Political India: Engaging America

Salman Hamdani was a young Pakistani Muslim who was killed in the twin towers when they were struck by two airplanes ten years ago. He had rushed in to save the lives of his fellow Americans. Far from being celebrated for the hero that he was, however, his family suffered doubly when the police circulated flyers suggesting he had was part of the terrorist plot.


While the discovery of his remains at the site cleared his name beyond a shadow of doubt and he was officially later recognised as a hero, the episode only added to the distress of his family and the sense of discrimination faced by the wider American Muslim community.


His mother, Talat Hamdani, spoke to Narayan Lakshman about how those events affected her and shaped her view of where the U.S. now stands with American Muslims.

What did your son, Salman, do on the day of the 9/11 attacks?

He did not come home that day. We all knew that he would go down to the Twin Towers to help, because that was in him, he was a certified paramedic and a New York Police Department Cadet. But apart from that he was a very genuine, kind, compassionate human being. We knew he would go down there.

But the fact that he would not come home and perish – that took a very long time for the family to accept that. We did search for him for 10-12 days at Ground Zero, with his picture and a flyer, to no avail.

Then we went to different hospitals in search of him. Maybe he had lost his memory, maybe he had lost his eyesight. Maybe he could not talk or hear. But no such luck there either.

Then we went to Mecca to pray. The day we were leaving all the reporters came to our house asking questions and I asked them – “What brings you back here a month later, October 11?”

They told us there was a flyer circulating in the NYPD with [Salman’s] picture and asking people who knew him to step up [and provide information]. Someone had told us about this incident in the store that my husband had in Greenpoint.

The story hit the media the next day when I was not even here to defend myself. The New York post lived up to its reputation and made a misstatement that he was missing or hiding. There were insinuations that he went out with a Koran that day, that he was seen at the mid-town tunnel at 11 am and that his neighbours were wondering what kind of a person lived next door to them. It was everything negative that you could possibly think about.

As yet, many people ask me if they apologised, but nobody apologised. To be honest ten years later I am wondering what has happened to this country. We have let it go for a very long time – and when I say “we” I mean the American masses.

So how did the matter get cleared up after the flyer went out and what happened next?

The reason they had to clear him [of any wrong-doing] was that his remains were found on the site, in the third week of October [2001] and they verified it. They tried, as much as they could, to investigate it thoroughly, so they did not confirm it until March 20, 2002, six months later.

That was hard, again because there was hope that he had been detained and there was no question that people had been detained. Some Indians were detained, some Jews came back from these camps saying that they had been let go because they were not Muslims. A couple of Indian doctors came back and they even testified before the United States Senate.

They came back from which camps?
From federal [government] detainment. People were immediately detained after the fact [of the 9/11 attacks].

But it was a reputation redeemed. There was a journalist from the New York Times, Joyce Purnick, who was very persistent in following through with what happened to my son. She even called up the NYPD and asked them who put out that flyer and the NYPD denied it.

But just look at all the information that is coming out about the NYPD ten years later – that speaks volumes for itself.

So it is not a good time right now to be a Muslim, honestly. There are many people I know who have taken on American names. But you cannot deny your roots or your ethnicity or your faith.

I was speaking to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” yesterday and he was reflecting on a similar theme about the need to explain to the broader American public the viewpoint of American Muslims. Do you feel there is still a long way to go or do you feel things have improved under this government?

No, things have not improved at all under this current administration. I know President Obama tried very hard to change the image [of America], especially the injustices done in the name of 9/11. We stand in violation of our own human rights, our own Constitution, the Geneva Convention, and the United Nations’ convention on human rights.

His hands are tied. This administration has not alleviated our situation at all. Guantanamo was not shut down. All the inmates are Muslims. On the domestic front the civil liberties of citizens [have not been respected]. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has not even met for ten years now! At least under [former President George W.] Bush five members were nominated, but right now there are only two members. Why is it taking so long?

There were so many initiatives in the name of national security. I do accept that we need national security, but not at the cost of stigmatising and demonising the Muslims and the Arabs. That is not the way to go, because that is going to divide the nation and we will never reunite again.

That is un-American. We stand in violation of our Constitution. To build a mosque and pray is our constitutional right.

President Obama defended this and I thanked him for that. He is a wonderful man, God bless him.

On the tenth anniversary of the attacks, as a mother and as someone affected directly by the attacks and as someone who has spoken a lot about this since that time, what do you make of this anniversary and what is your message on this day?

The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to me is the end of a tragic era of the tragedy, the sadness of what happened.

We cannot dwell on the past because it does not do us any good. Because of 9/11 many things have changed. America has changed. We need to return to our original core values.

So the tenth anniversary to me is a culmination of the past tragedy and it is a big celebration of not only the resilience of the victims’ families but of the nation as a whole.

It is also about moving forward, fighting, for the second time around, the civil liberties fight – this time for American Muslims for the next decade.

On that clear morning 10 years ago, Mohammed Salman Hamdani (23), a Pakistani-American, headed out from his home in Brooklyn, New York, to his new job as a researcher at Rockefeller University. While on his journey he suddenly noticed smoke pouring out of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan and realised something was dreadfully wrong.

Being a certified Emergency Medical Technician and a New York City Police Department cadet, Mr. Hamdani did not hesitate and used his official identification to get through restricted traffic and reach the burning towers to offer assistance to those trapped within.

He was never heard from again.

Until this point Mr. Hamdani's chilling story resembled that of 2,605 other New York City victims of the 9/11 terror attacks, which shook the United States to its very core and set in motion a chain of events that would reverberate across the world. What followed, however, was a disturbing narrative of minority discrimination and an early indicator that the U.S.' so-called “war on terror” would have a darker side.

Mr. Hamdani's mother, Talat, said to The Hindu on the 10th anniversary of the attacks, “We all knew that he would go down to the twin towers to help, because that was in him... he was a very genuine, kind, compassionate human being. But the fact that he would not come home and perish — that took a very long time for the family to accept that.”

She spent weeks on a fruitless search for Mr. Hamdani amidst the debris of the twin towers. “Then we went to different hospitals in search of him. Maybe he had lost his memory or maybe he had lost his eyesight. Maybe he could not talk or hear. But no such luck there either,” she said.

Nasty shock

One month later, in the very depths of mourning the loss of their son, the Hamdanis were greeted with a nasty shock — the New York Police Department had been circulating a flyer suggesting that their son was possibly involved with the terrorists who carried out the attack. By that time, faced with dwindling hope, Ms. Hamdani was on her way to Mecca, to pray for her son.

“The story hit the media the next day when I was not even here to defend myself,” she said, adding that the New York Post in particular lived up to its reputation and insinuated that he was missing or hiding, that he went out with a Koran that day, that he was seen at the mid-town tunnel at 11a.m. and that his neighbours were wondering what kind of a person lived next door to them. “It was everything negative that you could possibly think about,” she said.

By then the entire atmosphere appeared to have been poisoned against the Muslim community in America, and even Hindus and Sikhs got caught up in the intensifying scrutiny of the Bush administration. Several Sikhs, including Balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas station operator, were victims of hate crimes in the wake of 9/11.

Ironically the possibility that Mr. Hamdani had been arrested held out a ray of hope for his mother. “There was hope that he had been detained... Some Indians were detained, some Jews came back from [federal government detention] saying that they had been let go because they were not Muslims. A couple of Indian doctors came back and they even testified before the U.S. Senate,” she said.

Yet that was not to be. While Mr. Hamdani's remains were found amidst the rubble of the collapsed towers a month later, it was only in March 2002, six months later that they authorities completed their investigation of his case and confirmed that he was in fact a victim of the attacks.

Mr. Hamdani was subsequently declared a hero by the U.S. Congress and specifically his name was mentioned in the U.S. PATRIOT Act for acting “heroically during the attacks on the U.S... [He] is believed to have gone to the World Trade Centre to offer rescue assistance and is now missing.” At the at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York in 2002 he was further memorialised as a hero by Mayor Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, Congressman Gary Ackerman, among others.

“It was a reputation redeemed,” Ms. Hamdani said.