America's 'invisible' Muslims

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"Some of the people fear when they see a Middle Eastern family. They tell them to go back to their country; that they're terrorists."

Times of Ahmad | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: BBC News
By Anthony Zurcher | October 30, 2016

[Excerpt]

Two decades ago, Muslim refugees fleeing Bosnia arrived in St Louis and became a crucial part of the city. Now anti-immigrant fervour might lead the Bosnians of St Louis to become more politically active.

Imam Eldin Susa recounts how a family of recent immigrants from the Middle East was threatened at gunpoint while looking for housing in Affton, a leafy suburb of St Louis, Missouri.

"From their faces, it was obvious from where they came," he says - and the firearm-wielding resident wasn't happy about the prospect of such new neighbours.

Dzemal Bijedic, a Muslim chaplain with the St Louis police, says a Muslim woman waiting for a bus recently was set upon by five men who shouted anti-Islamic slurs and tried to tear off her hijab.

Eventually onlookers intervened.


"Some of the people fear when they see a Middle Eastern family," Bijedic says. "They tell them to go back to their country; that they're terrorists."

Ajlina Karamehic-Muratovic, a professor at St Louis University, says she's been involved in conversations where she was shocked to hear casual anti-Islamic views by people who didn't know they were talking about her own faith.

For Susa, Bijedic and Karamehic-Muratovic, Islamophobia is real.

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