Issues with religion in America

“Under suspicion: American Muslims search for identity 10 years after Sept. 11

By Marc Fisher, Published: June 11

Hungry to be just one of the guys after immigrating to Texas, Palestinian Fawaz Ismail asked everybody to call him “Tony.” The nickname put people at ease at his Dallas high school, where Tony switched from soccer to football and picked up a bit of a Texas twang.

He remained Tony when he moved to Northern Virginia to expand his family’s flag-selling business. The name made him feel as American as his Falls Church store, Alamo Flag, a patriot’s paradise brimming with Stars and Stripes banners, pins and stickers.

Then came the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the day Tony became a foreigner again. That afternoon, people started pouring into Alamo Flag, many wearing sunglasses to hide their crying eyes. Ismail sold thousands of American flags in those days of fear and unity, and he gave away thousands more.

But soon after the twin towers fell and the Pentagon burned, Ismail felt his adopted homeland pushing him away. He decided to push back. He sent Tony into permanent exile, taking back his given name. Now, a decade later, his name is a daily message to his fellow Americans: They must deal with him for who he is — a Muslim who loves his country and proudly sells its banner.

“A lot of people use a nickname to make it easier for Americans to pronounce,” he says, “but now, I don’t care. They’re going to have to pronounce my name. It’s not that hard — Fah-wahz.”

There was pride in that decision but also a real and still-growing anger — at Americans who assume that anything Islamic is shorthand for terrorism; at the older generation of American Muslims, whose immigrant, old-world version of Islam paints them as rigid and intolerant; and at people who accept him if he’s Tony but recoil at a name such as Fawaz.

“It’s hard hearing your faith put down all the time as this scary, evil thing,” he says. And hard to endure the cloud of suspicion that American Muslims feel has grown rather than dissipated over the past decade.

Like most American Muslims, Ismail, who is a buff and hale 50, is not particularly religious. He likes to listen to tapes of Koranic chants at night to relax. But in the past few years, he has struggled with the reality that some Americans take one look at him and think, “Hmm, is he really one of us?”

“I pay my taxes. I love this country. You want to talk about patriotic? I am the definition,” says Ismail, who became an American citizen as a teenager. “I sell the best flags, made in the United States, not in China like a lot of stores sell. I’m all about moderation — man, I like Fleetwood Mac.”

Late at night, Ismail has a cup of chamomile tea with anise seed to try to get to sleep. It can be a struggle, just as it is for many of his Muslim friends.

“I see them with their sleeping pills and antidepressants, and I know how hard it is,” he says. “I smoke because I’m stressed. Sometimes I wish I was born a Swede.”

As Ismail talks, his 20-year-old son, Talal, pops in to say he’s heading over to the the mosque — in the basement of a Best Western on Route 7 — for Friday prayers. Talal, in T-shirt, jeans and earrings, is a drummer in a metal band — “progressive metal,” his father qualifies — and works at the flag store.”