Standing for Islam

When Sumbal Mahmud grows weary of people assuming she's non-American and calling her views on the Iraq war un-American, she's tempted to bring out her plaques.

The plaques, which laud her "all-American" mock-trial victories at Hamline University in St. Paul -- as well as other awards she won there, at Osseo High School and at the University of Minnesota Law School -- have come to stand for far more than the honors they chronicle.

"When someone wants to question how American I am, I can say, 'I played along with the best of them. I have these plaques to prove it,' " she said. "All-American. That's me."

Mahmud, 28, is the public face of the Islamic Center of Minnesota.

In the past few years, especially since the Iraq war began, she has faced challenges she could not have imagined back in the 1990s at Osseo High.

The challenges have strengthened her faith and have forced her to be more public about her convictions. At the same time, the spotlight she finds herself in makes her want to keep her most deeply held religious beliefs private.

And the challenges of the past three years have made it more difficult for her to speak freely -- in an All-American way -- about a war she abhors.

A faith viewed with suspicion

The word Islam, Mahmud said, "comes from the root word 'sa la ma,' which means to surrender to the will of Allah and to peace.

"The very essence of war goes against my faith," she said. "That doesn't mean I might not believe in a cause."

But she wants to be able to speak against aggression without being labeled a terrorist. When Mahmud expresses her anti-war views in conversations with acquaintances and strangers, she said, she gets a stronger reaction than non-Muslim war opponents get.

"Many Muslim-Americans are actually afraid to speak out on the war," she said, her voice rising in indignation. "Can you believe it? To do that -- freely protest -- which is the most American thing, they are afraid!"

The war has also affected her expression of her faith.

The hostility of some non-Muslims makes her want to speak out, to defend and clarify Islam as a faith that at its core strongly stands for peace and freedom. And so she does, replying to each communication, as well as to friendly invitations to speak at churches and to civic groups.

Last year, she received an angry, anonymous e-mail about Muslims that she replied to with calm words. In a series of exchanges, she and the e-mailer found they had much in common and in fact had crossed paths during their legal careers. Finally, "We had a pretty good dialogue," she said. "The more we talk, the better."

Misunderstanding abounds

Mahmud is a corporate attorney from Maple Grove. She was born in Pakistan and has no connection to Iraq; in fact, she has often dreamed of someday serving as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Yet somehow, since the war, she has become what she calls "the face of the Iraqi people" in Minnesota.

"Perhaps it's my scarf, or that I'm Muslim, or because people don't know what an Iraqi looks like, but sometimes I'm the closest thing they have got," she said. "I'm someone they can focus their dislike for the war on."

Minnesota's Muslim population is fast approaching 150,000, by some estimates. Mosques are springing up around the state. Because many Muslim women, including Mahmud, wear the hijab, they sometimes draw more attention, especially since the war began.

While a student at Hamline, she spent time at the United Nations undertaking research on female genital mutilation. She graduated with honors in 2000, and from the U law school in 2003.

While in law school, Mahmud spent a semester in the Netherlands. "There's a big immigrant Turkish population in the Netherlands and Germany, and the Dutch would treat me like I was a Turk," she said. "Then they'd hear my English and say, 'Oh, you're from America! Come on in!'

"There, I was 'The American.' Here," she said wryly, "I'm 'The Pakistani.' "

Late last year, after a month of humanitarian work in quake-torn Pakistan in which she was again reminded that she is "an American -- a person of privilege," she accepted a job as associate corporate counsel for a Twin Cities corporation.

It's been a stellar career path. But outside of work, she is constantly reminded of how life has changed for her, and for all American Muslims.

A woman in a hijab, a man who speaks Arabic, sometimes anyone with a Middle Eastern look often get a cold shoulder from passersby. And yet, she said, "they might have lived in America all their lives."

An elected representative

In 2003, Mahmud was elected to a three-year term as communications director for the Islamic Center. It's not an easy job. Questions pour in, always urgent, sometimes loaded, often downright ignorant. Mahmud answers them all, even the anonymous ones that flood in after any event that involves Muslims: a bombing in Israel or Iraq, riots in Europe over Mohammed cartoons, a particularly bloody twist in the war.

"Muslims in America have been forced to become spokespeople for our faith," she said. "One of the criticisms we heard after 9/11 is that our leaders didn't come forward to say what happened was wrong. It was unimaginable with something so horrific that someone had to articulate that."

Her faith teaches that she is not accountable for the sins of others, she said. But since 9/11, she has realized that "American culture demands vocalization of the obvious."

Increasingly, people are listening, she said. Churches call on her to speak to their congregations.

"I have to turn down church invitations, there are so many," she said. "I'm in church more often than I'm in a mosque."

But she also realizes that those aren't the people who most need to hear her message. "If they're in church and inviting me to come speak to them, I'm preaching to the choir," she said.

War's long shadow

The war in Iraq has brought more attention to the Islamic Center, and to Mahmud. People ask her unanswerable questions, such as "How does a suicide bomber think?"

"I turn that back on them," she said. "If they're male, I say, 'You're a male; tell me how a rapist feels or thinks.' "

She encounters the most reminders that some consider her un-American when she expresses her own dismay at the war.

"My pacifism and my faith are interrelated," she said.

"Fourteen hundred years before the Geneva Convention, Islam taught some simple rules of war. For instance: You can't attack a civilian. ... If I am in your country and displace a tree, I am obligated to replace the tree."

As a pacifist, a Muslim, and a feminist, she said, "The idea of civilians as 'collateral damage' is mind-boggling."

The war has unearthed another issue, she said -- suspicion of disloyalty. "I joke with my friends on the phone; I say, 'Our friends at the NSA [National Security Agency] are probably monitoring us.' Then I think -- I'm the communications director for a large Muslim organization. I wouldn't be surprised if someone were listening."

She worries about the erosion of civil liberties in the United States -- not just for Muslims, but for everyone.

"What distinguishes us as a country is the rights afforded to our citizens," she said. "If those are being eroded to fight the so-called war on terrorism, then we will become no better than those we are fighting."

Teaching the children well

What brightens her eyes and brings out her public faith and hope, is her Sunday school class at the Islamic Center, a rainbow of Muslim ninth-graders from around the world.

"After 9/11, our classroom changed," she said. "Instead of talking about what happened 1,300 years ago, now we talk about current events. ... We talk about what's the proper response to questions, why nonviolence is best."

Mahmud said that she holds out hope that her students will live in a country that does not prejudge or fear them.

"Since the war, yes, more explaining has been expected of us," she said. "But the fact that someone is looking to us -- maybe that's an opening for dialogue, a window to reach each other."

Most people, she said, are genuinely curious when they ask questions.

"All we have to do is be a little forthright, hopefully in a nonconfrontational way."

It is, as she points out, the All-American way.

Pamela Miller • 612-673-4290