jennifer bryan
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is the outmigration of Arab Muslims, a consequence of the heightened investigations and hostile
climate in Jersey City. As one woman told me:
After September 11
th
a lot of people leave Jersey City because they are afraid for
their lives.
Or, as another woman put it:
This place used to be so nice. We had too many Egyptians here; too many
Muslims. Like whole community. Now everybody is leave.
Egyptian Muslims spoke of feeling hurt and snubbed by community members who left
them behind. In fact, Egyptian Muslims who have lived in Jersey City for a long time feel like
they have been left behind twice, since a similar exodus is said to have occurred just after the
1993 World Trade Center bombing when Muslims in Jersey City came under similar suspicions.
The very emphasis on practicing “the true” Islam has created tensions in the Arab
Muslim community, as even the slightest deviation from “the true” Islam has become more
noticeable and salient among Muslims. Activities which were previously not given much
attention, such as wearing nail polish and make up, saving photographs and children’s artwork,
and talking across gender and religious group lines, have become subject to close scrutiny as
important symbolic markers of who is and who is not practicing “the true” Islam. As an
Egyptian Muslim woman told me:
Now, I don’t go to [the mosque] anymore. I pray at home. Because everybody
likes to talk. They look at what you’re wearing, how you pray, how your kids are
acting, what you put in--how you say—collection. Now everybody wants to be
“the true.” But they don’t know what is “the true.” Because if they know, they’re
going to know that in Islam what is most forbidden is backbiting. This is very
important. So when you fast, you are not only supposed to fast from water and
food. This is easy. But the most difficult is to fast from the backbiting.
As this quote suggests, the pressure to be “the true” has resulted in a kind of internal
“Othering” in the form of “backbiting.” While it could be argued that gossip helps to maintain
moral order, gossip and the pressure to conform, if they become too intense, can threaten in-
group community cohesion (see Erikson 1976: 186-246). Indeed, intense pressure to be the most
perfect practicing Muslim backfired in a few cases in that people were so put off by backbiting
that they sought to avoid the mosque altogether.
Convention