USA: Ahmadi Muslims in Bay Area respond to Trump, San Bernardino

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"We're encouraging our members to go out and meet their neighbors, talk with their neighbors, teach their neighbors and tell them who we really are."

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: San Jose Mercury News
By Joe Rodriguez, Thomas Peele, Julia Prodis Sulek
Posted: December 8, 2015

Even before Donald Trump's incendiary proposal this week to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, Zakir Agha knew what many Americans were thinking: Is there a terrorist among us?

The San Bernardino massacre -- carried out by a couple whose inner circle of family, co-workers and fellow Muslim worshippers expressed shock at their secret allegiance to the Islamic State -- has left many among the Bay Area's 250,000 Muslims struggling with a range of emotions, from anger to exasperation to sorrow to fear.

Concerns of a backlash persuaded the large Muslim Community Association in Santa Clara to hire professional security guards, restrict entry to two entrances, and advise members to leave promptly after prayers. "Please be watchful both at the masjid and elsewhere," MCA posted on Facebook. "These are cautionary measures, so do not be unduly alarmed."

But Agha said his fellow worshippers at the Baitul-Baseer Mosque in Milpitas are taking another approach.

"We're encouraging our members to go out and meet their neighbors, talk with their neighbors, teach their neighbors and tell them who we really are," said Agha, 43, a software engineer who lives in Dublin with his wife and two children.

On Tuesday night, the mosque, which sits along the rolling east hills of this suburban city, held a prayer vigil for the San Bernardino victims and an interfaith discussion. It wasn't the first time the 200 members of the relatively small Ahmadiyya branch of Islam opened their mosque's door after a terrorist attack on American soil. They did the same only a few days after Sept. 11, 2001.

Now, as then, Agha said, "It hurt us more because it was a so-called Muslim who resorted to these acts. We're trying to remove that image of Islam. We want people to know the true Islam. Part of our faith says that you must be loyal to the country that is your host."

Samir Munir and other members of the Milpitas mosque said they were devastated and alarmed that neither the family nor friends of the San Bernardino shooters had any inkling of their radicalization.

Munir and other members said they are passionate about keeping their youth actively engaged in their community so they won't be vulnerable to the hate-filled messages of the Islamic State group. The youth group meets monthly here to talk about their lives straddling two worlds -- their roots in the Middle East and their teenage lives as American high schoolers. They do annual blood drives in memory of the Sept. 11 victims and regularly donate to the food pantry at Sacred Heart Community Service in San Jose.

"The youth group keeps you connected to something bigger than yourself so you don't feel vulnerable," said Asher Jamil, 15, who has endured the occasional taunt of "you're a terrorist" at high school in Pleasanton.

Agha said several members of the mosque have reported being intimidated in public, including a woman who said she was wearing a veil at a local mall when a man confronted her and said, "Hey, you're not going to blow up the building or anything, are you?"

At the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Bay Point, Imam Ahmad Salman heard from one woman who was helping colleagues plan a holiday party when she was dropped from an email chain and shunned. Other women wearing burqas have been leered at in public, he said.

Salman said he's afraid that Trump's rhetoric could turn the anti-Muslim hysteria violent. "We fear for our lives," he said.

Trump, the early front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, drove home his controversial proposal on Tuesday and basked in the controversy swirling around him on talk shows and social media. He even invoked President Franklin D. Roosevelt's internment camps of Japanese, Germans and Italians living in the U.S. during World War II as a similar example of what's necessary to protect the country during war.

Munir, who attended Tuesday's vigil in Milpitas, said Trump's comments were not only outrageous but personal. Her daughter lives in Germany and messaged her on Tuesday that "If Trump has his way, I won't be able to see you."

"That was a big eye opener," Munir said.

Trump clarified his remarks Tuesday, saying the ban would not include American Muslims or legal residents traveling abroad. That means the ban would not have applied to Syed Farook, who along with his Pakistani wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people during an office holiday party Dec. 2. He was born in the U.S.

"This was an American citizen who committed a crime," said Hamdy Abass, a Gilroy insurance agent who attends the South Valley Islamic Center in Morgan Hill. "Was he influenced by Islam? I don't think so. He might have been influenced by radicals in the Middle East. Those persons are not Muslim at all."

Still, Trump's proposed ban was greeted enthusiastically in some of the more conservative parts of the country, and at least by some of his supporters living in the largely liberal Bay Area.

"It's fine with me. I'm for a total ban," said Leslie Solmonson, a retired aerospace engineer from San Jose who recently moved to San Juan Bautista. "They could be hardworking, honest people, but they could be a damned terrorist, too. We don't know. Let's stop it."

Solmonson said he will probably vote for Trump in the California primary election next year.

"I believe he's saying a lot of things that white, old Americans can't say," the 67-year-old Solmonson said. "He doesn't want one more American killed."

Even Trump's most controversial comments have buoyed him in the polls, but many local Muslims say they are hopeful that the growing backlash against the billionaire will overwhelm his message.

"No matter what he says, the American values of freedom and justice will prevail over his bigotry," said Ghaidaa Mousabacha, a Syrian-American schoolteacher in San Jose. "I am not worried about his statements. They won't stand for long."



Contact Joe Rodriguez at jrodriguez@mercurynews.com, contact Thomas Peele at tpeele@bayareanewsgroup.com, and contact Julia Prodis Sulek at jsulek@mercurynews.com.


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