South Asian Americans and Islamaphobia After 9/11
“What kind of person I am?...When you read about me, what do you really see?” - Shahawar Matin Siraj
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Today’s topic will be on the increased surveillance efforts made by the US government after the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings on September 11th, 2001. Pursuant of maintaining national and domestic security, the federal government’s policies turned towards closing doors and limiting immigrants from entering the US as well as heightened deportation efforts. What was different about the treatments against South Asian Americans and Muslims from the US government from other race-based discrimination was that these enforcements were done behind closed doors. That is, no federal law was passed to target a specific race, but the execution of the laws were targeted towards Pakistani Americans, Muslim Americans, and other South Asian Americans. Below are two stories of how the increased enforcement upended their American Dreams.
Ansar Mahmood was a pizza delivery man in Hudson, New York. He was born and raised in Pakistan, and in 1999, Mahmood obtained his green card and a year later moved to the United States. Less than a month after 9/11, Mahmood was found taking photographs of a water treatment plant in New York. Under suspicion of being a potential terrorist and for trespassing private property, a local person called the police to investigate. Mahmood was quickly cleared, but because he was on file now, the police thoroughly searched his activity. Soon after, the police found that Mahmood was housing two foreigners whose visas had expired. Though Mahmood claimed he was not aware of their visa statuses, he was still charged with a felony and was jailed for the next three years. Local members of the Hudson, New York community protested this increase discrimination, but to no avail. After three years of jail time, Mahmood was deported back to Pakistan in 2005.
Shahawar Matin Siraj is a Pakistani American who was convicted of plotting a bomb in a New York City subway station. The major evidence against Siraj was an undercover agent Osama Eldawoody who worked as a paid informant for the New York Police Department as part of anti-terrorism efforts after the 9/11 attacks. The details of the bomb plotting are a bit unclear, and some may think that Eldawoody, who before the conviction was a trusted father figure, influenced Siraj’s actions to plot the bomb in the first place. Perhaps it was in exchange for Eldawoody’s own safety and financial security; after all, he was promised $100,000 for his help in aiding the NYPD. Eldawoody says that he has only received $25,000 and monthly payments of $3,000, but he claims that it was not what was promised. Regardless of the motivations, the verdict charged Siraj as guilty of bomb plotting and conspiracy. In 2007, Siraj was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He is still there now, and once his sentence is up, he will most likely be deported back to Pakistan, forever labeled in the US as the “bombing terrorist.”
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