THE PROMISE: Islamophobia exists in Iowa, but advocacy worker says hope for change continues

CEDAR RAPIDS - When Miriam Amer opens the front door of her home, she occasionally finds dog feces or pork - a food Muslims do not eat - on her front step.

Islamaphobia exists in Eastern Iowa and across the state, she says, adding without hesitation she believes the political climate of the last two years has given that hatred credence.

'When this past election cycle came up, it exploded,” she said. 'You've got Mr. Trump out there shouting from the rooftops, ‘We're going to shut down immigration to the Muslims. We're not going to let any Muslims into this country until we figure out what the heck is going on.' He was pounding at those issues.

'All the sudden it was, ‘Wow, somebody who believes the things we do.' He was telling them it's OK.”

Amer is executive director of Iowa's chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In that role, she travels the state to advocate for the civil rights of Muslims. Her appointments range from discussing issues of discrimination to advocacy work to speaking at worship centers and civil rights commission meetings.

Amer doesn't mince words, and she doesn't sugarcoat. By her own description, 'she has a big mouth and (she) uses it.”

Amid harassment, threats and even assaults, she's had to find her voice as a Muslim in America. And while she said she believes the fear and hatred of Muslims has been on the rise for more than a decade, there's still hope for Iowa Muslims as she helps them find their voices, too.

‘Not as bad as it is now'

Amer grew up as a quiet, self-isolating middle child in a family of nine children who moved from military base to military base with her Marine father. Her family, from Lebanese ancestors who came to the U.S. in the 1860s, was Muslim but 'didn't pray like they should” and celebrated some Christian holidays. When they settled in Connecticut and Massachusetts, they drove three hours to a mosque about once a month.

While Amer described hers as a secular family, their faith and otherness caused the children to be teased once in awhile. However, she said, the political climate and tendencies toward fear and Islamophobia were not yet as widespread.

'Back when we were kids, it's not as bad as it is now,” she said. 'The issue about Saddam hadn't even come up yet. There was no problem.”

Amer went on to law school at Boston University, graduating amid a family tragedy that held her back from ever taking the Bar Exam. But when she moved back to Connecticut, it was one of the first times she became deeply embedded in the community and fought for civil rights. The community caught on, and many immigrants and Muslims began coming to Amer for help navigating the legal system.

'People started coming to me because I'm American and a lot of the people weren't,” she said. 'They needed help with immigration, with divorces, family law.”

In 2000, Amer's husband accepted a position at Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, and the couple moved to Iowa. Again, Muslims and immigrants came to her for help. But this time, she said other factions of the community were more wary of her, including her neighbors whom she said didn't know what to make of a woman in a hijab - or headscarf.

'Iowa was a culture shock,” she said. 'Back east, you have all kinds of people. ... My daughter came home from school and said ‘mommy, a little girl in my class said she could still play with me even though I'm black.' She's not black, she's Arab. It was incredible the way that people treated us.”

And then the Sept. 11 attacks on the twin towers happened.

‘It came home to roost'

Amer, who once worked at One World Trade Center in New York City, said watching the towers collapse was like watching her family being killed.

Many of her family members still lived on the East Coast at the time, including her brother who was a firefighter and volunteered to help remove a large steel beam from the wreckage of the towers shortly after the attack so victims' bodies could be recovered.

'Come prayer time, he'd excuse himself and go to the corner to do his prayers,” Amer said. 'People started looking at him weird. The third or fourth day he got there, someone had spray painted ‘kill the rag head' on the beam. It was directed at my brother Joe. It just ripped his heart out.

'He wasn't accustomed to facing that type of prejudice, and he was working to solve the issue to recover people who were human beings who were murdered.”

That's when the social and political climate changed for Amer. She believes the fear of the Muslims involved in that gruesome act of terrorism spread to fear and hatred of most Muslims.

'9/11 hit us like a ton of bricks. It started before 9/11. ... After 9/11, it came home to roost.”

Even so, Amer found the good in people - like those who surrounded the Islamic Center in Cedar Rapids on Sept. 12, 2001, to show their continued support for the Muslim community.

'For every 1,000 good people, there's just one bad,” she said.

Sense of Hope

That sense of hope is what led Amer to open a chapter of the national Council on American-Islamic Relations in Cedar Rapids, she said. Every day, she's working across the state and into Illinois and Nebraska to represent clients who feel their civil rights are infringed upon or they are victims of Islamophobia.

Amer has seen plenty of it herself. She can tick off the cases of perceived Islamaphobia, violence and threats she's experienced:

' Graffiti on the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids and an incident where someone shot at a group of kids in the center's parking lot, hitting and shattering a window.

' 'Trump” spray painted on a mosque in Waterloo and the windows busted out of another in Davenport.

' Being harassed while driving on Interstate 80. She said she was wearing a hijab last spring when another driver saw her and repeatedly cut in front of her, forcing her to slow down, and even bumped his car into hers.

' A man waving a gun at a Quad Cities woman driving on the interstate after he saw an Islamic saying on her license plate.

Some cases have been even worse.

A few years ago, two teenage boys saw Amer in her hijab at a local grocery store. They followed her home, placing a homemade bomb in her garage, she said. When they confessed to the crime, police wanted Amer and her family to ask for them to be arrested.

'I said, ‘No, I want them to be educated. I want them to do community service. Putting them in jail is not going to do any good, it's just going to make their hatred deeper,' ” she said.

Through it all, Amer says there absolutely is an opportunity for Iowans to turn back the dial on the fear and hatred of Muslims.

'Muslims have been in this state for more than 100 years. We're your teachers, your doctors, your next door neighbors,” she said. 'The mosque is here and it's open. If you want to learn about Islam, make an appointment and come talk to us.

'Don't learn about it online. Learn about it from an actual Muslim who practices.”

l Comments: (319) 368-8516; makayla.tendall@thegazette.com