Rozina Ali on Islamophobia before 9/11

Your book Seasons of Fury tells the history of the “War on Terror” not from the vantage point of presidents or institutions, but through four Muslim families whose lives were shaped by rising Islamophobia decades prior to 2001. After spending years immersed in these families’ lives and in the broader history of American Islamophobia, how did writing this book change your own understanding of the United States?

I long believed that institutions and rational minds would check a darker impulse toward bigotry. That’s one reason I embarked on this project: to understand why anti-Muslim sentiment became so prevalent during a time when there were broad efforts to combat racism, and when more Muslims were in politics and media. First, I was surprised to learn how unsophisticated much of the government’s understanding of Islam and Middle East politics was, before and after 9/11. And second, I recognized that over the decades, there has been a slow erosion of checks and balances in this country. Many policies that we consider discriminatory, like Trump’s Muslim ban, have been upheld by the Supreme Court, because courts ceded considerations of national security to the executive branch.

You write about these families across eight decades. How did you see the weight of suspicion and surveillance shape them and their children? What was passed down, and what was left behind?

Long-term suspicion and surveillance prompted different reactions among Muslims I spoke with: in some, it inspired fight; in others, a desire to work with the government; or, in others still, silence. Whatever their position, Muslims continued to look toward U.S. institutions to combat discrimination. But the longer-term effect of such widespread surveillance has altered families. Even decades after September 2001, some Muslims refused to discuss the post-9/11 surveillance out of trauma, or fear they are still being watched.

The wide net of suspicion that was cast over the community led to high depression rates among its youth. Despite the rise of Muslim politicians and personalities, an anxiety and uncertainty lingers that Muslims’ place in American society is not completely secure—a sentiment that’s reinforced by the fact that many Americans, including senior policymakers, do not recognize that Islamophobia is a problem in the country.

Was there a moment in your reporting that made you rethink the book you had set out to write?

I thought I was going to start this book in September 2001, and had even begun writing it as such. But as I dug deeper into the longstanding architecture of surveillance and scrutiny of Muslim Americans, which was present even before 9/11, I realized that the history was much more complex and vast than I thought.

The way in which Islamophobia manifests today is intrinsically tied to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and how the U.S. has targeted communities at home because of this conflict. I could not summarize this history in a few pages. Instead, I needed to tell it in a nuanced way, one that would show the different roles that Muslim and Arab Americans occupied in the political sphere before September 2001, and the ways in which the 9/11 attacks were a continuation and a break in that history.