said they had little knowledge of Islam and another 43% admitted to feeling at least “a little prejudice” against Muslims.
But attitudes have gradually changed over the years.
Lana Lockhart-Ezzeir, a Louisiana native who converted to Islam 22 years ago while still in college, recalled the stares when she wore the hijab back then.
“When I first became a Muslim, the hardest part was putting on the hijab. Now when you walk around here in Nashville, you would hardly get a glance for wearing one. You see the hijab all the time, in Walmart and everywhere else,” she said.
“America,” she added, “is a home of immigrants. If people tell you to go home, you can say the same thing to them.”
Things are not entirely smooth sailing, however.
Her son once came back from school and told her that his friends had remarked to him that “you’re going to hell because you don’t believe in Jesus.”
As a social worker, Lockhart-Ezzeir is now helping young Muslims acculturate through a girl scout movement in Nashville, where she and her Palestinian husband have been living since 1994.
A Somali mother, whose child is in the scout movement, said: “I don’t worry about what people think anymore. I don’t care if they think I have a machete under my veil.”
Having lived peacefully in the United States since 1974, she refused to see discrimination or stereotypes.
“If you want to find hate, that is what you would find.”
Life, indeed, has its sweet ironies.
Another Nashville mosque, which was burned in 2008, is now operating from another building that was once a church.
“About 40% of the donations given to us after the attack came from Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims,” said Daoud Abudiab, president of the Islamic Centre of Columbia.
Three men have been convicted for painting swastikas on the mosque and throwing Molotov cocktails at it. Last month, one the offenders was sentenced to 15 years’ jail.
Daoud acknowledged that there had been greater hostility since 9/11.
“But after the fire in the mosque, I received so many calls from local groups and churches denouncing the attack and encouraging us to rebuild.”
The FBI and the Government, he said, had done very well also.
“We did not see the fire as a tragedy but a good way to open up communication.”
But his relatives in Palestine and Dubai did ask him to pack up and leave.
He chose to stay.
“This is our home, our town. I feel welcomed here.”