jennifer bryan
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In general, there has been a heightened awareness of religious rules regulating social
interactions and behavior. For those practicing “the true” Islam, listening to popular music,
going to clubs, wearing nail polish, and talking with non-Muslims have, in some cases, become
problematic. Rules on gender interactions such as avoiding shaking hands or making eye contact
with members of the opposite sex have become important social markers for identifying “the
true” Muslim in public places.
In addition, some in the Muslim community even began to practice Islam for the first
time after 9/11. Oral histories with newly practicing Muslims suggest that this change may be
related to personal experiences of demoralization and stigmatization by non-Muslims since 9/11.
For those who began to practice after 9/11, the quest to be “the true” has become all-consuming,
perhaps in part to make up for years of not practicing. One man told me:
Before September 11
th
, I didn’t know anything about Islam. I was drinking
alcohol. I was smoking cigarettes. I was going to the discoteque. I was with too
many girls. I was like ignorant, really. But after this happened, people started to
call me terrorist, Osama bin laden. And then I these people on the TV are saying
this is Islam, that is Islam. And this is my religion, my culture. And I don’t know.
So I had to find for myself what is Islam. Now Al Hamd li Allah I feel so much
good, so much peace to know “the true.”
Frantz Fanon once described the search for cultural identity in post-colonial societies as:
Passionate research…directed by the secret hope of discovering beyond the
misery of today, beyond self-contempt, resignation and abjuration, some very
beautiful and splendid era whose existence rehabilitates us both in regard to
ourselves and in regard to others (Fanon cited in Hall 1997: 51).
Fanon’s words speak to the internal struggle for validation and recognition among Jersey
City’s Arab Muslims, whose cultural worth has been challenged after 9/11. Many are searching
into history to resurrect an essential core of Islam that may ‘rehabilitate’ their image in their own
eyes and in the eyes of others. This search for authenticity and recognition would appear to
resemble the resurgence of ethnic identities in the former Yugoslavia and numerous other post-
communist countries (see Anderson 1982).
Yet, it is not only through a renewed interest in historic religious practice and prayer that
Muslims are working to construct “the true” Muslim identities. It is also important to recognize
the constantly changing nature of what it means to construct “the true” Muslim identities in the
Convention