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Today, Americans can rest easy regarding a threat on two fronts. Osama bin Laden is dead and Muslim Americans are happy about it. Yes, thanks to this story at the Detroit Free Press, we can now be certain that American Muslims we've suspected for so long officially rebuke bin Laden. Ta-Nehisi Coates points out the "enemy within" narrative lying beneath this story -- that, in an era plagued by Islamophobia, the need to log Muslim Americans' joy at bin Laden's death has become both "necessary and insulting." But how far down the rabbit hole have we gone when we accept that bin Laden is responsible for a prejudice that is solely our own?
Rabadi was a screener for a Detroit Metro Airport security company when the Twin Towers fell, then was laid off a few months later as the threat of terrorism affected the travel industry.“I’ll never forget how silent was the airport when that happened,” she said. She blames bin Laden for her layoff, which led the single mother of five children to cobble together a comparable living by working two jobs – one at the Eastborn Fruit Market in Dearborn, where she was working today. “I’m so happy. It should have been done a long time ago. What took them so long to find him?”It is a striking vignette that sheds light on how much the anti-Muslim bias has seeped into media coverage. While Rabadi may blame bin Laden for her unemployment, the Detroit Free Press notes that she was let go because "the threat of terrorism affected the travel industry." This is a painfully weak nod to the fact that the anti-Muslim prejudice burgeoning in the days after the attacks led to well-documented and fervent backlash against Muslims -- particularly in the travel industry. Osama bin Laden did not fire Rabadi, our inability to distinguish between him and her did. Such a failure to engage on that fact can allow for the discrimination -- and a disturbing justification -- to persist. But, we live in an era in which widespread anti-Muslim prejudice is officially embossed. Americans are trotted out before congressional hearings to prove they police themselves and lambasted on TV when they protest. That American Muslims might feel the need to downplay institutional discrimination in hopes of cultural acceptance does not come as a surprise. That we allow such things to pass, however, should.
