Resurging Islamophobia in response to the conflict in Gaza has Nour Bilal reconsidering her newfound sense of home in the US
By Abigail Bennett
Nour Bilal’s past experiences with the police in her home country of Syria have all led her to deeply distrust state-imposed authority at any level; so it was much to her own surprise that she made the decision to join the police academy after resettling as a refugee in Salt Lake City, Utah. While Nour intrinsically understands the well-founded feelings of fear and intimidation refugees have towards the police, she believes that fostering a genuine trust for the police is essential for refugees to completely acclimate to their new homes.
“Everything I went through in Syria led me to not trust authority,” said Nour. “Police, guns, it all means trouble. I brought that attitude with me to the US. We all did.”
Nour and her family were the first Syrian refugees to be resettled in Salt Lake City, Utah after fleeing the civil war in 2014. The Assad regime unfoundedly arrested Nour’s father on two separate occasions and continued to harass the family in the ensuing months. The family sought asylum in the United States; when they learned they’d be going to Utah, they had to Google the unfamiliar name in order to learn about their new home.
Nour and her sister Yasmin have both described acclimating to Salt Lake City as isolating, awkward and confusing. Their initial experiences within the community were uncomfortable and the two women can readily recall specific instances in which they felt their identity was called into question after arriving in Utah.
“This man asked me, ‘What is this piece of tissue on your head?’” said Nour. “My English wasn’t as good then, so I couldn’t respond in the way I would have wanted to. But that made an impression on my brain.”
“I remember I wanted to try out for my high school’s drill team,” said Yasmin. “The coach looked up and down at me and told me I wouldn’t fit the uniform. It was like she was telling me you are not supposed to be here, this is not for you – because of your hijab, you can’t do certain things. She didn’t care to see other options that might work for me.”
The two sisters pushed through these preliminary tensions, and as the Muslim population within the city began to grow, Salt Lake became more like a home to them. Nour made the decision to join the SLC police academy and is now a recent graduate of the program; she will be sworn in as a full-time officer in March of next year. Yasmin was married in March and is expecting her first child, a baby boy due within the coming days.
However, the recent conflict in Gaza has now undeniably stirred up Islamophobic sentiments across the United States and Salt Lake City is certainly not exempt from such resurging tensions. Nour has described the overall response to the war as overwhelmingly biased and says the lack of communal support in Utah is starkly apparent. This new wave of hostilities has left her feeling that her place in the local community is precarious, regressing even, and her uncertainty about Salt Lake and the greater United States as trustworthy entities has resurfaced. Furthermore, the enthusiasm she felt for her upcoming professional milestone of joining the police force has been greatly diminished.
“It has changed, I don’t feel seen and respected by our city,” said Nour. “Living in Utah, I feel very unvalued as a member of the community and now as a first responder. I worked to be a first responder for this community, but I don’t feel now that this community has my back.”
In addition to her work at the police department, Nour regularly volunteers for a local SLC non-profit, Emerald Project, whose mission is to combat Islamophobia and the misrepresentation of Muslims in public discourse by fostering conversations, specifically between local youth in the Salt Lake community.
“We did a couple rallies to support Palestine and no city representatives showed up,” said Nour. “They just lit up the Utah Capitol with Israel’s flag colors.”
“I’ve worn the keffiyeh scarf as a hijabi in public twice,” said Nour. “Both times I’ve told myself, ‘Be ready for anything.’ You might be attacked, you might have someone throwing a racist comment at you. I hate that I feel that fear. But the world right now is this side or that side. And freedom of speech, that’s all just written stuff.”
Nour has also said that the ongoing conflict in Gaza feels awfully reminiscent of the Syrian civil war she fled from. The unrelenting news of attacks on Palestinian civilians has been triggering and distressing for her, consuming her daily thoughts. Both Nour and Yasmin have expressed their complete solidarity for the Palestinian people, while also acknowledging that the conflict has brought their own experiences to the forefront and forced them to revisit prior traumas.
“It feels like I’m reliving the war in Syria,” said Nour. “It put me back ten years. We didn’t have an outside enemy that was occupying us; ours was a civil war, brothers killing each other, neighbors killing each other. So it was different. But this still feels similar.”
The conflict Nour and Yasmin have experienced is distinctly unlike the situation in Gaza, in terms of historical dimensions and overall political dynamics. However, there is clearly such an unwavering consensus of support for Palestinians from fellow Muslims, as well as a tendency for the global community to view all Muslims as a homogeneous entity.
“I’m not from Palestine but having my fellow brothers and sisters in Palestine go through that, I count myself as one of them,” said Nour.
“Palestine is not just for Palestinians, they tie all Muslims to the whole thing,” said Yasmin.
Since moving to Baton Rouge, Louisiana with her new husband, Yasmin feels a bit more removed from the activity that her sister Nour so thrives in. Yasmin has said she feels lonely in her new environment and that the tragedies she sees unfolding in Gaza have taken a toll on her.
“I really felt like I don’t want to live here anymore,” said Yasmin. “I think about the unfair treatment for people who aren’t white and how our taxes are funding this genocide.”
Not yet fully acclimated to her new home, Yasmin doesn’t have much to distract her from the onslaught of war-related information. She’s constantly on social media and left to think about what sort of future her son will have in this country that she’s so thoroughly disenchanted with.
Even as the sisters are both highly immersed in any bit of news that comes out of Gaza, they both have said that they try to step back at times and limit their intake of such horrifying updates. They agree that because they haven’t healed from their own traumas, taking on a new one is taxing.
“As much as we hate what we’re seeing, as much as it’s testing our faith, God is watching,” said Nour. “Even the people I see on the news who are holding their dead family, these people are still praying. Their faith is still holding up so strongly. We all pray that God gives us the faith of the Palestinians.”