ICCNC: San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Otis R. Taylor Jr. has written a report on the activities of the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California(ICCNC).
Following this Report:About a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Arshad Chowdhury, an American-born college student who had been visiting friends in San Francisco, was told he couldn’t get on a Northwest Airlines flight because his name sounded suspicious.
He was terrified, alone and 3,000 miles from home — and there weren’t hundreds of protesters at San Francisco International Airport demanding his fair treatment.
Chowdhury, who is Muslim, was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University at the time, and airport security and the FBI soon verified that he wasn’t a threat. Still, the Northwest pilot would not allow him to board.
He took another airline to Pittsburgh. But, according to Chowdhury, Northwest Airlines put him on a no-fly list, adding to his distress.
Yes, this happened to an American citizen.
And now we’re heading down that path again.
Last week’s presidential executive order banning citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States ensnared legal U.S. residents. Green-card holders were detained at airports across the country, including San Francisco’s. The ban has been challenged but, like Chowdhury, I wonder how deep the president’s hate will seep into national and international policy.
“I wonder what’s going to restrain them from doing the absolute worst,” said Chowdhury, an entrepreneur who now lives in New York.
If you want to live in an America where you’re afraid of your neighbors and your neighbors are afraid of you, great. But that’s not for me. We’re not the enemy, which is why we can’t allow the erosion of civil liberties and civil rights to go any further. Xenophobia and Islamaphobia can’t be allowed to suffocate sanity.
What’s next — religion tests, the denial of jobs based on religious affiliation, not prosecuting hate crimes and confiscating property?
“Do we have it in us to sit back and watch while our police, our military, our systems of power disenfranchise, disempower or even incarcerate millions of us because of our race or identity?” asked Chowdhury, who was raised in a Bangladeshi community in Connecticut. “It’s a loud ‘yes.’ We’ve been doing it to the African-American people since the beginning of this country.”
Let’s not forget the suffering of the Japanese and the Native Americans at the hands of the American government. But hey, I’ve got an off-the-wall solution: Let’s just be inclusive.
Let’s take the lead of Muslims in Oakland who are opening their arms instead of closing their doors.
Last weekend, the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California distributed 1,000 sleeping bags to homeless people in Oakland and San Jose. Friday, the center on Madison Street near Lake Merritt is participating in an interfaith food drive for the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
Payman Amiri, the Islamic Cultural Center’s chairman, told me half of the organization’s activities include reaching out to non-Muslims.
“Everybody wishes that their home is safe, and this country’s our home,” said Amiri, a naturalized American citizen who was born in Iran. “But brushing everyone with the same color — I don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s creating an opportunity for some bigots to go out and harm people because their faith is different. It’s very un-American.”
On Thursday, Zahra Noorbakhsh, an Iranian-American comedian, and self-described feminist Muslim will open a comedy show at the center. The performance, titled “On Behalf of All Muslims,” couldn’t be more appropriate.
Zahra Noorbakhsh brings Her Comedy Special to ICCNC “ON BEHALF OF ALL MUSLIMS”
“It feels more necessary than ever to do what I can as a member of the Muslim community to bring as many allies as I can to the cultural spaces,” she said. “These issues impact all of us. It really allows me the ability to highlight that for the audiences that I entertain.”
Noorbakhsh, the cohost of the monthly #GoodMuslimBadMuslim podcast, told me her activism is spirituality rooted in the complexities of her cultural history. She used to joke that she was the pork-eating, alcohol-drinking, premarital sex having Muslim.
“It was, for me, a way to complicate the narrative for those outside of the Muslim community that sought to simplify it so that they could turn it into the other and the villain,” she said. “I have to find ways to laugh because that’s also how I cope with anger.”
“And I hope I can bring that sort of levity to the masses,” she added. “I hope that I can reflect a lot of the thoughts that they’ve been having because of how much we’re being gaslighted by the administration.”
There are six performances of “On Behalf of All Muslims.” I’m attending one with a Muslim friend. We’ve chosen humanity over hate.
It’s the only way we’ll all move forward.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.