Journal Entry: Intersection and Religious Discrimination

250 I RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION belongs not in Butte." The Immigration Act of 1917 further prohibited immigration from Asian countries from the "barred zone," including parts of China, India, Siam, Burma, Asiatic Russian, Polynesian Islands, and parts of Afghanistan.

This "nativist" anti-immigration fever culminated in 1924 with the National Origins Act, which set restrictive quotas of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, that is, mainly on Catholics and Jews (the latter referred to as members of the so-called "Hebrew race").

The law, however, permitted large allocations of immigrants from Great Britain and Germany in order to "protect our values . . . [as] a Western Christian civilization." Jews were considered racial as well as religious undesirables by the 19''' century scientific community as a lower "racial" type, with essential immutable biological characteristics— a trend that increased markedly into the early 20* century C.E. Once seen as largely a rehgious, ethnic, or political group, Jews were viewed by "nativists," who valued American racial and religious "purity," as a "mixed race" (a so-called "mongrel" or "bastard race"), a people who had crossed racial barriers by interbreeding with black Africans during the Jewish Diaspora.

These restrictions on immigration based on "national origins" were not lifted until The Immigration and Nationalit}' Act of 1965.

This legislation resulted in dramatic increases in immigration from both Asian and Latin American countries of many religious backgrounds including Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Zoroastrian, varying forms of Catholicism, and African, and Afro-Caribbean rehgious traditions.

The 1965 law allowed for 170,000 immi­ grants from the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 from the Western Hemisphere with 20,000 immigrants per Eastern Hemisphere country. Partly as a result of the removal of restrictions on immigration that were specifically race-based and implicitly religion-based reflecting between 1882 until the 1960s—an effort to create an U.S.-American culture that was Protestant as well as northern European—the United States today stands as the most religiously diverse country in the world.

This diversity' poses great challenges as well as opportunities.

46 Religious Oppression of Indian Americans in the Contemporary United States Khyati Y.

Joshi In the United States, we have a Constitutionally guaranteed "freedom of religion," the right to choose and practice the faith we hold dear; the Constitution prohibits the state from sponsoring a rehgion and from restricting people's exercise of their religious beliefs.

But having free choice is not the same as to have one's choice accepted and supported by the institutions and culture of one's country, rather than ignored, marginalized, exoticized or demonized.

In this section, I discuss the concepts of religious oppression and Christian privilege and then apply them to the contemporary experiences of Indian American Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.

The dynamics of religious oppression and Christian privilege are complicated by the fact that these populations are religious minorities as well as mem­ bers of visible racial and ethnic minorit)' groups. While followers of these faiths have been present m the U.S. since the early 1800s, it was not until the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 that the United States saw the arrival of substantial numbers of immigrant CHRISTIANITY IN PUBLIC SCHOOLiNG AND IN THE LARGER SOCIETY | a hijab (the garment many Mushm women wear in pubhc) was taking her baby for a walk in a stroller, and a man driving a truck nearly ran them over. The woman cried out that, "You almost killed my baby!," and the man responded, "It wouldn't have been a big loss." Nearly one-quarter of all reported civil rights violations against American Muslims involve unwarranted arrests and searches. Law enforcement agencies routinely "profile" Muslims of apparent Middle Eastern heritage in airports or simply while driving in their cars for interrogation and invasive and aggressive searches. In addition, governmental agencies, such as the IRS and FBI, continue to enter individuals' homes and mosques and make unreasonable arrests and detentions. Anti-Muslim hate crimes also occur on college and university campuses across the United States.

Sikhs have been the targets of increasing numbers of hate crimes as well.

Since 2002, the Sikh Coalition organization listed 62 hate crimes directed against Sikh citizens of the United States. Many of the attacks committed against Sikhs are classified under the category of "personal attacks" or assaults as well as vandalism and arson. One incident involved a Sikh student at the University of North Carohna who was assaulted by three local teenagers. National attention focused on the severe beating of Rajinder Singh Shalsa in New York City, and the fatal shooting of Sikh gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi in Mesa, Arizona.

It is widely assumed that Sikhs are targeted because they wear turbans, which the public imagination equates with terrorism.

Hindus have hkewise been targeted. In June 2003, for example, Saurabh Bhalerao, a 24-year-old Indian graduate student studying in Massachusetts, was robbed, burned with cigarettes, beaten, stuffed in a truck, and twice stabbed before his assailants dumped him along the road. The attackers allegedly misidentified this Hindu student for a Mushm because during the assault, the perpetrators yelled at him, "Go back to Iraq." Each year the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish social advocacy organization, docu­ ments incidents of anti-Jewish hate crimes. They reported over 1,500 such incidents in 2004 alone, including verbal and physical assault, harassment, vandalism, property damage, and other acts of hate. These included the burning of a Holocaust museum in Indiana, and the spray-painting of swastikas and epithets on the walls and driveway of a Jewish community center near Phoenix, Arizona.

This latter incident occurred on my campus, Iowa State University, in 2005.

Among the swastikas, the vandals also spray-painted anti-Muslim, racist, misogynist, and homophobic epithets.

"MULTI-FACETED" PRIVILEGE AND OPPRESSION:

IMMIGRATION BATTLES The history of the 19*-century anti-immigration battles illustrates the intersections and interactions among Young's five faces of powerlessness, exploitation, marginalization, cultural imperialism, and violence, by which non-Christian religious status interacted with subordinated racial(ized) status. Throughout the 19* and into the 20* centuries, nativist exclusionist movements gained momentum within the United States. "Nativist" refers to an anti-immigrant ideology by U.S.-born, European-heritage Protestants, directed especially against non-Protestants such as Italian or Irish Catholics, Eastern European Jews, Asian Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Buddhists. In some cases, non-white, non-Protestant ethnic and religious groups were socially constructed as lower "racial" forms by the mainline Protestant power structure as a justification for exclusion, exploitation, marginalization, cultural imperialism, and violence. Subsequently, religion was itself "racialized." Strong "nativist" currents against Asian Muslim, Sikh, and Buddhist immigrants led the United States Congress to bar Chinese immigrants in 1882, and also made it illegal for Chinese to marry white or black Americans. The exclusionist sentiment regarding the Chinese held by many U.S. citizens was summarized by the editor of the newspaper in Butte, Montana: "The Chinaman's life is not our life, his religion is not our religion.

... He RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION OF INDIAN AMERICANS IN THE CONTEMPORARY UNITED STATES | • ARCHITECTURE.

The norms for houses of worship in which, for example, a steeple is "normal" but a minaret is something foreign.

• PRAYER.

The western image involves an act of worship performed in a seated or kneeling position, in silence, and with crossed hands.

• SACRED STORIES.

In American societ)'. Biblical stories, however fantastical, are treated as credible. . . . Stories based in the Christian tradition, such as the Virgin birth, are believed to be credible and true, whereas stories based in the Muslim tradi­ tion, such as Mohammed's midnight flight to heaven, or the Hindu tradition, such as Vishnu's periodic visitation upon earth in different incarnations, are not believed and considered to be incredible and fantastical.

• HOLIDAYS.

State and federal holidays, including the position of the "weekend" on Saturday and Sunday, are structured around the Christian calendar.

• SAFETY.

Most Christians are able to pray publicly and visibly in safet)', without fear of violence or mockery.

Also, Christian congregations can build their houses of worship without opposition from neighbors and local authorities.

Christian privilege benefits not only people who identify with Christianity or con­ sider themselves "religious," but also those born Christian who are no longer observant.

Christian privilege involves a legacy of public acceptance from which Christians benefit whether they want to or not, and whether they know it or not. It is an unearned perquisite of their identity as Christians. They can live theii lives unaware of the daily exclusions, insults, and assaults endured by Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs.

Contrariwise, non-Christians find themselves forced to explain their religions not in their own terms but by reference to a Christian vocabulary: "What is your church like?

What is your Bible? When is your Christmas?" The conveniences of life as a Christian are lost to the Hindu who must leave work to observe a Hindu New Year, the Sikh who must cut his hair in order to join the mihtary, or the Muslim student who must participate in gym class while fasting for Ramadan.

2. THE BELIEF SYSTEMS OF HINDUISM, ISLAM, AND SIKHISM, ALONG WITH THEIR RESPECTIVE HISTORIES AND CULTURES ARE DELEGITIMIZED, MISREPRESENTED AND/OR DISCOUNTED By exacerbating the "otherness" of Indian American Hmdus, Muslims, and Sikhs, the racialization of religion contributes to the delegitimization of these three faiths in a number of ways.

First, in everyday interactions the Christian norm is apphed, and Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism are compared to this norm. Second, differences, real or imagined, from the Christian norm are highlighted, such as the Christian posture of "prayer" (kneeling, with the fingers of both hands interlaced) compared to Mushm bowing eastward or to Hindu aarti (fire offering). In terms of belief, the power of the norm is found at the line between what the western mind views as "credible" and what it considers "incredible." Consider these three stories: A Jewish virgin gives birth to the child of God, after an angel visits her at night and tells her what to name the child.

A prophet rides a flying horse to Heaven, accompanied by an angel. God comes to earth in the form of a dwarf and saves the world from a demon king.

The first of these stories is the Biblical story of the Annunciation and the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary. What makes it more credible or "believable" an idea than Mohammed's midnight flight from Jerusalem, or Vishnu's periodic visitation of the Earth in different incarnations? Yet in the United States, it is. Bibhcal stories, however fantastical, are treated as fact, or at least as "faith." The beliefs of other religions are 254 I RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION viewed as silly (at best) or heretical (at worst); they are branded with the more dismissive terminology of "myth" or "superstition." Christian norms are reinforced by the Christian majorit)' who assume these norms, and also assume without question the illegitimacy of other different faith traditions by comparison.

The perception of illegitimacy grows out of ignorance, contempt, and mischaracterization of Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism by the mass m.edia as well as social and political institutions and individuals.

Its negative effect is felt most dramatically by children and adolescents from marginalized faith traditions, whose home belief systems are invalidated and even actively contested by educators, other adults, and peers, and whose invisibility is manifested in the absence of news coverage or the congratulatory public service announcements aired around Christmas, Easter, and other "recognized" holidays. Disrespect is shown by the co-option of holy images and prayers to sell candles, perfume, and other commercial goods.

3. HARASSMENT, DISCRIMINATION, AND OTHER FORMS OF DIFFERENTIAL TREATMENT ARE INSTITUTIONAL AND UNCHALLENGED Another dimension of Christian privilege appears in the non-acceptance, disrespect, and invisibihty of minority religious traditions, despite the Constitutional guarantee of the free exercise of religion. Christian privilege in this case involves both legal "freedom" (which is shared, at least in theory, by members of other religions) and social sanction, which is not available to marginalized faith traditions.

As Christians are made to be confident, comfortable, and oblivious to their privilege because of the omnipresence of Christianity in the American culture and social system, other religious groups are made unsure, uncom­ fortable and alienated. Being Christian protects one from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which—even when subtle—are part of daily experience for people of Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, and other non-western religious backgrounds. While society's endorsement may be tacit, and even invisible to the Christian eye, it's absence is conspicuous and visible to these religious minorities.

4. VIOLENCE AND THE THREAT OF VIOLENCE Many South Asian and Arab Americans and other "double minorities"—non-White and non-Christian—experience verbal attacks and physical threats and attacks from people who are both White and Christian. Students in the K-12 school setting are threatened because of their religious identity (often signified by turban or hijab) and racialized phe- notype. While hate crimes and threats of violence against these populations did in fact increase during the weeks and months after September 11, 2001, they were not confined to this "9/11 backlash" and in fact have occurred both before and since that time.

Indian American Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs are part of immigrant communities, and for these communities, although experiencing racism, the experience of religion is paramount.

The communities are built on the edifice of rehgion, and while they also encounter racism, the experience of religious oppression is critical and must not be ignored. The impact of racial oppression takes on religious dimensions, arising from the belief in rehgion as something especially profound and "never changing." Religious oppression results in Indian American Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus identifying more closely with their home religion, magnifying religion's role in one's life and increasing the likelihood the individual will identify as "reli­ gious" and engage in worship, ritual, and rehgious study in adulthood. PRECEDENTS | 255 47 The Destruction of ttie European Jews Precedents Raul Hilberg Anti-Jewish pohcies and actions did not have their beginning in 1933. For many cen­ turies, and in many countries, the Jews had been victims of destructive action. . . . The first anti-Jewish pohcy started in the fourth century after Christ in Rome.

Early in the fourth century, during the reign of Constantine, the Christian Church gained power in Rome, and Christianity became the state religion. From this period, the state carried out Church policy. For the next twelve centuries, the Catholic Church prescribed the measures that were to be taken with respect to the Jews. Unlike the pre-Christian Romans, who claimed no monopoly on religion and faith, the Christian Church insisted on acceptance of Christian doctrine.

For an understanding of Christian policy toward Jewry, it is essential to realize that the Church pursued conversion not so much for the sake of aggrandizing its power (the Jews have always been few in number), but because of the conviction that it was the duty of true believers to save unbelievers from the doom of eternal hellfire. Zealousness in the pursuit of conversion was an indication of the depth of faith. The Christian religion was not one of many religions, but the true rehgion, the only one. Those who were not in its fold were either ignorant or in error. The Jews could not accept Christianity.

In the very early stages of the Christian faith, many Jews regarded Christians as mem­ bers of a Jewish sect.

The first Christians, after all, still observed the Jewish law. They had merely added a few nonessential practices, such as baptism, to their religious life. But their view was changed abruptly when Christ was elevated to Godhood. The Jews have only one God.

This God is indivisible. He is a jealous God and admits of no other gods. He is not Christ, and Christ is not He. Christianity and Judaism have since been irreconcilable. An acceptance of Christianity has since signified an abandonment of Judaism.

In antiquity and in the Middle Ages, Jews did not abandon Judaism lightly. With patience and persistence the Church attempted to convert obstinate Jewry, and for twelve hundred years the theological argument was fought without interruption. The Jews were not con­ vinced.

Gradually the Church began to back its words with force. . . . Step by step, but with ever widening effect, the Church adopted "defensive" measures against its passive victims.

Christians were "protected" from the "harmful" consequences of intercourse with Jews by rigid laws against intermarriage, by prohibitions of discussions about religious issues, by laws against domicile in common abodes. The Church "protected" its Christians from the "harmful" Jewish teachings by burning the Talmud and by barring Jews from public office.

Expulsion is the second anti-Jewish policy in history. In its origin, this policy presented itself only as an alternative—moreover, as an alternative that was left to the Jews. But long after the separation of church and state, long after the state had ceased to carry out church policy, expulsion and exclusion remained the goal of anti-Jewish activity.

The expulsion and exclusion policy was adopted by the Nazis and remained the goal of all anti-Jewish activity until 1941. That year marks a turning point in anti-Jewish history 256 I RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION In 1941 the Nazis found themselves in the midst of a total war.

Several million Jews were incarcerated in ghettos.

Emigration was impossible. A last-minute project to ship the Jews to the African island of Madagascar had fallen through. The "Jewish problem" had to be "solved" in some other way.

At this crucial time, the idea of a "territorial solution" emerged in Nazi minds.

The "territorial solution," or "the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe," as it became known, envisaged the death of European Jewry.

The European Jews were to be killed.

This was the third anti-Jewish policy in history.

To summarize.

Since the fourth century after Christ there have been three anti-Jewish policies:

conversion, expulsion, and annihilation. The second appeared as an alternative to the first, and the third emerged as an alternative to the second.

The destruction of the European Jews between 1933 and 1945 appears to us now as an unprecedented event in history.

Indeed, in its dimensions and total configuration, nothing like it had ever happened before. As a result of an organized undertaking, five million people were killed in the short space of a few years.

The operation was over before anyone could grasp its enormity, let alone its implications for the future.

Table 47.1 Canonical and Nazi Anti-Jewish Measures Canonical Law Nazi Measure Prohibition of intermarriage and of sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews, Synod of Elvira, 306 Jews and Christians not permitted to eat together.

Synod of Elvira, 306 Jews not allowed to hold public office.

Synod of Clermont, 535...

Jews not permitted to show themselves in the streets during Passion Week, 3d Synod of Orleans, 538 Burning of the Talmud and other books, 12th Synod of Toledo, 681 ...

Jews obliged to pay taxes for support of the Church to the same extent as Christians, Synod of Gerona, 1078 .., Jews not permitted to be plaintifts, or witnesses against Christians in the Courts, 3d Lateran Council, 1179, Canon 26...

The marking of Jewish clothes with a badge, 4th Lateran Council, 1215, Canon 68 (Copied from the legislation by Caliph Omar II [634-644], who had decreed that Christians wear blue belts and Jews, yellow belts) Construction of new synagogues prohibited, Council of Oxford, 1222 Christians not permitted to attend Jewish ceremonies, Synod of Vienna, 1267...

Compulsory ghettos.

Synod of Breslau, 1267 Christians not permitted to sell or rent real estate to Jews, Synod of Ofen, 1279 ...

Jews not permitted to act as agents in the conclusion of contracts, especially marriage contracts, between Christians, Council of Basel, 1434, Sessio XIX Jews not permitted to obtain academic degrees. Council of Basel, 1434, Sessio XIX Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, September 15,1935 Jews barred from dining cars (Transport Minister to Interior Minister, December 30,1939) Law for the Re-establishment of the Professional Civil Service, April 7,1933 ...

Decree authorizing local authorities to bar Jews from the streets on certain days (i.e., Nazi holidays), December 3, 1938 Book burnings in Nazi Germany...

The "Sozialausgleichsabgabe" which provided that Jews pay a special income tax in lieu of donations for Party purposes imposed on Nazis, December 24,1940 Proposal by the Party Chancellery that Jews not be permitted to institute civil suits, September 9,1942 (Bormann to Justice Ministry, September 9,1942)...

Decree of September 1,1941 (Jews must [wear the] yellow star of David) Destruction of synagogues in entire Reich, November 10, 1938 (Heydrich to Goring, November 11,1938) Friendly relations with Jews prohibited, October 24,1941 (Gestapo directive) [Compulsory ghettos] by order by Heydrich, September 21, 1939 Decree providing for compulsory sale of Jewish real estate, December 3,1938 ...

Decree of July 6,1938, providing for liquidation of Jewish real estate agencies, brokerage agencies, and marriage agencies catering to non-Jews Law against Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities, April 25,1933 298 I RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION Biblical accounts added to her doubts. "The stories sounded a little too fantastical to me," she said. "It didn't seem to go with reality. Over the many years, I've had (religious) friends and have gone to church and tried to pray. It just didn't wotk for me. I'm more of a scientist at heart; science works for me." Brush wants people of faith to know: "I'm a good person. Just because you don't have a behef in God doesn't mean you're not a good person. I'd like a little more tolerance." Jason Gale, a 57-year-old business manager, said, "As a child, my mom was religious, so I kind of came along for the ride." But when he was 25, someone told him his religion "was a belief in magic. That caused me to start thinking about removing magical things from my thinking." Gale fell into agnosticism for a while—"someone who says God can neither be proved or disproved"—but didn't like being a "fence-sitter." So he turned to atheism. "It is a belief; not something you can prove, but it seems to be better supported by empirical observations around you than religion," he said. "In religion, you need to have a leap of faith." Gale said his wife is a Christian and returned to church about three years ago after a 20-year hiatus. He supports her, but admitted, "I knew she believed m God, but I never thought she'd become active." He said he "backs way off" when others talk emotionally about their faith or his. But he wants people to know, 'I'm not an evil person because I'm a nonbeliever. I don't torture dogs and cats just because I don't believe in God." And he gives this advice to believers: . . . "'Keep it on the positive side.' Help people, like the Peace Corps. Do what Jesus said, visit the sick and the people in prison. Do all the good works and stay away from weapons." Susan Robinson, 50, said, "I always had the feeling from childhood that (religious) things I was told were not right." As she matured, Robinson said she "kept looking for something to believe in. I explored other churches—Presbyterian, Mormon. I even started reading the Koran. I could never find a god I considered to be moral.

"Very often, there are different rules for God than for people.

Like the flood—I'm sorry; I made a mistake. Let's wipe everyone out except for one family and start all over again. Or when Jesus was born, every child up to two years old was killed.

That's a huge price for a savior." For many years, she said, "I was afraid to tell people I was an atheist because of their reaction. I've read of a poll that says people view atheists less good than Muslims, includ­ ing terrorists out there, and homosexuals. I read about things happening to people—losing friends, losing family members, losing marriages." She's still cautious, but not as fearful. And she'd like to tell believers "not to be afraid of atheists. They're usually striving to make the world a better place. And please, please keep religion out of government. Any time God is put into government or someone wants to be treated like a god, it's really bad news for all the people." Peggy Gardiner, 62 and a business owner, said her only childhood religious experience was when her grandparents took her to a small church in south Modesto.

"The Sunday school teacher told a Bible story and asked if there were any questions. I raised my hand and said, 'How did God get here?' I was about 5 or 6 years old. She said, 'God has always been here.' That pretty well settled it for me." MODESTO-AREA ATHEISTS SPEAK UR SEEK TOLERANCE | 297 them how the veil is supposed to protect women, keep them modest, keep them focused, help them respect themselves and others, and keep them pure of heart and soul.

Islam values women and it treats them as jewels to be protected.

I explained to them that the hijab brings out your personality not your looks. Women are not supposed to be talked to because of their looks or how big their boobs are or their butt or something. It's supposed to be about your personality. When you wear the hijab, it's not like a guy is going to check you out, look you up and down. He's going to talk to you because of your personality, not the way you look. Hijab makes me proud that I'm Muslim and it makes me respect my own body, myself, and it also makes other people respect me.

So as you can see I'm not weird and bizarre, even if I'm not the norm.

I am different and unique.

I can do fun things like going to beaches, pools, ice skating, skiing, paintbalhng, biking, and rollerblading. And, I do swim, believe or not, with my hijab.

I have fun because I am a normal human being like you are, but I can do it all while I'm fully covered.

I also have a life, a family that loves me, a God that cares for me, and a God that I pray to five times a day.

I mean what more can you want from life when you are loved, know where your right path is? I want to finish school, get a good education, and get a good career.

I want to represent the Muslim community as intelligent, educated, and civilized.

I want to take part in raising the standards of the Mushm Ummah and benefiting them.

56 Modesto-Area Atheists Speak Up, Seek Tolerance Sue Nowicki It's difficult at times being a person of faith, but it can be even harder to be an atheist, someone who believes there is no God.

According to a recent, large-scale Pew Forum report, 92 percent of U.S. residents believe in God or a universal spirit.

The Pew report and 50 years of Gallup surveys found that atheism in the United States has remained stable over the years, coming in at about 4 percent of the population when lumped with agnostics, who believe it is impossible to know if God exists.

[I]t's clear that atheists are an overwhelming minority, and atheists say there are sev­ eral misconceptions about their beliefs. Several strongly make the point that they are not satanists, immoral or dumb. Those who spoke . . .

range in age from 20s to 60s and from business owners to blue-collar workers. They'd like faith groups, especially Christians, to be more tolerant of their views.

Here are excerpts of what they had to say:

Mary Brush, a Modesto resident and teacher, 53, traces her atheist roots to her child­ hood in a Catholic home.

"I went to catechism classes, but I gave my mother so much grief, I didn't take confirmation in eighth grade.

The nuns frightened me.

They really made me afraid of dying.

I thought I'd go to hell." STUDENT FACES TOWN'S WRATH IN PROTEST | Despite her views, Gardiner doesn't make a scene around behevers, she said. "I have a sister and a brother-in-law, and when we go out, they like to say a prayer before a meal.

I have no problem with bowing my head with them.

To be agnostic or atheist, you have to be pretty open-minded." She'd like to tell people of faith "that while they all think they have the answer, it's not the only answer.

... If people would spend as much time trying to improve the world as they do proselytizing, we'd probably have a better world." Chris Muir is a 51-year-old Modestan who works as a part-time secretary.

"I grew up in a religious. Mormon household in a little farm town in southeast Idaho.

It was pretty much an all-Mormon town." When he was 8 years old, "I started having doubts.

One of the things they said is that when you were baptized, you'd be receiving the gifts of the Holy Ghost.

I believed it, but when I was baptized, I didn't feel any different. Then I started finding discrepancies that didn't fit.

By the time I was 14, I'd pretty much decided this was baloney." Over the years, he said, he's studied "the tenets of other religions. Being a skeptic, I find the flaws in those religions, too.

Basically, rehgion appears to be what people want to believe.

If it comforts them and helps them cope in life, I'm not going to try to dissuade them.

It might be cruel to take (religion) away from them.

It may be a false hope, but it's still hope." He said he remains on good terms with his devout family but is "quite happy without having to give donations and tithes to maintain the church anymore." And he does have his own beliefs. "I get asked a lot, Ts there anything you do believe in?' I have to say yeah.

I believe the world does exist as we see it." 56 (CONTINUED) Student Faces Town's Wrath in Protest Against a Prayer Abby Goodnough CRANSTON, R.I.—She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.

A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer's presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neu­ trality in religion.

In the weeks since, residents have crowded school board meetings to demand an appeal, Jessica has received online threats and the police have escorted her at school, and Cranston, a dense city of 80,000 just south of Providence, has throbbed with raw emotion. I RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION State Representative Peter G. Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, called Jessica "an evil little thing" on a popular talk radio show. Three separate florists refused to deliver her roses sent from a national atheist group.

The prayer, eight feet tall, is papered onto the wall in the Cranston West auditorium, near the stage.

It has hung there since 1963, when a seventh grader wrote it as a sort of moral guide and that year's graduating class presented it as a gift. It was a year after a landmark Supreme Court ruling barring organized prayer in public schools.

"Our Heavenly Father," the prayer begins, "grant us each day the desire to do our best, to grow mentally and morally as well as physically, to be kind and helpful." It goes on for a few more lines before concluding with "Amen." For Jessica, who was baptized in the Cathohc Church but said she stopped believing in God at age 10, the prayer was an affront. "It seemed like it was saying, every time I saw it, 'You don't belong here,'" she said the other night during an interview at a Starbucks here.

Since the ruling, the prayer has been covered with a tarp. The school board has indicated it will announce a decision on an appeal next month.

A friend brought the prayer to Jessica's attention in 2010, when she was a high school freshman.

She said nothing at first, but before long someone else—a parent who remained anonymous—filed a complaint with the American Civil Liberties Union. That led the Cranston school board to hold hearings on whether to remove the prayer, and Jessica spoke at all of them. She also started a Facebook page calling for the prayer's removal (it now has almost 4,000 members) and began researching Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious freedom.

Last March, at a rancorous meeting that Judge Ronald R. Lagueux of United States District Court in Providence described in his ruling as resembling "a religious revival," the school board voted 4-3 to keep the prayer. Some members said it was an important piece of the school's history; others said it reflected secular values they held dear.

The Rhode Island chapter of the A.C.L.U.

then asked Jessica if she would serve as a plaintiff in a lawsuit; it was filed the next month.

Rhode Island is the nation's most Cathohc state, and dust-ups over religion are not infrequent. Just last month, several hundred people protested at the Statehouse after Gov.

Lincoln Chafee, an independent, hghted what he called a "holiday tree." In Cranston, the police said they would investigate some of the threatening comments posted on Twitter against Jessica, some of which came from students at the high school.

Pat McAssey, a senior who is president of the student council, said the threats were "com­ pletely inexcusable" but added that Jessica had upset some of her classmates by mocking religion online. "Their frustration kind of came from that," he said.

Brittany Lanni, who graduated from Cranston West in 2009, said that no one had ever been forced to recite the prayer and called Jessica "an idiot." "If you don't beheve in that," she said, "take all the money out of your pocket, because every dollar bill says, 'In God We Trust.'" Raymond Santilli, whose family owns one of the flower shops that refused to deliver to Jessica, said he declined for safety reasons, knowing the controvetsy around the case.

People from around the world have called to support or attack his decision, which he said he stood by. But of Jessica, he said, "I've got a daughter, and I hope my daughter is as strong as she is, O.K.?" Jessica said she had stopped believing in God when she was in elementary school and her mother fell ill for a time. "I had always been told that if you pray, God will always be CREATING IDENTITY-SAFE SPACES ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES FOR MUSLIM STUDENTS | 301 there when you need him," she said. "And it didn't happen for me, and I doubted it had happened for anybody else.

So yeah, I think that was just like the last step, and after that I just really didn't believe any of it." Does she empathize in any way with members of her community who want the prayer to stay? "I've never been asked this before," she said.

A pause, and then: "It's almost like making a child get a shot even though they don't want to. It's for their own good.

I feel like they might see it as a very negative thing right now, but I'm defending their Constitution, too." 57 Creating Identity-Safe Spaces on College Campuses for Muslim Students Na'ilah Suad Nasir and Jasiyah Al-Amin The current national political context has brought Islam (as both a practice and an identity) into the media forefront.

The events of 9/11 and the resulting war in Iraq have sparked renewed interest in the religion of Islam and the life of Muslims.

One only has to visit any chain bookstore to notice an explosion of books on Islam, terrorism, and Islamic extremists. Unfortunately, this attention has been largely negative, and Muslim communities across the nation are increasingly fearful of discrimination and even violence.

This context has made the discussion that we undertake in this article of the issues faced by Muslim college students at once more difficult and more important.

In this brief commentary, we explore some issues that arise for Muslim students on college campuses, drawing on both our own personal experiences and discussions and interviews with Muslim students from a wide range of college campuses.

. . .

We begin with the stories of two students from different backgrounds and with very different experiences on their respective campuses.

RASHID Rashid is a tall, African-American young man with a ready smile and playful eyes, who carries himself with dignity and humility.

In our interview he wore an indigo-blue African- style long dashiki and loose pants.

He grew up in a medium-sized Northern California city in a family that has struggled through economic and other woes.

He won a full basketball scholarship to a well-known institution in another (but still liberal) state.

Like many stu­ dents, college was his first experience living out of the state, and the transition, while exciting, was a bit unsettling. But he adjusted to his new environment well and enjoyed a central role on the basketball team and a good relationship with his coach and teammates.

Although he was raised a Christian, he started reading about Islam his freshman year and 302 I RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION converted during his sophomore year.

He describes this as the turning point in his hfe on campus.

Rashid's conversion shifted, first and foremost, his relationship with his coach, who was suspicious of Islam.

He accused Rashid of becoming a black nationalist, of hating whites, and of being racist. After his junior year, he asked Rashid not to return to the team.

Rashid then became active in the largely international Muslim student group on campus and declared Islamic studies as a second major. Here he encountered another obstacle—a non-Muslim Islamic-studies professor who was openly hostile to him and derogatory about Islam.

FATIMA Fatima is a soft-spoken (almost shy) young woman, with a bit of hesitancy in her voice that lessens as she gets more passionate about her topic.

At our interview she wore jeans and a college sweatshirt with a white scarf over her hair, pinned under her chin. Although her father is from Pakistan, Fatima grew up in the same state where she attends college, but in a different region.

She says the Muslim community wasn't her first priority in choosing a college, although she knew it was important, partly because her oldest brother (who was already in college and active in the Muslim Student Association in another state when she was choosing a college) told her so.

Her experience as a Muslim on her liberal college campus has been a positive one. She reported no instances of prejudice, and she said she feels involved with both the Muslim community and the broader community on campus. About a month before we spoke with her, Fatima had made a decision, which for her was a step in the practice of her faith—to wear hijab.

Her biggest problem on campus was finding a place to pray and make wudu (a special way of washing up for prayer).

She expressed concern about how she is perceived and about stereotypes of "oppressed" foreign Muslim women.

These two stories illustrate some of the variation in Muslim students' experiences on college campuses, which have to do both with characteristics of the student (including class, race, gender, and types of support needed) and characteristics of the campuses and their surrounding communities (including how "liberal" the campus is, the presence of Islamic student groups on campus, and the existence and constitution of the Islamic stud­ ies faculty). However, there are also important convergences in their accounts. Below we consider several core issues that these stories illustrate (and that others' experiences corroborate).

THE BURDEN OF MANAGING A POTENTIALLY "RISKY" IDENTITY All of the students we talked to described (in one way or another) the burden of constantly feeling that others were judging them in terms of negative stereotypes about Islam, such as "Muslim terrorist" or "oppressed Muslim woman." Interestingly, this fear has much more to do with a perception of potential threat than any actual acts of prejudice or discrimination.

...

For the students we interviewed, this threat became particularly salient in moments of practicing Islam (such as praying while on campus), where they felt vulnerable and highly visible.

Since Muslim students need to pray five times a day, they constantly have to search CREATING IDENTITY-SAFE SPACES ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES FOR MUSLIM STUDENTS | 303 out places to do so, such as an empty classroom.

One student noted, "You have to find a place to pray, so you look like you are sneaking, then you find a room, and people are thinking, what is she doing in there?" This student revealed her anxiety that others may judge her as sneaky or strange.

AN IDENTITY-THREATENING ENVIRONMENT AND LOWERED ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT This anxiety about the stereotypes that the Muslim identity might trigger also affects stu­ dents' academic performance.

. . .

While our sample was not systematic or representative, we did observe that students who reported more discrimination and contention tended to perform more poorly academically.

For instance, while Fatima, a biology major, is in excellent academic standing, Rashid left his university several units short of graduating, returning several years later to complete his degree. Most students we talked to had not been actively denigrated, but they felt taxed by the need to constantly manage others' impressions of them.

This identity-management process required energy and time that could have been devoted to their studies.

A hostile environment also made students want to distance themselves emotionally, and such distancing sometimes resulted in a disconnection not just from that particular campus community but from school in general.

In some cases, Muslim students reported that the experience of prejudice (at worst) and lack of understanding (at best) on the part of their professors affected their academic performance more directly. For example, Rashid's contentious relationship with the Islamic-studies professor resulted in his refusal to do some of the readings for the course (because he felt that they misrepresented the Muslim experience) and contributed to his low grades in the several courses with that professor that he needed to take for his second major.

AN IDENTITY-SAFE ENVIRONMENT AND WELL-BEING While academic performance is certainly an important effect of a welcoming campus envi­ ronment, students' feelings of well-being are perhaps equally significant. That is, students should feel positive about life and grow as people during their college years. They should feel whole and healthy. Our conversations made it clear that students who found their uni­ versity environment supportive of their practice of Islam, who felt that they were accepted as Muslims and as students and who didn't feel penalized or ostracized, were able to grow in the practice of their faith at their own pace and with full confidence.

For instance, two of the female students we interviewed (both of whom were raised Muslim) spoke of deciding during their college careers to begin wearing hijab on campus.

They reported the relief and acceptance they felt at receiving compliments on how they looked with the scarf on from both Muslims and non-Muslims. The first day Fatima wore hijab on campus, one of her professors told her that she looked beautiful.

This remark made her feel good about this step in her faith. I RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION CONFLUENCE OF GENDER, RACE, RELIGION, AND CLASS Our two stories illustrate another important point about negotiating Islam on college campuses: Islamic identity interacts with other identities to color both how a student is perceived by others and how he responds to such perceptions. It is significant that Rashid is Muslim, male, African-American, and physically imposing (he is tall and muscular), as he noted in our conversation with him. It may also be significant that he is a first- generation college student from a working-class family, since his resources for surviving college are fewer than those of more affluent or system-savvy students. We might note that the response of the basketball coach to his becoming Muslim was a largely racialized response—the coach objected to what he judged as a black-nationalist political philosophy and feared that Islam would make Rashid too radical regarding race and politics.

We see in Rashid's story that negative reactions to him were compounded by the fact that he belongs to multiple stigmatized groups. He not only has to negotiate being Muslim on a largely non-Muslim campus but also being African-American on a largely white campus, as well as a student athlete (which makes him highly visible and subject to scrutiny).

He was explicitly told that he couldn't be both a black male athlete and a serious student activist, but that he had to choose between the two.

Then, once his identity as a Muslim caused him to be released from the basketball team and he turned to his school work more seriously, he encountered resistance from others as he attempted to take up a "serious-student" identity.

In other work we have named these sets of identities "identity constellations" to capture the idea that people have not just one but multiple, sometimes conflicting, identities. The opportunity to reorganize these sets is more or less available in different contexts. Indeed in some environments, students are asked to choose among the various identities within these constellations, as Rashid's story shows. He (and other African-American students) talked about the feeling that they must decide whether to affiliate with the Muslim or the African-American campus community. A female student joked that before she began wearing hijab, the Muslims on campus didn't speak to her, but once she began covering, the yVfrican-American students stopped speaking to her. Such forced choices make students feel as though they have to privilege one aspect of their identities to the detriment of other equally important parts of themselves.

SMALL COMFORTS AND ACTS OF KINDNESS Our final point is a brief one, but it is critically important. When we asked students about what made their experiences as Muslims positive, they invariably mentioned incidents that seemed to us quite trivial—for instance, professors who acknowledged Ramadan or who comphmented them on wearing hijab.

One student noted with great fondness the special dinner and breakfast packets the dining hall provided during Ramadan. These small acts of kindness were highly valued by students and made a huge difference to their sense that both they and the practice of their religion belonged on campus.

Other things that make campuses more identity-safe for Muslim students include:

• A strong, diverse, and supportive Muslim student group on campus; • Professors who are knowledgeable about Islam and positive towards it (this especially includes the Islamic-studies professors, since this program is where students often go in order to learn about themselves and to feel connected and supported);