Life in post-9/11 America

A seismic shift befell American politics after the September 11 attacks, and 19 years later, Muslim Americans are still dealing with the aftershocks.

Most people are familiar with the so-called war on terror’s targeting of Muslims as well as anti-Muslim discrimination in the public sphere in the United States. But few know of Muslims’ difficulty in attaining justice in American courts in either of these cases.

As part of an ongoing study by the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights, we reviewed 175 Muslim civil rights cases filed across the US since 2001 and found that only 17 percent of claims made it to trial, with most cases dismissed by judges in the pre-trial phase. Our preliminary findings point to a troubling trend: not only have Muslims experienced more discrimination since 2001, but they have also not been able to find meaningful relief in the courts.

While most civil rights violations rarely proceed to litigation due to the prohibitive cost of retaining a lawyer, the success rate of those which do remains abysmally low. This outcome, which plagues civil rights cases in general, is due in part to the judges’ gatekeeping role in the litigation process.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on religion or ethnic origin, which are the most common cases filed by Muslims. Discrimination cases are already hard to win because judges consistently read anti-discrimination law with high deference towards employers, supervisors and law enforcement. In cases filed by Muslims, the judges’ exercise of discretion pre-trial demonstrates an ignorance at best, or callousness at worst, of discrimination experienced by Muslim communities.

In post-9/11 America, thus, Muslim plaintiffs face a nearly insurmountable battle to try their case before a jury of their peers, despite rising Islamophobia in society.

Take the case of Skwikar Ali Abdelkader in Maryland. For seven years without incident, she took Fridays off from her job at Sears to observe the Muslim Sabbath. In 2007, her supervisor suddenly demanded that she come in to work on Fridays, notwithstanding her long service to the company. When Abdelkader sued her employer, the judge flippantly noted that she could have used her vacation days to take Fridays off.

Never mind that Abdelkader was not asked to use her vacation days during the first seven years of her employment or that the average American worker gets a paltry 10 days paid vacation per year. Neither of these considerations mattered enough for the judge to take seriously this Muslim woman’s request for religious accommodation to allow her to have her day in court before a jury.

Excerpted from: ‘No justice for post-9/11 discrimination’

Aljazeera.com