Mosque Controversies in Europe (and Lessons Learned From the American Experience)

According to a 2012 research study conducted by Pew, Muslims are the second largest religious group in Europe, constituting approximately 5.9 percent of the population. Their growing presence, attributed to an influx of migration from Muslim-majority societies, has been met by increased government restrictions on and related social hostilities related to religion or belief. This post examines the conflict surrounding mosque construction projects.

By way of background, many Muslims view mosques as a divine house of worship reserved for spiritual reflection and prayer akin to a Christian church, Jewish synagogue, Buddhist temple or Hindu mandir.

In some communities, a mosque is a place of social, cultural and economic significance, too. Members may go to there to celebrate weddings or births, contribute to a charitable event, participate in interfaith dialogues and sell ethnic garb or goods.

For some Europeans, however, purpose-built mosques are a symbolic representation of Muslims, a visible imprint of the group's cultural presence. Similar to controversies arising in the American context, the debate surrounding European mosque construction plans may reflect popular anxieties about fundamentalism, expressions of gender inequality, links with extremism, etc.

Popular and political opposition may also be undergirded by a fear of Islamic power and dominion. This is because a purpose-built mosque visibly alters landscape and territory. In contrast, makeshift or ad hoc mosques are unrecognizable as such and are plentiful throughout Europe.

In Greece, a country that was subject to Turkish Ottoman rule for nearly four centuries, Muslims have been struggling since 1971 to build an official mosque in Athens, reportedly the only capital city in the European Union without one.

Their efforts stem from a desire to accommodate the faith practices of a growing community. Approximately 500,000 to 700,000 Muslims live in the area, and currently pray in ad hoc (unregistered) mosques operating in old garages, warehouses or cultural halls. Again, these mosques are invisible -- just a sign or plaque identifies them as such -- and little to no debate surrounds them.

Since 2011, plans to build an official mosque in Athens have failed on five occasions due to popular and political opposition. Organized protests to the Athens mosque has been fomented by supporters of the far-right National Front movement and by members of Golden Dawn, a political party openly espousing anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racism.

Amid Greek's financial turmoil in recent years, these parties have grown in strength and political power with adverse consequences for the country's ethnic and religious minorities, including Muslims who have historically been viewed as Turkish, foreigners or harboring anti-Greek sentiments.

In Northern Ireland, Muslims have been working for over a decade to establish a purpose-built mosque in Belfast to accommodate the community of approximately 5,000. Their initial plans failed about 10 years ago when popular opposition voiced concerns about how a purpose-built mosque would attract Islamic militants and introduce noise pollution to the area. Members continue to pray in a Victorian house that accommodates just 200 worshippers.

As reported by Amnesty International, the efforts of Muslims to introduce a purpose-built mosque to Catalonia, Spain have similarly failed. In fact, between 1990 and 2008, such efforts have given rise to 40 disputes between Muslim organizations, municipal officials and residents.

With more than 350,000 Muslims residing in the region, some political parties have described the group's desire for a purpose-built mosque as "incompatible with Catalan traditions and culture." As a result, Muslims are frequently forced to pray outdoors due to the lack of adequate space at ad hoc prayer rooms.

In other instances, selective enforcement of laws and regulations are used to shut down mosques. In Italy, for instance, officials are described as selectively enforcing security or fire safety standards against mosques but not other buildings that are in violation of the same regulations. To be sure, all buildings should comply with applicable rules and regulations that should be applied fairly across the board.

In the United States, American Muslims have confronted popular and official opposition to mosque construction and expansion projects, too. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), such opposition represents the Civil Rights Division's greatest "growth industry" in the context of anti-Muslim activity.

In response, American Muslims have often filed related lawsuits to enforce their right to establish a house of worship under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal U.S. statute that protects individuals, houses of worship and other religious institutions from discrimination in zoning law.

From Murfreesboro, Tennessee to Bridgewater, New Jersey, American Muslims have prevailed in those cases.

And, they have frequently done so with the assistance of or support from the U.S. federal government. In Murfreesboro, the DOJ famously intervened by filing legal papers supporting the Muslim community's right to build their house of worship. In the past two years, the DOJ has initiated 21 cases involving discrimination and arbitrary action by local zoning boards against mosques.

This represents the first lesson learned from the American experience: officials must strengthen the rule of law by implementing and enforcing appropriate legislation.

Under international law, the right to establish places of worship is a protected aspect of one's right to freedom of religion or belief set forth within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and European Convention on Human Rights.

This is because constructing a purpose-built mosque represents a manifestation of religious freedom.

European government officials should protect the rights of all citizens, including religious minorities, to establish places of worship by further strengthening the rule of law in their respective states. They can do so by ensuring that private and official actors adhere to the law. Further, political leaders and officials should visit existing mosques to help dispel stereotypes and stigma surrounding the institutions; U.S. embassy officials should do the same.

In so doing, their efforts not only advances the cause of human rights and religious freedom but also effectively undermines the narrative that the so-called 'War on Terrorism' is in reality a 'War on Muslims.'

Similar to their American counterparts, Muslims in Europe have a critical role to play in upholding the rule of law, too. And, that brings us to the second lesson learned from the American experience:

File a lawsuit.

And, once you have prevailed, be sure to hold an open house at the new purpose-built mosque to facilitate dialogue and enhance mutual understanding necessary to fostering peace and building community in your area.

Engy Abdelkader is a Legal Fellow with the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C.

This article was published in the Huffington Post on January 2, 2014. Read it here.

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Hijab purifying our intentions

“Verily, the reward of deeds depends upon the intentions, Verily, every person will get rewarded only for what he intended.” – Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

As a female, I realize how hard it is to overcome the temptations of dressing up in a certain way. Since we’re constantly bombarded with media images telling us how to dress and how to look more appealing to others. I realize this. But I also realize a bigger reality. For this isn’t the reason why I was created. It’s not all about my looks and how others perceive me. I was created for a more noble purpose. To help make this world a better place and find my way back to my Creator. While studying some of the world religions, I realized that among the many similarities between them is in fact the religious dress code of women. It has always been about covering and not drawing attention to one’s body. In Islam, we often refer to this kind of dress code as Hijab.

Any behavior that is regularly repeated will soon turn into a habit. That’s why in Islam we are constantly encouraged to renew our intentions before taking any action. Finding meaning to hijab, which is an act of obedience to God, is essential. It shouldn’t turn into a habitual act devoid of any spiritual meaning.

There is in fact an increasingly popular trend among Muslim women these days of taking off the hijab. It might also become the norm very soon. I believe one of the main reasons girls are taking it off is because they no longer feel its essence. It has become insignificant or an unnecessary burden. Some might argue that it’s not obligatory. While others believe it is, but admit it’s a decision they’re not ready to take. Nouman Ali Khan, a Quran teacher, says about the validity of Hijab: “The ruling hasn’t changed. It’s not something that is really open to discussion and it wasn’t questionable until recently.”

So what is Hijab?

Hijab comes from the Arabic word ‘hajaba’ meaning to hide or to concel. Islamically, it often refers to the dress code of Muslim women. Khimar is another Arabic word that comes from the root word ‘khamara’ meaning to cover. Everything that covers something else is called its khimar. In accordance to the Muslim woman dress code, Khimar is the top garment (head-covering) while hijab may refer to the garment of the rest of the body. This shows that Hijab is not simply a headscarf covering the head, but it’s more than that. You can wear whatever you want making sure it doesn’t violate the Islamic guidelines of Hijab which mainly revolve around wearing loose garments that do not reveal the female’s figure.

“O you Children of Adam! We have indeed sent down to you garments to cover your shame, and (garments) for beauty but the garment of God-consciousness is the best of all..” [Quran 7:26]

So why should we wear it ?

Many Muslim women wear hijab for a number of reasons. Whether it’s for cultural reasons, parental influence, religious reasons or others. Our intention behind wearing it is what really counts. Most of us though would answer instantly when asked and say we do it for God. But the truth is, sometimes we tend to forget that and we keep it on out of habit or out of fear of being judged by others. According to Islam, we wear it not because it forces men to respect us; and not to save our beauty for them, not to make ourselves less of a trial for men: they’re not even part of the equation. We do it because God told us to do so, not because we saw benefits in it either. On a personal level, I also see it as a test. A test from the Most Beautiful. Among God’s countless blessings is the fact that He made all women beautiful.

And no doubt – we all love our beauty to be recognized.

But I believe our obedience is actually being tested.

“Do the people think that they will be left to say, “We believe,” without being put to test? [Quran 29:3]

The word Islam bears within its meaning ‘peace and submission’ , coming from the same root word as Salam, ‘Salam and Isteslam’ respectively. So it basically means that by submitting your will to God you’ll be at peace. That is what Islam is about, submitting our standards to God’s standards. And truth be told, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

It’s important to mention that Hijab is not the only way by which women could worship God. However, it is still an act of worship we’re commanded to be engaged in.

As Maryam Amirebrahimi says: “Worship comes in such a variety of forms. Being a housewife can be a form of worship. Being a stay-at-home-mom can be a form of worship. Being a working wife and mother can be a form of worship. Being an unmarried female student can be a form of worship. Being a divorced female doctor, a female journalist, Islamic scholar, film director, pastry chef, teacher, veterinarian, engineer, personal trainer, lawyer, artist, nurse, Qur’an teacher, psychologist, pharmacist or salon artist can each be a form of worship. Just being an awesome daughter can be a form of worship.

We can worship Allah in a variety of ways, as long as we have a sincere intention, and what we do is done within the guidelines He has set for us.”

European Islamophobia finds a home in the U.S.

Anti-Muslim sentiment seems to have gone mainstream. Fringe groups like Stop Islamization of America, which is behind many of the protests in lower Manhattan, are suddenly receiving attention from media outlets.

You may have heard the ad put out by the National Republican Trust Political Action Committee: “On Sept. 11, they declared war against us. And to celebrate that murder of 3,000 Americans, they want to build a monstrous 13-story mosque at ground zero.”

Did you catch that? They attacked us on 9/11, and now they want to build a mosque at ground zero.

This is what has become of the debate over the construction of an Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan. You know, the so-called mosque at ground zero that’s neither a mosque nor at ground zero.

No matter what your feelings are about the proposed community center, there can be little doubt that Islamophobia is on the rise in America.

A Washington Post poll released last year found that nearly half of Americans — 48 percent — have an unfavorable view of Islam. That’s nine points higher than in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks. A new national survey by the Pew Research Center found that 30 percent of those who disapprove of President Obama’s job performance believe he is Muslim.

What’s more disturbing is that anti-Muslim sentiment seems to have gone mainstream, with fringe groups like Stop Islamization of America — which is behind many of the protests in lower Manhattan and has been participating in similar anti-Muslim rallies across the country — suddenly receiving regular air time on mainstream media outlets.

Stop Islamization of America is actually an affiliate of a European organization called Stop Islamization of Europe, an anti-Muslim hate group whose motto is “Racism is the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense.”

The connection between the two organizations is telling.

In Europe, the passage of laws curtailing the rights and freedoms of Muslims and the success of avowedly anti-Islam political parties have led to a sense of marginalization and disenfranchisement among Europe’s Muslim communities. That in turn has led to what I believe is a sharp increase in radicalization among Europe’s young Muslims.

For years, scholars like myself who’ve studied these radicalization trends have confidently argued that the kind of institutionalized Islamophobia one sees in large parts of Europe could never take hold in the U.S. That America’s unbreakable dedication to religious liberties would never allow anti-Muslim sentiment to become mainstream. That, in fact, America’s Muslim community — educated, prosperous, moderate and integrated into every level of American society — may be our nation’s greatest weapon in fighting the ideology of radical extremism.

It seems we were wrong. The same kind of Islamophobia that has made much of Europe inhospitable to its Muslim citizens is now threatening to seize the U.S.

The fear is that this may lead to the same kind of radicalization among Muslim youth in the U.S. that we’ve seen in Europe. It has already played into the hands of al-Qaida, which has for years been trying to convince American Muslims that the unfettered religious freedoms they enjoy is a mirage — that the U.S. will eventually turn against its Muslim citizens.

Are we in danger of proving al-Qaida right?

I am a liberal, progressive, secularized American Muslim. But when I see that bigotry against my faith — my very identity — has become so commonplace in America that it is shaping into a wedge issue for the midterm elections, I can barely control my anger.

I can’t imagine how the next generation of American Muslim youth will react to such provocations. I pray that we never find out.

The Struggle Of Islamophobia

I’ve had a lot of interviews over the last few days by different media outlets doing stories on being Muslim in America. One question that seemingly keeps coming up is “How do you feel about the Islamophobic attitudes that have seemingly increased in the United States over the last few years?”

I feel it almost every day – it’s presence and manifestation in my own life and the lives of many around me. It’s there and it needs to be stopped. For those who don’t believe that Islamophobia exists, you’re wrong. There’s really no other way of saying it.

The Center for American Progress, based out of Washington D.C., released a report  entitled Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America. This report offers a great analysis of the Islamophobic movement, key players in it, and how it is supported and funded. I would encourage everyone to read it objectively and share it with your networks and friends.

Wahajat Ali, one of the authors of the report, writes

“Last July, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich warned a conservative audience at the American Enterprise Institute that the Islamic practice of Sharia was ‘a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.’ Gingrich went on to claim that ‘Sharia in its natural form has principles and punishments totally abhorrent to the Western world.’”

Numerous politicians have been very irresponsible with their words when it comes to Islam. It’s as if Muslims have a different set of rights that other citizens of the country for no reason other than we choose to practice Islam. The rhetoric, whether we choose to acknowledge or not, enables hate to exist. I regularly meet Muslims from all walks of life who have been harassed, bullied, robbed, beaten, because they practice Islam. Even people who aren’t Muslim are victims of hate crimes because their ethnicity or cultural background isn’t distinguishable by the one carrying out the crime. Islam is a religion – it’s not a race. Muslims are from every country of the world including the United States.

I once did an interview that never aired, much to the dismay of the interviewer, in which my co-panelist told me that Muslims deserve the way they are being treated. That was probably the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard in my life. How is that a cab driver who is trying to make a decent living deserves to be stabbed because of his faith? How is that a young girl deserves to be abused for wearing a headscarf and it’s justifiable for people to yank it off her head and tell her to go back home while everyone around her watches? How is okay for our children to grow up with limited sense of aspiration? Am I not entitled to the same comforts and securities you are because of my religion? Do I deserve to be scrutinized, singled out, profiled, and stereotyped because of my faith? No, I do not. It’s not ok. It’s wrong.

I travel a lot for speaking engagements and work and over the last year every time I have come into my country, the United States of America, from an international trip, I am detained. These days when it happens, an announcement is made after we land that passports are being randomly checked on the way out so have them ready. Two customs officers stand at the door and when my passport is found, the one who has it tells the other “I found him.” Essentially I am the random check. I am then escorted to a small room that is filled mostly with minorities and immigrants and kept there from two to six hours. This happens regardless of my reason for traveling or where I am traveling to and in the last year or so has taken place about a dozen separate times. It happens even when I travel on behalf of the State Department in an official capacity. When my NYPD credentials are seen or letters from ambassadors from the State Department, the frustration by the Customs officers is apparent. First they ask who I am and then they ask, “Why are we stopping you?” I wonder the same thing. I asked one officer once what he thought after he had gone through the process with me multiple times and began to recognize me when I came in. He said “You are young, male, and Muslim. And right now those three things don’t go well together.” At the end of it though, I have to go through the process. Really what else can I do? My civil rights somehow become secondary because I practice Islam.

Islamophobia exists in much of the world today. It is an unfortunate reality, but a reality nonetheless. Do your part in ensuring that is not empowered any further by understanding where it comes from and helping those around you understand it as well.

Tempest in a Teapot: Islamophobia Meets Homophobia

A group of the extremists among the Imamis consider the legal obligation [to believe] in the inviolability of their leaders. They consider that to even be consistent with their treatment of animals and their servants. They have gone to an extreme in such matters that they have removed the veil of modesty from their faces and become objects of ridicule, amusement, and mockery of religion.

They even believe that this inviolability extends to every aspect of their lives such that they could not even theoretically make a mistake in their reports or testimonies in courts of law. But perhaps the most bizarre aspect of this is that they permit those same leaders, and even in some instances consider it their obligation, to practice taqiyyah [dissimulation]. They claim this is part of our religion. In other words, they permit bold-faced lies. If such is the case, how then is it possible by any stretch of the imagination to depend upon the inviolability of their words? If you permit them to say what they don’t believe, if you can’t trust them with what they say [as it may be taqiyyah], then how can you consider their actions inviolable? If it is permissible to dissimulate in their words, then certainly the same applies to their actions.

– Imam al-Haramayn al-Juwayni (d. 478 AH/1085 CE), al-Ghiyathiy

The English love their tea, and some also seem to relish tempests in their teapots. In America, we love our mountains, and we tend to make them out of molehills. Making a big hullabaloo over small matters is a common human affliction.

Recently, a storm has been brewing in one of the tearooms of Cambridge, and it involves someone I have known and respected for more than three decades. Dr. Tim Winter, who teaches theology at Cambridge University’s Wolfson College, has been accused of homophobia for making remarks about homosexuals that, according to some, warrant his expulsion from Cambridge’s prestigious faculty.

The offending remarks are from a Rihla (Muslim teaching program) in 1995 when Dr. Winter was answering questions from a group of Muslim students, and they surfaced now through a video clip that was posted online. Dr. Winter answered a student’s question regarding homosexuality with what would pass as a normal response in almost any mosque throughout the Muslim world, and is the belief held by hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide. In essence, he said that homosexuality is an aberration and not consistent with the natural functions of the body.

The root of the problem here lies in not distinguishing between the same-sex attraction that many people, including obviously some Muslims, feel, and the actual act of sexual relations between two people of the same sex. As Dr. Winter explained in his answer, some people appear to be born with the tendency towards homosexuality, but “if they do not act upon this tendency, they are not sinning.” Unfortunately, that distinction is not commonly drawn, and this troublesome conflation—and the rarely understood nuanced difference in our religious tradition—is increasingly causing problems for Muslims. Too many of us alienate many good Muslims when we fail to make this distinction and simply demonize them.

Our scholars clearly made these distinctions in the books of Islamic jurisprudence and use the term ma’bun to refer to someone with same-sex tendencies. Imam Dasuqi says that if such a person leads the prayer, his prayer is valid. In fact, the actual text he was commenting on addresses who can or cannot lead the prayer. Quoting Mukhtasir Khalil, Dasuqi writes, “It is discouraged [but not prohibited] for a eunuch (khasi) or homosexual (ma’bun) to be a regular prayer leader.” In his commentary on this, Dasuqi, who died in 1815, explains:

It is disliked [but still valid] for a ma’bun to be an assigned leader of the obligatory prayers as well as for communal supererogatory prayers, but not tarawih, or travelers’ prayers, or as someone who leads them on occasion. And the intended meaning of ma’bun is a male who is effeminate in his speech, similar to a woman’s speech, or someone who desires rectal intercourse but doesn’t practice it, or someone who has practiced it but since repented yet, nonetheless, has set tongues wagging.

In the wake of the storm that engulfed Dr. Winter, he has apologized, and his retraction and clarification should be taken at face value as genuine maturity and growth in understanding.

Unfortunately, some critics and many troll commentators have suggested that Dr. Winter is practicing “taqiyyah,” a word now entering the Western vocabulary as Islamophobes increasingly promote it to insinuate that Muslims represent a “fifth column” of subversive quislings hell-bent on putting every pig farmer in the West out of business and forever banishing pork rinds from convenience stores. But, as the above-mentioned quote of Imam al-Juwayni shows, while taqiyyah is practiced by a small minority of sectarian Muslims, it is not in any way part of the Sunni tradition that Dr. Winter adheres to, and it is not permissible for a Sunni Muslim unless that person is under immediate threat of death. It is certainly not morally acceptable to practice taqiyyah simply to save face with a verbally hostile public or to preserve one’s job. Islamophobes will naturally argue that I am practicing taqiyyah here, so you can’t really win with them. But if that was the case, morality would lose all meaning, and a man’s word would be of no significance, something incomprehensible to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the Prophet Muhammad’s character—he was called “al-Amin” (the trustworthy) because he was known never to break his word, ever.

Fascists demand always that there be only one way of thinking, living, or believing. But ours is a pluralistic world, and our grandmothers and grandfathers fought a great war to prevent fascists from having their way in it. In a free society, Dr. Winter is entitled to believe in his faith, and his faith prohibits and deems sinful the act of sexual relations between unmarried couples whether gay or straight (since some states have now legalized same-sex marriage). What he has retracted and apologized for is the manner in which he said what he did at the time. “I believe—and Allah is my witness—that I was right, in Sharia, and considering the maslaha [commonweal] of the Muslims, to dissociate myself from the lecture and to apologize,” he wrote recently.

And then he added: “The key point is this: mercy and understanding are better than recrimination.”

One critic argued that Dr. Winter’s characterization of his comments as “youthful enthusiasms” is unacceptable given he was in his mid-30s at the time. However, in the Arabic language, the word “youth” (shab) indicates a period of one’s life that lasts until the age of 40, and, while perhaps not in the case of that critic, most of us are full of folly before the age of 40 and too many of us well after that. As someone who has known Dr. Winter over the years, I can say that while he, like all of us, is capable of mistakes and, like the rest of us, carries the baggage of “youthful enthusiasms,” he has always been one of the youngest wise men I have ever known.

Whatever his opinions on any subject, he is never fanatical and never imperious in his approach. Moreover, the guidance that he would impart to fellow Muslims who share the same beliefs as he does would naturally differ from his lectures whereby he would be sensitive as a professional and acknowledge the diverse sensibilities of a post-modern student body with all the varieties that that entails. I am sure that those who have been fortunate to study with him at Cambridge, whether gay or straight, would concur.

Meanwhile, let us be aware that much more formidable storms are raging in the world. We should be far more occupied with putting out the fires of war and tending to the needs of the refugees of real tempests than trying to get someone fired for “youthful enthusiasms.”

Moms with elite education opting out of careers

VANDERBILT (US) —Female graduates from top-ranked universities who become mothers are working less despite the promise of higher wages, new research finds.

The battle for work-life balance among female white-collar employees, especially those with children, is something women have struggled with for decades. Though past studies have found little evidence that women are opting out of the workforce in general, first-of-its-kind research shows that female graduates of elite universities are working much fewer hours than those from less selective institutions.

“Even though elite graduates are more likely to earn advanced degrees, marry at later ages and have higher expected earnings, they are still opting out of full-time work at much higher rates than other graduates, especially if they have children,” says Joni Hersch, professor of law and economics and of management at Vanderbilt University.Hersch’s research, published in the Vanderbilt Law School, Law and Economics Research Paper Series, finds that 60 percent of female graduates from elite colleges are working full time compared to 68 percent of women from other schools.It’s all about the kidsThe presence of children strongly influences how much a woman works. Labor market activity is lower for women with children, but the gap between those women with and without children is largest for elite graduates. Among elite graduates, married women without children are 20 percentage points more likely to be employed than their elite counterparts with children, while among non-elite graduates, the difference in the likelihood of employment is 13.5 percentage points.

MBA moms work least of all

Hersch found that when comparing graduates from elite and less selective schools, the largest gap in full-time labor market activity is among women who also earned a master’s in business degree.

“Married MBA mothers with a bachelor’s degree from the most selective schools are 30 percentage points less likely to be employed full time than are graduates of less selective schools,” says Hersch.

The full-time employment rate for MBA moms who earned bachelor’s degrees from a tier-one institution is 35 percent. In contrast, the full-time employment rate for those from a less-selective institution is 66 percent. The gap remains even after taking into account the selectivity of MBA institution, personal characteristics, current or prior occupation, undergraduate major, spouse’s characteristics, number and age of children, and family background.

Fewer female CEOs?

Hersch contends these statistics show that the greater rate of opting out by MBA moms with undergraduate degrees from elite institutions has implications for women’s professional advancement.

“Elite workplaces, like Fortune 500 companies, prefer to hire graduates of elite colleges,” says Hersch. “Thus, lower labor market activity of MBAs from selective schools may have both a direct effect on the number of women reaching higher-level corporate positions as well as an indirect effect because a smaller share of women in top positions is associated with a smaller pipeline of women available to advance through the corporate hierarchy,” says Hersch.

Comparing degrees

Hersch found a similarly large gap among women who later earned a master’s in education. Sixty-six percent of tier-one graduates are employed full time compared to 82 percent of graduates from non-elite institutions.

Other factors also contribute to which women are working more hours.

“Estimates show greater labor activity among women with a bachelor’s degree in a field other than arts and humanities; those with graduate degrees; those in higher-level occupations such as management, science, education and legal; and women who are not white,” says Hersch.

Why opt out?

A common question associated with opting out is whether highly educated women are willingly choosing to exit the labor force to care for their children or whether they are “pushed out” by inflexible workplaces. But Hersch says this hypothesis of inflexible workplaces does not explain why labor market activity differs between graduates of elite and non-elite schools.

“Graduates of elite institutions are likely to have a greater range of workplace options as well as higher expected wages than graduates of less selective institutions, which would suggest that labor market activity would be higher among such women,” Hersch writes.

“Without discounting the well-known challenges of combining family and professional responsibilities, increasing workplace flexibility alone may have only a limited impact of reducing the gap between graduates of elite and non-elite schools.”

Gathering the data

Hersch gathered her data from the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, which provided detailed information for more than 100,000 college graduates. The survey was conducted by the US Census Bureau for the National Science Foundation.

To identify schools considered elite and to put these schools into tier levels, Hersch used both the Carnegie Classifications of institutions of higher education and Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges. Barron’s Profiles looks at quality indicators of each year’s entering class (SAT or ACT, high school GPA and high school class rank, and percent of applicants accepted). Barron’s then places colleges into seven categories: most competitive, highly competitive, very competitive, competitive, less competitive, noncompetitive, and special.

The Carnegie Classifications are based on factors such as the highest degree awarded; the number, type, and field diversity of post-baccalaureate degrees awarded annually; and federal research support. For example, Research universities offer a full range of baccalaureate programs through the doctorate, give high priority to research, award 50 or more doctoral degrees each year, and receive annually $40 million or more in federal support.

Boston coverage points to need for Muslims in the media

As details continue to emerge about the two brothers suspected of planting bombs at the Boston Marathon on Monday, many American Muslims are processing the treatment that this story has gotten in the mainstream news media. The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia, but little is still known about their motives or other affiliations.

Even before the suspects were identified, news shows and commentary programs on outlets such as Fox News, CNN and Glenn Beck speculated that the perpetrator of the attack was Saudi, Arab, “dark-skinned,” or Muslim. Fox News pundit Erik Rush provoked particular outcry when he tweeted “Let’s kill them all,” in response to a message about Muslims —a tweet that he later said was sarcastic.

“[The] Islamophobia machine is out there, it’s well-funded, well-oiled,” said Abdul Malik Mujahid, a Chicago-area imam and founder of SoundVision, an Islamic educational media organization. “Muslims have a responsibility to move forward and use the media which they have the freedom to use to say their opinion.”

Mujahid said the coverage has bolstered his belief that Muslims need to play a bigger role in crafting media coverage, whether by creating their own media outlets or by joining the newsrooms of existing ones. It’s a battle that Mujahid began nearly ten years ago, with the launching of Radio Islam, a daily, current affairs program that streams online and at 6 p.m. nightly on WCEV 1450AM.

A recent show focused on Muslims who were at the Boston Marathon as runners or as first responders. Mujahid said the idea is to counter a trend toward unfavorable attitudes toward Muslims.

“Despite the fact that Muslims have done a lot of effort to reach out to their neighbors, [perceptions of] Muslims and Islam in America continue to go on the negative side,” he said.

In the wake of the Boston coverage, Mujahid has stepped up a call for donations to expand Radio Islam’s programming. He wants to build a new studio downtown to increase the amount of programming, as well as foster the training of Muslim journalists.

“We’ve made this switch from more of a victim mentality, more of this idea of please don’t beat me up, and kind of scared and not knowing what to expect, as opposed to now taking a more confident and proactive position,” said Asma Uddin, an attorney at the Becket Foundation for Religious Liberty and the founder of Altmuslimah, a blog about gender and Islam.

Uddin said since 9/11, more Muslims have started to think like Mujahid, focusing on how to disseminate their stories through the media. She said she saw the effect of that in the media coverage of the Boston bombings. Although some news outlets rushed to connect the attack to Islam, she said many more were careful not to jump to conclusions.

“It’s become increasingly sophisticated, and part of that, is because Muslims are speaking up and nuancing people’s perceptions,” Mujahid said.

Odette Yousef is WBEZ’s North Side Bureau reporter. Follow her at @oyousef and @WBEZoutloud.

Coffee and qahwa: How a Sufi drink went global

The Arab world has given birth to many thinkers and many inventions – among them the three-course meal, alcohol and coffee. The best coffee bean is still known as Arabica, but it’s come a long way from the Muslim mystics who treasured it centuries ago, to the chains that line our high streets.

Think coffee, and you probably think of an Italian espresso, a French cafe au lait, or an American double grande latte with cinnamon.

Perhaps you learned at school that the USA became a nation of coffee drinkers because of the excise duty King George placed on tea? Today ubiquitous chains like Starbucks, Cafe Nero and Costa grace every international airport, and follow the now much humbler Nescafe as symbols of globalisation.

Coffee is produced in hot climates like Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Vietnam and Indonesia, and you could be forgiven if you thought it is a product from the New World like tobacco and chocolate. After all, all three became popular in Europe at more or less the same time, in the 16th and 17th Centuries.

In fact, coffee comes from the highland areas of the countries at the southern end of the Red Sea – Yemen and Ethiopia.

Although a beverage made from the wild coffee plant seems to have been first drunk by a legendary shepherd on the Ethiopian plateau, the earliest cultivation of coffee was in Yemen and Yemenis gave it the Arabic nameqahwa, from which our words coffee and cafe both derive.

Qahwa originally meant wine, and Sufi mystics in Yemen used coffee as an aid to concentration and even spiritual intoxication when they chanted the name of God.

By 1414, it was known in Mecca and in the early 1500s was spreading to Egypt from the Yemeni port of Mocha. It was still associated with Sufis, and a cluster of coffee houses grew up in Cairo around the religious university of the Azhar. They also opened in Syria, especially in the cosmopolitan city of Aleppo, and then in Istanbul, the capital of the vast Ottoman Turkish Empire, in 1554.

In Mecca, Cairo and Istanbul attempts were made to ban it by religious authorities. Learned shaykhs discussed whether the effects of coffee were similar to those of alcohol, and some remarked that passing round the coffee pot had something in common with the circulation of a pitcher of wine, a drink forbidden in Islam.

Coffee houses were a new institution in which men met together to talk, listen to poets and play games like chess and backgammon. They became a focus for intellectual life and could be seen as an implicit rival to the mosque as a meeting place.

Some scholars opined that the coffee house was “even worse than the wine room”, and the authorities noted how these places could easily become dens of sedition. However, all attempts at banning coffee failed, even though the death penalty was used during the reign of Murad IV (1623-40). The religious scholars eventually came to a sensible consensus that coffee was, in principle, permissible.

Coffee spread to Europe by two routes – from the Ottoman Empire, and by sea from the original coffee port of Mocha.

Both the English and Dutch East India Companies were major purchasers at Mocha in the early 17th Century, and their cargoes were brought home via the Cape of Good Hope or exported to India and beyond. They seem, however, to have only taken a fraction of Yemeni coffee production – as the rest went north to the rest of the Middle East.

Coffee also arrived in Europe through trade across the Mediterranean and was carried by the Turkish armies as they marched up the Danube. As in the Middle East, the coffee house became a place for men to talk, read, share their opinions on the issues of the day and play games.

Another similarity was that they could harbour gatherings for subversive elements. Charles II denounced them in 1675 as “places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers”.

A century later Procope, the famous Parisian coffee house, had such habitues as Marat, Danton and Robespierre who conspired together there during the Revolution.

At first, coffee had been viewed with suspicion in Europe as a Muslim drink, but around 1600 Pope Clement VIII is reported to have so enjoyed a cup that he said it would be wrong to permit Muslims to monopolise it, and that it should therefore be baptised.

Austrian coffee drinking is said to have received a big boost when the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 was broken, and the European victors captured huge coffee supplies from the vanquished.

Perhaps that is why, to this day, coffee is served in Vienna with a glass of water – just like the tiny cups of powerful Turkish coffee with its heavy sediment in Istanbul, Damascus or Cairo. Is this just a coincidence, or a long forgotten cultural borrowing?

The beverage we call “Turkish coffee” is actually a partial misnomer, as Turkey is just one of the countries where it is drunk. In Greece they call it “Greek coffee”, although Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians, Jordanians and others do not seem to care overmuch about the name.

But there are other coffee drinking traditions in the Arab world. The coffee which is native to the Gulf is bitter and sometimes flavoured with cardamom or other spices.

It is often served a decent interval after a guest has arrived – to serve it too soon might be an impolite suggestion of haste – and then once again before departure.

It often comes just before or after a small glass cup of black, sweet tea. The order in which the two beverages are served varies, and seems to have no significance. What is remarkable for a Western visitor is the idea that the two very different drinks should be offered in such quick succession.

Sadly, however, while coffee has gone truly global production has declined in Yemen, the victim of cheap imports and rival crops like the narcotic qat.

In 2011, Yemen exported a mere 2,500 tonnes although there are attempts to revive cultivation of the best coffee in its original home. Today, none of the Arab countries is listed among the world’s significant producers.

‘Please don’t be Arabs or Muslims’

I texted my friend at 7:47am EST, extending well wishes for a “successful and prosperous race”. Like the 23,181 runners who left Hopkinton dreaming about breaking the ribbon 26.2 miles away, my friend signed up for the 117th Boston Marathonexpecting anything but two bomb explosions waiting for him at the finish line.

I instantly thought of my friend who ran the Marathon upon learning of the explosions. However, concern for loved ones was superseded by a distinctly Arab and Muslim-American psychosis: “Please do not let the culprit be Arab or Muslim.”

This fear still grips me while writing the article, and certainly raced through the minds of most Arab and Muslim-Americans. That gut-wrenching anxiety and debilitating concern, borne out of the implicated guilt that follows every modern terrorist attack from World Trade Center I to Sandy Hook, emerged into a collective Arab and Muslim-American psychosis. Indeed, it may typify best what it has come to mean to be Arab or Muslim-American.

The knots in my stomach tightened with preliminary reports from the New York Post that Boston Police had seized a “Saudi National”. In a media nanosecond, “Muslims” was trending on Twitter, additional news providers corroborated the reports, and the hatemongering ensued.

Conservative columnist, Erik Rush, stated:

Everybody do the National Security Ankle Grab! Let’s bring more Saudis in without screening them! C’mon!

“Islamism”, “al-Qaeda” and “Arab Terrorism” raced through news channel tickers and out the mouths of reactionary pundits, echoing the same brand of reporting that followed every domestic terror crisis big and small.

There was no verified nexus between the explosions and Arabs or Muslims, but this did not prevent Rush from rushing to that conclusion. Recent history revealed that hate could instantly devolve into violence, with guilt being assigned as a consequence of the ingrained understanding of Arabs and Muslims as terrorists, which for hatemongers like Rush, trumps the importance of the facts.

As Yale Law Professor Muneer I Ahmed wrote in “A Rage Shared by Law: Post-September 11 Racial Violence as Crimes of Passion”:

The racially directed anger and moral outrage of the perpetrators of post-September 11 violence, if not the violence itself, found resonance with the emotional responses of many Americans. Put more bluntly, the anger of the perpetrators was the anger of much of the country. 

I was concerned for my friend in the race, the dead and those injured. However, the strict assignment of guilt and the public violence that follows, combined with the memories that followed every previous attack, left me voiceless and glued to the television screen. Arab and Muslim-Americans experienced this existential purgatory in concentrated communities, like Detroit or Anaheim, and parts of the country with sparse numbers of both groups.

These interim moments, between catastrophe and discovering the real culprits, define what it means to be Arab and Muslim-American today. Other Americans are afforded the space to grieve and mourn, and demonstrate concern without the colour of guilt.

However, Arab and Muslim-Americans are denied that right. The societal modus operandi of instantly elevating Arab and Muslims to the level of guilt not only strips one from the ability to grieve, but has – after decades of instant vilification – created a new brand of psychological guilt.

“Please don’t be a Muslim or Arab,” many thought, tweeted, and uttered as they took in the images from Boston. Three innocents were killed, among them an eight-year-old child, and 130 injured. Sadly, these statistics were – until a culprit was identified – of secondary importance for Arab and Muslim-Americans.

The moment of time, which seems frozen and in turn freezes every other concern in life, between catastrophe and identifying the culprit, subsumes Arab and Muslim-Americans, and extinguishes our ability to fully join our fellow Americans in grieving.

This existential state of guilt and confusion, fear and anxiety, characterises what it means to be Arab and Muslim-American. As both communities race toward a modicum of normalcy, approximately 12 years after 9/11, the Boston Marathon explosions are a stark and chilling reminder that neither Arab nor Muslim Americans have reached that finish line.

The attacks on the 117th Boston Marathon, and the attacks before it that falsely implicated Arab and Muslim-Americans as the culprits highlight that the race toward full-fledged Americanness is no sprint – but a marathon.

How to write about Muslims

The Western press and social media often seem to exercise two options for dealing with the Muslim population of the world: overt, unabashed Islamophobia or slightly subtler Islamophobia.

As Georgetown University’s John L Esposito writes in the foreword to Nathan Lean’s The Islamophobia Industry: How the Right Manufactures Fear of Muslims, 9/11 and other terror attacks “have exacerbated the growth of Islamophobia exponentially” and resulted in a situation in which “Islam and the Middle East often dominate the negative headlines”, thanks in part to the calculated machinations of “a number of journalists and scholars”.

Needless to say, the aftermath of 9/11 did not yield much thoughtful consideration on the part of the mainstream punditry as to the context for such events. According to one prominent narrative, 9/11 was simply evidence of an inherent and unfounded Muslim hatred of the West.

A notable exception was veteran British journalist Robert Fisk. In an article published in The Nationimmediately following the attacks, Fisk issued the following prescient warning:

“[T]his is not really the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days. It is also about US missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and US helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia – paid and uniformed by America’s Israeli ally – hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps.”

The sale of the “war on terror”, Fisk stressed, depended on the obscuration of all details regarding past and continuing devastation of Arab lands and lives – including US State Department-applauded sanctions that eliminated half a million children in Iraq – “lest they provide the smallest fractional reason for the mass savagery on September 11″.

Outlets such as Fox News took advantage of the opportunity to impute mass savagery to select Arab populations via de-contextualised post-9/11 headlines like, ”Arafat Horrified by Attacks, but Thousands of Palestinians Celebrate; Rest of World Outraged”.

‘Muslim Sickos’

The demonisation of Muslims by certified sociopaths such as Pamela Geller comes, of course, as no surprise. However, the subtler dissemination of similar sentiments in Western mainstream discourse underscores the fundamental utility of the sociopathic sector in making institutionalised prejudice appear more rationally benign.

For example, according to Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development in the UK:

“[a] study commissioned by the Greater London Authority of 352 articles over a randomly selected one week period in 2007, found that 91 percent of articles about Muslims were ‘negative’.”

As it turns out, a little journalistic trick called “the invention of information” may come in handy in the proliferation of negativity. A 2008 article by Peter Osborne in the British Independent – titled “The shameful Islamophobia at the heart of Britain’s press” – catalogues some of the news industry’s more egregious deviations from the truth, such as a front-page story in The Sunannouncing that a “Muslim hate mob” had vandalised a home and left a “Fuck off” message in the driveway.

As Osborne notes, The Sun quoted MP Philip Davies’ opinion that “[i]f there’s anybody who should fuck off, it’s the Muslims who are doing this kind of thing”. Osborne adds:

“But there was one very big problem with The Sun story. There was no Muslim involvement of any kind.”

Other instances of scaremongering discrimination and deceit cited in the Independent report include:

1. A front-page newspaper headline implying that “Muslim Sickos” were to blame for the disappearance of a young girl. The corresponding text reportedly revealed that the so-called “Muslim Sickos” merely suggested on the internet that the girl’s parents were involved in her kidnapping.

2. A Daily Express article “claim[ing] that NatWest and Halifax had removed images of piggy banks from their promotional material in an effort to avoid offending Muslim customers”.

3. A story about a Muslim bus driver commanding passengers to disembark at prayer time.

Beards and civilisation 

John L Esposito highlights some of the disconcerting repercussions of pervasive Islamophobic rhetoric in the US in his foreword to The Islamophobia Industry. According to a 2006 USA Today-Gallup Poll of non-Muslim Americans, Esposito writes:

“[f]ewer than half the respondents believed that US Muslims are loyal to the United States. Nearly one-quarter of Americans – 22 percent – said they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbour; 31 percent said they would feel nervous if they noticed a Muslim man on their flight, and 18 percent said they would feel nervous if they noticed a Muslim woman on their flight. About 4 in 10 Americans favour more rigorous security measures for Muslims than those used for other US citizens: requiring Muslims who are US citizens to carry a special ID and undergo special, more intensive, security checks before boarding airplanes.”

It’s not enormously difficult to see how such a climate would spawn record levels of anti-Muslim violence in the country.

The de facto criminalisation of certain types of facial hair and other signifiers of Islamic piety is meanwhile aided and abetted by certain journalistic manoeuvers such as references to “bearded savages” and the like in the mainstream press.

A 1998 New York Times feat of Orientalist travel writing entitled “Exotic Oman Opens Its Doors” begins:

“Think of the Persian Gulf and what do you see? Gulf war soldiers, burning oil, bearded fanatics, polluted seas and flat, bleak desert.”

Luckily for the author-vacationer, Judith Miller, “exotic” Oman defies stereotypes and proves itself to be an “exquisitely civilised country”. As for less fortunate Persian Gulf locales, the same Miller subsequently expanded her talents from providing the Times‘ readership with detailed descriptions of the turtle egg-laying process on the Omani coast to falsified reports of an Iraqi WMD programme.

In the end, media characterisations of Muslims kill two birds with one stone, justifying oppression at homeand imperial devastation abroad.

Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, released by Verso in 2011. She is a member of the Jacobin Magazine editorial board, and her articles have appeared in the London Review of Books blog, The Baffler, Al Akhbar English and many other publications. 

Follow her on Twitter: @MariaBelen_Fdez