Life and Experiences of South Asian Muslims in Houston
HIST 5381- “Keeping the Faith”
Abstract
This paper provides a deep view of the life and experience of Muslim Americans in Houston. The city of Houston is among the cities in South and the southwestern United States that hosts the largest Muslim populations. The information documented in the paper is obtained from participant observations and interviews. It explores the daily lives of the Muslim Americans on the basis of class, religious sectarian affiliation, profession, race, sexuality, and gender to demonstrate the complex experience that the South Asians had in the foreign land. The paper incorporates the narratives given by members Muslim Americans with Pakistan descent, in which some of them were scholars who migrated from Pakistan to the United States to further their education and expertise. Some of the narratives included in the paper are from members of Ismaili Muslim, a community that the most skilled labor forces who worked in large businesses in the United States. It also decenters dominant framings that flatten the understanding of Muslim Americans such as “model minority” and “terrorists”. It offers a transitional experience that South Asians have encountered in U.S. and the allegations that the cooperate Americans had against them.
Introduction
While Ahmed Afzal was busy conducting anthropogenic fieldwork on the life and experience of the South Asian Muslims in Houston, the Muslims were attacked in the American land in September 2001.’Lone star Muslims: Transitional Lives and South Asian Experience in Texas ‘tried to disintegrate the general assumptions that the Americans had towards Islam as tourists and religious militants.[1] The Americans had this generalization considering the behavior of the extremist Muslims who acted on the name of appropriated Islam. This generalization in foreign soil formed the basis to which Pakistan Muslims were victimized and looked down upon by the American natives. The American Muslims received other damages in the context of racism, Islamophobia, and post-9/11 government surveillance, among others. However, every encounter that this American Muslims went through was critical in shaping their ideas on citizenship, community, and identity[2]. To understand everyday life experience that the Pakistan Muslims went through while in the United States, this paper will consider several contexts such as the homeland politics, the ethnic economy of South Asians who live in Houston, ethnic media, festive celebrations, Muslim sectarian community formations, and transnational revivalist Islamic movements, in addition to the aftermath of 9/11.
In the real sense, the events that occurred in September 2001 had a severe influence on the life that the Muslim Americans went through[3]. In the government sector, the USA patriot act was passed following the 2011 events and expanded the authority of law enforcement agencies of the United States for the purpose of monitoring the Muslim Americans and combat terrorism in and out of the United States. The patriot act also revised the definition of terrorism so as to cover the domestic attacks and allowed more powers to the law enforcement agencies to carry on their activities on domestic terrorism. Later after a decade or so, the enforced activities of the government, the surveillance, and the control became entrenched in the statecraft of the United States and later sustained by the ongoing U. S. militaristic and geopolitical in South Asia, the Middle East and the Gulf States. The U. S. government representatives claimed that these policies and laws were implemented by the integral part of the United States-led global fights against terrorism were meant to keep the United States safe and free from both internal and external security threats. According to the Muslim Americans, these policies and laws were targeting them, and they represented state-sanctioned racism and criminalization of the citizens of U. S. and the noncitizen residents based on their country of origin and respective religion.[4]
The Muslim Americans felt that they were the key targets by American natives on a daily basis following the 9/11 attacks. The violence that targeted the Muslims, especially the male, was rationalized and fell into the category of “crimes of passion” that are committed to defend and express patriotism of the Native Americans to the United States[5]. In Texas, such crimes appeared in regularity in the mainstream press. For example, in Dalton, a mosque was firebombed, an incendiary device was thrown at the gasoline station that was owned by the Pakistanis in Austin, while several burets were fired through the windows of Dallas-area mosque. The real racism was spotted when the Muslim owner of the delicatessen in the border town of McAllen, reported that a poster was written “Go Home” was spray-painted several times on the door of his Al-Madinah Market and lastly, an arson attack to the shop followed[6].
Additionally, the Ku Klux Klan started and sponsored demonstrations in front of the convenience store that was owned by the Pakistani in Houston’s Montgomery County after an email circulated to the social media claiming that the Muslim workers from the convenience store had ripped down American flags. American natives conducted several protests after the owner of the store explained to the organizers that the American teenagers had removed the flags after they were denied permission to purchase cigarettes without their original identification card to verify their age.
The fear of everyday hostility and violent backlash towards Muslim Americans played a major role in the crisis over self-presentation in the public in the Muslim communities[7]. Most of the Muslim business owners in Houston found it wise to post expensive signs on the wall or large windows of their houses that read “We support America” or “God bless America” or display American flags in front of their business premises so as to secure the businesses from frequent attacks and robbery[8]. Most of the Muslim Americans were also found it prudent to attach stickers of American flags on the screen of their cars or pin the logos of American flags on their clothes to please the Native Americans.[9]
The feeling that non-American business owners and the Muslims had decided to publically demonstrate their forced patriotism indicated that the nationalism of the United States is marginalizing and exacerbating vulnerabilities, if not totally excluding, Muslim communities from the native American community. Cultural anthropologist Andrew Shryock noted that “In the aftermath of 9/11, Muslim Americans and Arabs have been compelled, time and again, to apologize for acts they did not commit, to condemn acts they never condoned, and to openly profess loyalties that, for most U.S. citizens, are merely assumed. Moreover, Arabs political movements, ideologies, causes, religious organizations, and points of view that they are currently at odds with U. S. policy.”[10]
The proliferation of the literature of the life experience that the Muslim Americans went through has expended the knowledge and understanding of many scholars as well as giving detailed information about the myriad response to the 9/11 attacks. The Muslim Americans were also given scholarships in the foreign land to further their studies, but they had to submit to their sponsors madly. Sociologist Nazli Kibria argues that “there has been a tendency to homogenize Muslims, to present one-dimensional views of who they are and how they organize and understand their place in the world and the role of religion within it” (Kibria, 2011). He further stated that “much post-9/11 scholarships on Muslims have taken a top-down approach towards its subject matter. Texts, official discourses, and the views of Islamic leaders have framed the dominant investigative window into the Muslim experience. Even when researchers have, in fact, taken a broader and more inclusive approach, it has always been to study those Muslims who are active participants in Islamic groups and organizations. The perspectives and experiences of those Muslims who are marginal to these organized forums have received little attention. If only in indirect ways, this too has nurtured the image of homogeneity.”[11]
The flattening of the experience of the Muslim Americans means that there was a relative absence of ethnographic analysis that was community-centered of the Pakistan Muslim experience, especially those who lived in southern states. Different scholars on the job conducted several studies flows of the South Asians, and both come to the agreement that the opportunities offered to the Muslim Americans are far less compared to the job opportunities given to the American natives.
Due to the increased racialization of Muslim Americans and U. S. government surveillance for almost two decades, this paper will challenge the general belief of associating all Islam with global terrorism. It will decenter the Native American’s dominant framings, such as “model minority” and “terrorism,” that flattens the experience of the Muslim Americans and Islam[12]. It will also employ cultural analysis to explain the heterogeneity of the Pakistanis in the American soil and the Pakistan immigrant experience in general. The paper will also include narratives of what resulted in the internal diversity of the population of Pakistan. However, this ethnic group consists of the highly skilled personnel who are employed in large businesses in the United States, although their wages still remain significantly low. The most skilled Pakistan members were the Shia Ismaili Muslim labor force, who worked in the cooperate America[13]. Others were just local entrepreneurs, while most of them were employed in small Pakistan ethnic businesses, community activists, radio programs hosts, and gay Muslim American men with Pakistan descent. All these narratives will serve to provide extensive knowledge of a variety of lived experiences that the Muslims went through and show how the specificities of profession, class, citizenship status, sectarian religious affiliation, sexuality and gender work in harmony to shape the transitional identities, and mediate racism, abjection, and marginalities in the foreign land.
The paper also contains detailed results of the study that was carried out to three different groups Muslims in two different places so as to illuminate the complexity that exists in the Muslim communities and their life experience since the 9/11 attacks. The three groups that were examined include gay Muslims, Shia Ismailis, and entrepreneurs. The two places that the paper seeks to explore are the airwaves of a vibrant Pakistani radio programming landscape in Houston and Pakistani Independence Day festival, which demonstrates the diasporic public cultures of the Pakistanis who live in Houston[14].
The homogeneity that was attributed to the South Asians and Muslim Americans obscured the vital roles of Islamic sectarian ideologies meant to shape the community formations in the foreign soil. Much of the scholarly studies that were conducted earlier on the experience of the Muslim Americans focused on the Sunni Muslims and slightly touched on other Muslim communities such as the Ismaili, Shia, Ansaru Allah, Ahmadiya, and Druze communities[15]. The homogenization of these communities obscures the entire Muslim American community from maintaining their Islamic beliefs and practices[16].
Educational and professional experience of the Ismaili Muslims
The most skilled group of Muslims known as the Ismaili professionals also were included in the ‘model minority’ concept as a result of their aggressive pursuit of professional achievement and higher education. Most Pakistan professionals were employed in the energy sector in Houston, known as Enron. It was an elite energy company that appeared in top companies and one of the American dreams. It was founded in the mid-1980s and offered all energy solutions within the United States. After less than a decade since its emergence, Enron emerged the best company in the energy sector worldwide, with high profile collaborations and projects with the governments in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and South America. It owned and operated electricity plants, gas pipelines, pulp and paper plants, water plants, and broadband assets. It also traded extensively in the financial markets for the same products and services. Due to the complex operations and activities that were being undertaken in the company, there was a need to employ several thousand employees who are highly skilled because the company had started to gain public influence in and out of the United States[17].
Its reputation as the leading energy company attracted professionals from top universities and colleges with a lot of emphasis on education to the middle-class Pakistan families. Ajmad, from the Pakistanis in America, managed to secure apposition in Enron Company had attended an Ivy League university where he studied business admiration. He noted that the only way that the foreigners could secure high ranks and mutual respect of their entire community while in a foreign land is through aggressive pursuit of professionalism in the American labor market. In an ethnographic study that was conducted to South Asians in the high-tech industry, an anthropologist Shalinsi Shankar noted the significance of education to the families of the Muslim Americans and the South Asians while in the foreign soil of America. Shankar noted that “at home, upper-middle-class parents emphasize the importance of earning high grades and test scores from elementary school onward. They prioritize schoolwork and draw on their educational background to help their children with homework and school assignments. It is not unusual for the Desi parents of this class background to push their children to perform academically and emphasize education over leisure. These parents also have the financial means to ply their children with spending money and urge them to focus on school assignments and pursue internships that will embellish their resumes”[18]. Shankar emphasized that the only way through which the immigrants could be recognized in a foreign land is through academic success.
The reputation of the Enron Company not only a motivating factor to Ajmad but the entire community. For instance, Salim, who was almost ten years older than Ajmad, was the sole breadwinner of his entire family. He grew up in India, where he used to a private entrepreneur but later migrated to the United States to pursue his graduate education. After the completion of the business school at a top-tier university, he received a job offer from Enron and moved to Houston. This was the first exposure that Salim had with the cooperate Americans. Like Ajmad, he emphasized that it’s only through education the Muslim Americans and Pakistanis in the United States could be recognized and treated just like the Native Americans.
The collective admiration of foreign professional in cooperate America was as a result of their academic and professional achievements. The emphasis that Ajmad, Salim, and Muslim elites had on individual success and hard work echo the qualities that were admired by the American employers as well as other employees who were employed at high-profile companies in the United States[19]. The collective enthusiasm for hard work while at Enron was coupled with an understanding of the rituals that were associated with the drive for success and go-getting attitude in cooperate America.
The model minority and U. S. race regimes.
The cultural projection to explain the few cases of individual success from the minority groups in Houston eludes the experience of unemployment, elusiveness, homelessness, and poverty that the Muslim Americans and South Asians immigrants, as well as other racial minorities, have gone through in the foreign soil[20]. The concept of model minority has been critiqued for obscuring classed difference and entrenched racialization in free access to opportunities and undermining alliance building between the Latinos, Asians, and African Americans. Shankar argues that “the success of some minorities, these reports indirectly blamed others for not advancing in what was touted as an open society. The racist dynamics that govern structures of opportunity were neither acknowledged nor taken into account”[21]
Some foreign communities, such as South Asian in the United States, may confound the issue of the model minority. The racialization of this community, especially in relation to the African Americans, the whites, and Latinos, suggests that the South Asians had ambiguous and complicated positioning in racial hierarchies within the United States. The model minority was evident in terms of educational attainment levels, residential settlement patterns, perception of cooperate Americans, and professional achievements.
According to the mode of integration that exists in the United States, the South Asians professionals are positioned at a distance on the model minority compared to other minority communities, notably the Latinos and African Americans. Some scholars have noted that the South Asian immigrants have not been identified with many struggles that the African Americans and the Latinos have been facing across the racial borders. A sociologist, Monisha Gupta, states that “for South Asians, racism towards Blacks and Latinos has long been a rite of passage into model minority citizenship. This rite of passage is complemented by disinterest in the economic disenfranchisement and the struggles against police brutality of African American communities”[22]. A historian Vijay Prashad also argued that ” the entry of desis in large numbers after the passage of the Civil Rights Act not only brought them into the model minority category but also set the terms for the desi view of Black Liberation. It did not take long for the media to add desis to the model minority category. Here was a community with phenomenal demographic data: Almost everyone had an advanced degree, and almost all the migrants’ imbibed bourgeois values of education and work ethics. This was the cream of the bourgeois South Asian crop, and it was certainly going to make an impact despite its small numbers”[23].
The appropriations and assertions of the model minority have meant appealing to dominant and predominantly white societal norms, instead of intermingling and identifying with people of different colors. The critics of this concept of the model minority have framed it as a divisive racial project that is based on class, constructs both bad and good racial subjects in the society. Most of the scholars from the Asian Indian communities have acknowledged class-based inequalities, racism, elisions, and sexism. Still, they have fallen short of excluding differential access to rights, privileges, and entitlements in the neoliberal economy of discrimination[24].
While criticizing the model minority concept from an anti-racist and feminist perspective, Monisha Das Gupta (2006) pointed out that “the enthusiasm with which the South Asian mainstream embraces the model minority image is reprehensible not only because it accepts anti-black and anti-Latino racism but also because this acceptance is tied to patriarchal oppression and compulsory heterosexuality in the name of culture.”[25]
In the real sense, most of the Ismaili professionals such as Ajmad and his learned friends filter the whites through the lens of neoliberal ideologies to show what scholar of the ethnic study, Jasbir Puar termed as “fitness-within-capitalism” and the promise of incorporation that “always appears almost on the verge of fulfillment, but never quite satisfied.”[26] Jasbir further noted that “the seduction by global capital is conducted through racial amnesia, among other forms of forgetting.” While reflecting on the sentiments made by Jasbir, Salim added that” if her company had continued, we would have seen many non-whites at the highest level at Enron.”[27] The benefit that these scholars were enjoying in Enron, which was in the midst of the cooperate Americans and yet they were foreigners, is due to the unmatched experience among other employees. Otherwise, they could have been treated just like other Muslim Americans and South Asians. While Ahmed Afzal asked Ajmad whether they encountered any kind of discrimination in Enron company on the bases of their race, religion, or nationality, Ajmad quickly defended Enron by arguing that the company always rewards the efforts, merits, visions, and guts of its employees. He claimed that nationality, race, and religion were not an issue of concern to employers. He said that “if I stayed here, I could see myself as a senior executive. My personal experience was that at the level of associates or managers, the glass ceiling did not exist. Enron was the type of company where I would have wanted to be, twenty years from now. Perhaps in the future, I might have felt a glass ceiling.” However, both Salim and Ajmad felt that there was a significant barrier that existed in Enron, which could bar upward mobility of women in cooperate America from the glass ceiling. Ajmad claimed that “the energy industry is drive by traders. It is an industry that is driven by experts in the energy field, and if you look at these traders or experts, more often is men. Traders are extremely aggressive, extremely cutthroat, and mostly male. It was very macho kind of an environment that might turn off women, but racially, there was no issue. “Probably, the macho and aggressive kind of environment the Ajmad talks about suggests the gendered construction that the professional success and achievements have created that favor men compared to the female gender. Such gendered explanations for the success and professional achievement that exist in cooperate America supports and shapes the assertions and observations of Salim and suggests “ascendancy to whiteness” and management of sameness and racial differences[28]. These assertions confirmed the earlier research findings which indicated that Asians were not advancing, despite their excellent advancement in Academics and professionalism. The Asian Americans were also had fewer job opportunities, and whenever they secured the jobs, they were paid peanuts compared to the Native Americans[29]. This ascendancy produced bourgeois and heteronormative notions of family that is deployed to consolidate privilege. Thus, the discourse of model minority depended on deflected or deferred gratification, sexual and gender normativity, and the production of the hybrid multicultural body politic in exchange for lucrative possibilities within the global economy. This configuration of the privileges may require a lack of investments in progressive politics and interclass and interracial coalition building. As suggested by Pawan Dhingra (2012), a sociologist of the time, “racism may not be so significant to them that they form hostilities against whites. Ethnicity and race continue to matter, but the only question is by how much. The more they matter, the stronger are the ethnic and pan-ethnic boundaries and weaker integrations”[30] The homogeneity of most of the South Asian complicity in racial regimes and professional labor flow became much complicated after the 9/11 attacks, in which a significant number of South Asian members separated from others and who was mistaken by the United States for enemies. According to the underlying currents, one can comfortably argue that the disavowal of racism is based on the historical occurrences especially, the racial classification of South Asians in U. S.as well as the shift of Asian’s constructions and understanding of whiteness. During the 20th century, the South Asians started disintegrating and had several classifications such as the Hindoo, Caucasian, Asian Indian, and Asian or Pacific Islander. Later on, more than 25% of the second-generation South Asian Americans checked their racial category as white according to the census report of 2000[31]. As a result of such an ambiguous census report, the anthropologist Brooks Alison (2004) noted that “anthropology department sometimes receive desperate calls from parents: I am from Pakistan. Should I check ‘Asian’ or ‘White?’ This historical archive reveals that racial exclusions and racial classifications were codified in the Laws of the United States. In early 20th century reports, most of the South Asian immigrants settled on the Coast of North America. Later on, most of them moved to the United States. The population continued to grow while in the United States. Most of the men from this community secured low paying jobs in the agricultural sector and timber industry and were subject to discrimination and racism. The 1909 Federal Immigration Commission and the 1920 California State Board of Control, for instance, labeled this community as “the most undesirable immigrants in the state. His lack of professional cleanliness, low moral values, and blind adherence to theories and teachings so entirely repugnant to American principles make them unfit for association with American people.” This state-sanctioned racism made the south Asian men to protest. The immigrants also protested racially exclusive laws such as the 1913 alien Land Laws, which legally compromised the rights of these immigrants to farm ownership. Although the government of the United States intervened to check on the demands of the Protestants and changed some laws, the ambiguity of racial remains to some extent. In spite of such histories of ambiguities in categorization based on race, assignations, and assertions as a model minority during this contemporary period is not necessarily premised on disinvestment in coalition building, progressive politics, or negation of racism of Muslims within the larger society of the United States[32]. On the contrary, the investments of the immigrants on the construction of mosques and other religious infrastructures also played a major role in creating multicultural places of worship that exclude the Latinos and African Americans[33].
Education and practices of Pakistani nation building
The transitional Ismaili Muslim ideologies in foreign land emphasized the importance of professional achievement and higher education. Additionally, they also focused on nation-building that will provide another important register that decenters the salience of education as either an assimilated American value embedded in notions of the model minority or as an intrinsic Asian cultural trait. Most Pakistanis came migrated to Houston as scholars to pursue higher education on the fields of medicine, education, and engineering at around the 1950s under strict restrictive American immigration laws. Between 1950 and 1965, almost six thousand Indian immigrants (who were classified as Asian “other”), such as businessmen, students and refugees and moved to the United States.[34] Most of this population from families that had previously migrated from India to Pakistan following the partition of British Colonial India Into two sovereign nations, Pakistan and India, that occurred in 1947. Education in the U. S. was the second in series of prolonged transitional population movements to most of the students who migrated to the country.[35]
Pakistan achieved its independence from the colonial rule of the British after persistent communal violence. It was later formed as the sovereign nation that accommodated Muslims of South Asia in 1947. As a sovereign nation, Pakistan faced several problems, including the war with India over the territory of Kashmir, the influx of a large number of refugees into West Pakistan, hunger, poverty, and severe diseases[36]. As a result, Pakistan lost a lot in the industrial sector, higher education, communication networks, and institutions of governance. Additionally, the military and civil bureaucracy was desperately short of requisite infrastructure and skilled labor.
Due to such deficiencies, the Pakistanis placed much focus on professional and academic achievements such as training in medicine, engineering, and management sciences to enhance modernity, progress, and nation-building. In fact, as a result of the Indo-Pakistan war that took place in 1947, due to the disputed territory of Kashmir, which both Pakistan and India claim to be part of their sovereign territory, nationalism, education, dogma, and patriotism, became synonymous. The Emphasis of Pakistan on economic, industrial, and infrastructural growth models in the state that had recently acquired independence in Asia, professional was desperately needed to boost the country’s institutions and industries.
In the case of the United States, the process of building a variegated alliance with the newly independent state of Pakistan was guided by Cold War imperatives.[37] The strategic location of Pakistan in Asia, near the former Soviet Union and China, made it suited to contain all potential spread of communism in the entire region as required by the United States. From the military point of view, the retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer pointed out that each Asian country with which the U.S. signed a military agreement would “become little anti-communist bastions, prepared to resist a communist assault.”[38]
After Pakistan’s independence, the strategic alliances that the country had with the United States, providing expertise and technical assistance, in addition to educational scholarship opportunities offered to the Pakistanis. The alliance materialized through financial assistance for both social and economic development, military agreements, bilateral initiatives that would promote the education of the Pakistanis through the development of institutions of higher learning in Pakistan, education, and training of almost all men from Pakistan in the United States. Pakistan’s government saw this alliance as a golden opportunity to create an elite group of Pakistanis. The latter would go back to their native state and play important roles in social, economic, and industrial developments.[39]
In the 1960s, a lot of universities, government departments, and private institutions that were developed in Pakistan included bureaucrats, specialists, and administrators, most of which received training from the American specialists or have pursued their education from the American institutions of higher learning based in Pakistan.[40] For instance, the University of Pennsylvania had established the Institute of Public and Business Administration (IPBA) in Karachi, which offered diverse knowledge to the Pakistanis in different professional fields. At this institution, the Pakistani students were trained and educated using models of education from the business schools in America, and the “MBAs not only formed the skilled cadre for Pakistan’s comprador bourgeoisie but hey also became articulate spokesmen for the efficiency of American methods and advocates of free enterprise.” The emphasis of Pakistan on American education reflected the perception that “American colleges had more to offer in the student’s field of interests and were geared to practical education rather than just theory alone.”[41] According to the report given by Pakistan, the students who pursue their education in the United States or under American specialists confirmed that the United States would confer distinction in Pakistan society. Almost every Pakistanis student who interacted with the American education felt “that Pakistan would benefit from his foreign study or training and that the Government of Pakistan would welcome him on his return.” The students from Pakistan started dominating in learning institutions in Pakistan as well as those in the United States, mostly in technical fields and hard sciences, and academic progress that attracted most of the American entrepreneurs.
According to Syed Rizvi, an electrical Engineer who moved into the United States from Pakistan, tough regulations by the government make it almost impossible for Muslims and other immigrants in general to repatriate their income.[42] He however argues that his religious affiliations have not negatively affected his interactions with the community around him. He cites inter-religious efforts by members of the community to advocate for social justice for every member of the community. Rizvi’s sentiments are echoed by Hassan a khan who moved into the United States in 1968 from India.[43] He argues that his cultural and religious background has helped him positively impact the community both professionally and socially.
They secured high positions in Businesses in America even during the hard time when experience and skills were the key consideration for employment in most of the American business premises. For example, one of the former Enron employee, who was also a member of Ismaili community, had once produced a list of forty Ismaili women and men. They worked at Enron and other major energy companies in Houston and used this list to arrange informal social gatherings while in the United States[44]. The Pakistan professional group kept on growing in Houston and also started venturing into their own businesses. The association and friendship through professional interests, ancestral relationships, religious affiliation, and active involvement of Ismaili community activities to plans for business partnerships brought a theme of self-reliance and self-sufficiency in the 20th century concerning the Ismaili community. A combination of professional expertise, educational background in business management and administration, the Ismaili community in Houston, grew to be a strong society in the foreign soil[45]. This Islamic progress raised concern to the cooperate Americans. The Native Americans raised more questions following the 9/11 attacks, in which the attacks were thought to be conducted by a group of Muslims. The Native Americans thus came up with a generalization that the muslin community was composed of terrorists.
According to an interview that was conducted on Sohail, an Ismaili community member, he explained that “Rashid had shown up to work early in the morning and was just about to raise the metal shutters of the supermarket and begin the workday when two men who had been waiting in the parking lot of the strip mall approached him. The two men turned out to be the federal agents who took Rashid into custody.” The interviewee claimed that he was not able to visit Rashid in custody to know why he was the main target of federal surveillance or why he was incarcerated. After few weeks, the community was informed that Rashid was deported to Pakistan because he had overstayed his visa in .U. S.
Following the 9/11 attacks, most of the Muslim male immigrants became precarious, dispensable, and vulnerable to attacks from the Native Americans. Since there was no verifiable information regarding the stories of detention and deportation of most Muslim males, the issues were primarily explained through speculations. During the period of heightened covert and surveillance government operations and erosion of civil liberties and freedom, and the period in which details of incarceration, deportation, and surveillance remain outside the purview of gossip, public information and speculation are rational response and resources of the community that perceives itself under threat[46]. The speculation as a resource is based on the dominant framing of male Muslims as terrorists and as legitimate objects of arbitrary and excessive state intervention and disciplinary practices. Ironically, these experiences of the objection, extraordinary surveillance, and the curtailment of civil liberties allow noncitizens like Rashid, otherwise invisible to mainstream U. S. society, to become visible in narratives of U. S. imperialism. There was also an increase in stringent regulations by the government making it difficult for immigrants to help those they had left in their country of origin.
Conclusion
This paper is an addition to the literature of the Muslim Americans and the South Asian diaspora. It has discussed the life and experience of different societies based on class, race, and ethnicity. It includes the narratives of members of highly skilled Shia Ismaili labor force employed in the cooperate America, the working class, the Pakistan ethnic entrepreneurs, and working poor employed in Pakistani ethnic businesses. Some of the skilled members addressed in the paper include Syed Rizvi, who migrated to the United States as a full-time student from Pakistan and later became an electrical engineer while in the United States. It also includes the narrative of Hassan a Khan, an engineer from the Shia Islamic community who migrated in the United States from Telangana, India in 1968, in search of employment in the field of engineering, but later became a financial advisor while in the United States. The paper gives a perceptive glimpse into the lives of other immigrants from other communities who got their way into the United States for different reasons, including educational advancements and professional expertise. Additionally, it decenters dominant framings that flatten understandings of Muslim Americans and transitional Islam, such as “model minority “on one hand, and “terrorist “on the other hand. It shows how specificities of citizenship status, Islamic sectarian affiliation, class sexuality, and gender mediates racism, abjection, marginalities, and shapes transitional identities
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[1] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[2] ibid
[3] Ahmed Afzal, Muslim Heritage Economy: Transformations in the Pakistan Ethnic Economy in Houston, Texas, 2010.
[4] ibid
[5] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[6] ibid
[7] ibid
[8] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[9] Anjali Ram, South Asian immigration to Unite States: A brief history within the context of race, politics, and identity (2018).
[10] ibid
[11] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[12] Anjali Ram, South Asian immigration to Unite States: A brief history within the context of race, politics, and identity (2018).
[13] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[14] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[15] Anjali Ram, South Asian immigration to Unite States: A brief history within the context of race, politics, and identity (2018).
[16] ibid
[17] Jstor.”Racial Calculations: Indian and Pakistani Immigrants in Houston, 1960-1980.” (n.d.).” Vol. 38, (n.d.), pp. 55-76.
[18] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[19] Anjali Ram, South Asian immigration to Unite States: A brief history within the context of race, politics, and identity (2018).
[20] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[21] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[22] Anjali Ram, South Asian immigration to Unite States: A brief history within the context of race, politics, and identity (2018).
[23]Ahmed Afzal, Muslim Heritage Economy: Transformations in the Pakistan Ethnic Economy in Houston, Texas, 2010.
[24] ibid
[25] Peggy Levit, “you know, Abraham was really the first immigrant”: Religion and transformational migration review 37(3), 847-873, 2003.
[26]Peggy Levit, “you know, Abraham was really the first immigrant”: Religion and transformational migration review 37(3), 847-873, 2003.
[27] ibid
[28] Peggy Levitt, “you know, Abraham was really the first immigrant”: Religion and transformational migration review 37(3), 847-873, 2003.
[29] ibid
[30] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[31] Jstor. “Racial Calculations: Indian and Pakistani Immigrants in Houston, 1960-1980.” (n.d.).” Vol. 38, (n.d.), pp. 55-76.
[32] Anjali Ram, South Asian immigration to Unite States: A brief history within the context of race, politics, and identity (2018).
[33] ibid
[34] Quraishi, Uzma. Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston during the Cold War. Chapel Hill: UNC Press Books, 2020.
[35] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[36] Jstor. “Racial Calculations: Indian and Pakistani Immigrants in Houston, 1960-1980.” (n.d.).” Vol. 38, (n.d.), pp. 55-76.
[37]Anjali Ram, South Asian immigration to Unite States: A brief history within the context of race, politics, and identity (2018).
[38]Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[39] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.
[40] Quraishi, Uzma. Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston during the Cold War. Chapel Hill: UNC Press Books, 2020.
[41] Jstor. “Racial Calculations: Indian and Pakistani Immigrants in Houston, 1960-1980.” (n.d.).” Vol. 38, (n.d.), pp. 55-76.
[42] Syed Rizvi, Karachi, Pakistan, 2020.
[43] Hassan a khan, Hyderabad, Telangana, India, 2019.
[44] Anjali Ram, South Asian immigration to Unite States: A brief history within the context of race, politics, and identity (2018).
[45]Jstor. “Racial Calculations: Indian and Pakistani Immigrants in Houston, 1960-1980.” (n.d.).” Vol. 38, (n.d.), pp. 55-76.
[46] Afzal, Ahmed. Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas. New York: NYU Press, 2014.