Click here to read an investigation into discrimination against Jews who worked for the U.S. Army Corps at Fort Monmouth, NJ in the wake of Julius Rosenberg’s arrest.

ANTI-MUSLIM DISCRIMINATION IN POST 9/11 AMERICA - A Special Report

Muslims have replaced Jews as targets of discrimination

During the 1940s and 1950s, some Jewish scientists were stripped of their security clearances, causing them to lose their jobs or be downgraded to lower-security projects. One of the most famous cases was that of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the “father of the atom bomb,” who lost his clearance in 1954 because he had belonged to a group that also included communist members. “I think it is desirable that the U.S. population, especially its younger members, be reminded of that historical hysteria,” says Edward Gerjuoy, emeritus professor of physics at University of Pittsburgh and a former chair of the American Physical Society Committee on the International Freedom of Scientists.

Today, Muslims are more likely than Jews to lose security clearances, says Sheldon Cohen, a security clearance lawyer in northern Virginia. “I am finding discrimination against Muslims because of their religion and because of Islamophobia,” he says, adding that he finds no evidence of anti-Semitism today.

Muslims employed by the federal government who have lost clearance include Egyptian-born Dr. Moniem El-Ganayni. A nuclear physicist naturalized as an American citizen, his security clearance was revoked in 2007 by the Department of Energy. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took El-Ganayni’s case to U.S. District Court after the government—contrary to its own policy—denied the scientist the chance to contest the revocation and refused to divulge the reasons behind it, citing “national security.”

El-Ganayni lost his appeal for a hearing and, as a result, his job at the Bettis Atomic Power Lab in West Mifflin, outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylviania. “After September 11,” says El-Ganayni’s attorney Witold Walczak, legal director of the Pennsylvania ACLU, “there was a hyper-vigilance about Muslims and as a result you have some law-abiding Muslims who are unfairly targeted and punished simply because they are Muslim.”

Another high profile case concerned Wagih Makky, also an Egyptian-American. According to court documents, the Federal Aviation Adminsistration (FAA) hired Makky, a technical expert in aviation security, to create a special anti-terrorism unit for passenger jets after the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. After 13 years developing technology to detect and prevent explosives from detonating aboard commercial planes and passenger trains—first for the FAA, then for the Transportation Safety Administration—Makky’s clearance was revoked, leading to his dismissal. ACLU also failed in its efforts to challenge this in the justice system.

Although such cases are difficult to win in court—judges are loath to second-guess the government on security clearance issues—the clearance suspension process has significantly improved since the 1950s, says Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. “Executive Order 12968 issued under the Clinton Administration in 1995 established more clarity as well as new procedures for seeking reconsideration of adverse decisions,” he says. “The concept of the whole person” means that while “you may have been a convicted criminal in the past, that doesn’t guarantee that you cannot hold clearance in the future. At the same time the playing field is not level. It is the government that decides who will or will not receive a clearance.” You can appeal but you are only guaranteed an explanation.

Americans with Muslim names have a harder time finding a job

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, American Muslims have experienced increased job discrimination since 2001. Complaints alleging anti-Muslim bias in the workplace numbered nearly 800 for the year ending September 30, 2010, up about 20 percent from 2008 and showing a nearly 60 percent spike from 2005. In fact, Muslims account for just over 21 percent of religious discrimination cases despite comprising less than one percent of the population.

While discrimination on the basis of religion was outlawed by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a 2004 study by the non-profit Discrimination Research Center shows that Muslim names have become a liability for job-seekers. Six thousand similar, fictitious resumes were sent to California employment firms with names “identifiable” as white, Latino, African American, Asian American and Arab American. The name Heidi McKenzie received the highest positive response rate, 36.7 percent, and Abdul-Aziz Mansour, the lowest, 23 percent.

According to Biplab Pal, an Indian-American engineer who has served as a hiring manager for American engineering firms, it has become tougher for educated minorities, including Muslims and Indian and Bangladeshi Hindus who look like Muslims, to obtain white-collar jobs in the U.S. “Many minority engineers are changing their names to American-sounding Christian names to get a job,” says Pal.

Islamophobia has replaced the fear of communism

Since September 11, the balance between security issues and civil liberties in the United States has tilted toward security and fighting terrorism. “Muslim terrorist” has replaced “communist” and echoes of McCarthy can be heard. Popular conservative websites such as WorldNetDaily and scholars such as M. Stanton Evans, author of Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies, argue that McCarthy was on the right track and that liberals, who once hindered the struggle against communists, now hinder the fight against terrorism.

On the flip side are those who believe that the government is using methods comparable to those used in the 1940s and 1950s. Its “modus operandi” was to create lists of proscribed organizations, then investigate, prosecute and fire individuals based on their affiliations with these proscribed groups,” says David D. Cole, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University Law School. “It has been revived in the post-9/11 era. The suspect associations have changed. People don’t care if you get the Communist Party Worker’s magazine but they would care if you get the Hamas newspaper.”

The equation of Islam with terrorism troubles Akbar Ahmed, professor of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington, DC. “Unless we become aware of the problem and look at historical comparisons with the Jewish community 50 years ago, the stereotypes won’t go away,” he says. He points to the congressional hearings that are underway to “investigate radical Islam.” “It’s a good idea to talk about these issues, but I am concerned it will become a media circus,” he says. “That’s what happened to the Jewish community half a century ago.”

—Nadine Epstein

Click here to read an investigation into discrimination against Jews who worked for the U.S. Army Corps at Fort Monmouth, NJ in the wake of Julius Rosenberg’s arrest.

This project was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism