In Wichita, Muslims find hate, support (+videos)

Syeda Nabeela wears a hijab, the headscarf that many Muslim women wear.

People in Wichita sometimes stare at her and her hijab-wearing Muslim friends. Some people glare at them.

Nabeela likes her fellow Americans. But she’s concerned enough about being Muslim in public that she carries a small knife in her purse. Her friend, fellow WSU student Nibras Karim, carries a small Taser.

Wichita Muslims like her have heard harsh words about Muslims in the news lately: from Donald Trump, from local politicians like Karl Peterjohn, who warned at a county commission meeting in November that “The Islamist threat in this country is inside our gates.” Some have also been insulted in public for wearing the hijab, or have received hate mail.

But if you want to know what other Americans are like, you need to come see the roses, Muslims say. You need to see the tubs of cookies, the cards and love letters and children’s drawings of puppies sent to Wichita’s Muslims in recent weeks.

You need to know about the hundreds of loving and supportive e-mail and Facebook messages sent by hundreds of Americans to Muslims in Wichita.

You need to know about the man with the umbrella who walked beside Nabeela one dark night.

‘The America I know’

The roses sit on a table in an office room a few steps from the door of the mosque alongside the offices and private school run by the Islamic Society of Wichita, just east of K-96 and Woodlawn.

The stack of cards and notes sit in the sunrise brightness of an east-facing window sill.

“I’m sorry for the way some people live in fear of others,” one card says.

In the stack are magic marker and crayon and pencil drawings — hearts, flowers and puppies — made by children.

Some children had written “salaam” on the cards — “peace.”

“I am glad you are part of our comunity,” scribbled a Mennonite 4th grader from Newton who may need a little help with spelling. “I really enjoyd visiting your mosque.”

Farhana Ahmed sees the roses and the cards every day at the Islamic Society offices. They comfort her.

“This is the America I know,” she said.

They are afraid

Taben Azad, a Muslim engineering student at Wichita State University, received hate mail after WSU donors and alumni erupted in anger about WSU renovating the Grace Memorial Chapel last year.

Local ministers said it was Christians who urged WSU to remove pews at the all-faiths chapel. But critics, including on social media and in conservative media outlets, accused WSU of bowing to pressure from Muslim students to “take over” the chapel.

Azad publicly denounced “Islamophobia” in news interviews after the situation erupted. He politely but openly commented on the Facebook pages of local critics of Muslims.

He got some hate notes in reply.

WSU president John Bardo insisted publicly that the chapel will remain open to all faiths. He appointed a committee to study how to accommodate all concerns, a study not yet completed.

But the aftermath: Most Muslim students at WSU don’t pray at the chapel, Azad said.

They are afraid to do that, Azad said. “Especially after dark.”

Man of the Year

But after he got the hate mail, Azad also got notes and e-mails of support.

“They came from many people here but also from people all over the country,” Azad said. “For every one message of hate, I got five of support.”

Azad says it is also a tribute to the character of the WSU student body and staff that they treat Muslims like they do.

Fellow students, mostly non-Muslim, elected him to WSU’s student senate last year, representing WSU’s college of engineering.

Fellow students and faculty last year chose him as WSU’s “Man of the Year,” a campus honor that includes a $650 scholarship.

And he pointed out what they did for a friend of his:

Fellow students with WSU’s Student Ambassador Society chose Azad’s friend Maha Madi as their president last year.

Madi, a senior in psychology, a lifelong Wichitan, became in that role the leading WSU student recruiter of more students for WSU; she worked the campus at events and traveled to Topeka and Oklahoma, talking everywhere about the quality faculty and reasonable class sizes at WSU.

She wears a hijab.

‘Thank you for your question’

Days after the San Bernardino terror attack, where a radicalized Muslim couple killed 14 people in California, a man at the Wichita Barnes & Noble bookstore noticed Madi standing in line to get coffee.

The man walked up to her.

“What do you think about these Muslims committing these acts?” he asked.

She looked at him — speechless. How was she supposed to answer this?

Perhaps he was just curious, she thought.

But she’s a young woman with her teeth still in braces. She is a lifelong American. She’d graduated from quiet, suburban and mostly white Andover High School only three years ago. If not for her hijab, she’d look like any of the non-Muslim young women standing in line for coffee.

Why must she be the voice to answer for terror and murder?

“Thank you for your question,” she told him. “But I don’t associate with anyone who perverts their religion in any way.”

And she walked away.

‘We are Americans’

Hussam Madi serves as spokesman for the Islamic Society of Wichita.

No one knows an accurate count of Muslims in Wichita, he said. Local Muslims estimate there are anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000 in Wichita, most of them looking like any other American, he said.

“And that is what we are, by the way,” Madi said. “We are Americans. Most people have no idea when they meet a Muslim. Some women are targets for insults because they wear the hijab, but mostly you have no idea when you’ve met a Muslim here.”

Many local Muslims were born here, and have lived in this country for generations. They come from all over the world, from vastly different cultural traditions, Madi said — and are no more alike in their beliefs than Christians or any other group are alike in theirs.

Many Wichita Muslims work professional jobs, Madi said. Wichita is Kansas’ largest city, and Wichita has WSU, so there are many Muslim doctors, businesspeople like himself, and Ph.D. researchers and professors teaching at WSU. Muslim engineers help design and build airplanes in all of Wichita’s aviation factories.

Because census takers don’t ask about religious affiliations, no one can know accurately what economic boost is provided by local Muslims, said Jeremy Hill, a researcher at WSU. The only guess he can make, Hill said, is that it is “significant.”

At WSU, Azad said, there are about 1,000 Muslim students, including 600 students from Saudi Arabia alone. Most of them, being international students, pay higher fees and tuition for out-of-state education.

‘Be prepared’

In mid-November, Syeda Nabeela, the WSU Muslim student who carries a knife in her purse, watched television in horror and amusement as Sedgwick County Commissioner Karl Peterjohn gave a 13-minute speech as a “public warning for our citizens” about the threat of Islamic terrorism.

“I’ve heard some folks say, ‘Well, not all Muslims are terrorists.’ True but irrelevant,” Peterjohn said during the speech. “Not all Russians were communists. Not all Germans were Nazis.”

Peterjohn presented a slide show indicating that in history many acts of violence were perpetrated by people named “Mohammad.”

“The Islamist threat in this country is inside our gates,” he said. “Be prepared.”

“I just sat there watching and I laughed and laughed and laughed,” Nabeela said.

Peterjohn was talking about her and all her fellow Muslims, she thought.

Not all Muslims are terrorists or any other kind of threat, Peterjohn said this week.

Some critics on the Internet have tried to say he said that at that county commission meeting, he said. But he says he did not.

All he was trying to do was point out that people need to be on their guard, Peterjohn said.

After his comments in November, the Islamic Society of Wichita wrote the full Sedgwick County Commission expressing concerns.

“I wrote them back and invited them to come talk if they’d like to do that,” he said. “I have an open door for anyone who wants to talk.”

They have not replied to his invitation, “but they’re probably busy, I’m busy, and maybe they just haven’t had time to get back to me yet. But if they do, I’d be glad to talk with them.”

His concerns in November are not based solely on what happened in Paris and San Bernardino, or other places remote from Wichita, he said. Two years ago, FBI agents in Wichita arrested Wichitan Terry Loewen, who attempted to drive what Loewen thought was an explosives-laden vehicle, to detonate it at Mid-Continent Airport here. He had posted online before his arrest that he wanted to commit “violent jihad.”

Loewen was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

Loewen intended his act as Islamic terror, Peterjohn said. It happened here. He has no regrets about what he said in November, he said.

“I guarantee you, if the man who tried to blow up the airport had been a born-again Christian, the reverberations from that would still be ringing in our ears,” Peterjohn said.

He wasn’t trying to single out a religion, he said. He was merely pointing out that we all have a responsibility to watch over issues of public safety.

‘What kind of knife?’

Nabeela, a junior majoring in bio-engineering, was sitting on a couch last week at WSU’s Rhatigan Student Center. With her were Azad, and Nibras Karim, a WSU junior majoring in psychology. She’s the woman who carries a Taser.

Azad said Peterjohn’s talk upset him, too. But he knows that what Peterjohn said comes from concern.

Local Muslims watched the news out of Paris and San Bernardino and the Middle East along with everyone else: beheadings, children killed, people from Muslim backgrounds killing Muslims. It bothers them as much as it bothers anyone else, they say. But they say they should not be lumped in with terrorists because of their religious beliefs.

Azad knows this is a complicated issue.

Muslims can say repeatedly that Islam is a religion of peace, Azad said.

They can say that most of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are as peaceable as any other peaceable American, he said.

They can say all they want that the violence is done by only a few terrorists who have hijacked the name of Islam to further what he says are political and ego-driven goals rather than religious ideologies, Azad said.

But saying those things is no longer enough, Azad said. He said Muslims including him need to do a better job of talking with non-Muslim Americans who are now concerned about terror.

“On the night Peterjohn said what he said, I actually tweeted out to him: “The real threat is prejudiced politicians such as yourself,” Azad said. “But watching the violence ... is disheartening for what it means for Muslims. I blame myself in part. Muslims have to ask themselves whether we are doing enough to explain our religion.”

On the couches a few feet away, Nabeela and Karim nodded as he said this.

But then when Karim said fear about anti-Muslim anger prompted her to start carrying a Taser, and when Nabeela said she carries a knife because of her worries as a Muslim about safety, Azad looked startled.

Then he grinned. Then he gently teased Nabeela.

“A knife?” Azad said. “Seriously? What kind of knife? A butter knife?”

They all chuckled.

But Azad slowly shook his head.

‘Right out of the Dark Ages’

One non-Muslim local lawyer in mid-December, who wanted to remain anonymous, sent the Islamic Society of Wichita five big tubs of cookies. A gesture of kindness and support, Farhana Ahmed said.

“I had some of those cookies,” Karim said. “Chocolate chips, macadamia nuts — every kind of mint. They were really good.”

Some non-Muslims have called offering more than flowers or apologies for the political comments.

Beth King, a long-time marketing and public relations specialist in Wichita, called the Islamic Society’s spokesman, Hussam Madi, (WSU student Maha Madi’s father) in early December. King volunteered to help the Muslims with public relations work, free of charge.

“Some of what has been said about Muslims, nationally and locally — it sounds like it comes right out of the Dark Ages,” King said. “Given the Paris attacks and some other Islamic extremism, I get that, I understand. But it is not right to denounce a whole people or a whole religion.”

Peterjohn’s speech about Muslims troubled her. “Muslims here are our neighbors and friends. I wanted to do something.”

She and Hussam Madi are still talking about what she might do for them.

The bulk of calls of support and the baked goods and messages have come to the Muslims since Donald Trump in early December called for a ban on Muslim travel to the U.S., Ahmed said.

Nabeela says the venom she’s seen coming at her and her fellow Muslims has deepened her commitment to Islam.

But it has also gave her a memory she says she will hold in her heart forever.

They walked side by side

On campus last year, in the aftermath of the chapel controversy, there was a public gathering at which people were invited to speak their minds.

Nabeela drove to the campus and parked in the dark, not knowing what to expect.

It was raining.

She got out of her car, a small, young Muslim woman wearing her hijab.

She was alone — feeling wary in the night.

She saw a man in the dark.

He saw her get out of the car.

He was a non-Muslim, “a white guy, older, gray-haired,” Nabeela said.

He stopped, looked at her — and walked to her side.

“I felt scared,” Nabeela said.

But then he opened his umbrella in the rain.

He held it over her head.

They walked side by side to the door.

“It was a sweet gesture,” she said.

“I think about him.

“And every time I think about him, I feel good.”

This story was originally published January 16, 2016 at 9:36 PM with the headline "In Wichita, Muslims find hate, support (+videos)."