Arab Americans exercise caution amid anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S.

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Dearborn/New York, the United States

Since becoming a citizen of the United States 14 years ago, Intisar Alawie, a 16-year-old Muslim, never felt scared or threatened living in America, even though she wears a head scarf.

But the attack on the World Trade Center in New York and Pentagon in Washington on Sept. 11, 2001 changed everything. The attack brought fear not just for her, but also for many Arab Americans.

"My family decided to wait until summer. If things get worse, maybe we'll move back to our home country, Yemen. Now we are not sure what's going to happen tomorrow," Intisar told The Jakarta Post recently, after Friday prayers at one of the mosques in the city of Dearborn, Michigan.

During the first week after the attack, she recalled that her family told her to stay at home and pack, to get ready to leave the country in case the worst happened. They also asked her not to go out at night and be aware of possible discriminatory behavior toward them.

"Sometimes it's frightening to go to school because many young American men have verbally attacked me after the incident.

"However, what bothers me most is that some Arab American female students have chosen to take off their head scarves because they were scared to appear as Muslims," the high school student said.

Intisar was among many Arabs who migrated to the U.S. in search of better living and greater freedom. Many of them chose to live in Detroit, a city famous for its automobile factories, which have provided them with jobs and security.

In Detroit, there are around 150,000 Arab Americans, most of whom come from Lebanon and Syria. Dearborn has a large Arab American community.

In the four months since the attack, some 1,500 cases of discrimination, ranging from verbal attacks to murder, have been reported, not to mention the thousands of men of Arab descent who have been detained by the U.S. authorities -- some without clear reason. Even a Sikh man was mobbed to death in Arizona because he was mistaken for a Muslim.

Fear also gripped cadet Mustafa Durrani, a 21-year-old sophomore student of West Point Military Academy in New York, who had only once before endured a climate of fear after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, when there were scores of attacks against the Arab community in the U.S.

Durrani's father is a Pakistani although he was born in the U.S. and had visited his homeland dozens of times before the September attack.

"I was there during the Oklahoma City bombing and the first thing that came to my mind after hearing the Sept. 11 attack was 'oh no, not again'. My father was called by the FBI to describe the landscape of Pakistan," Durrani said.

The fear has also forced some parents not to let their children go to school. Salina public school in Dearborn -- the only school where all of its students are Muslim -- suffered a 25 percent drop in attendance the first week after the attack. A father of one of the students was almost beaten up by young white Americans near the school.

Many Arab stores and restaurants in Dearborn were closed during the first few days after the attack because the owners were scared of a possible backlash against them.

Despite these fears, Arab American communities still believe in the U.S. legal system; that there will be justice for all of its citizens.

"Police were positioned in our neighborhood and mosques during the Idul Fitri celebrations in December so we could celebrate our holiday peacefully," Intisar said.

Some schools, Intisar said, severely punished students who expressed hatred against Arab or Muslim fellow students.

In Salina, teachers worked closely with the police to maintain the school as a safe place for its children, while the school's counselors continued working to build the students' confidence and return to school.

"Within two weeks the students' attendance rate returned to normal, but we are still helping the children deal with the traumatic incidents," Linda Hallick, the school's resource teacher and parent education coordinator, told visiting Indonesian journalists recently.

In response to the scary situation, government officials have repeatedly stated that they will not tolerate discriminatory action against the Arab American community.

There are also efforts made by television stations to educate the Americans on the Arab community, such as CNN, which aired a campaign calling on people not to be prejudiced against the Arab community in the U.S.

The Disney television station even produced a movie encouraging tolerance among American people toward the Arab community.

Now, most mosques in Dearborn are crowded again. Schools, Arab stores are running as usual, but the cautious feeling is still there.

"We just have to be prepared and stay together because we never know what will happen," Intisar said.