{"id":3831,"date":"2011-07-06T06:17:16","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T10:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=3831"},"modified":"2011-07-06T06:25:27","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T10:25:27","slug":"washington-post-muslim-americans-struggle-to-find-an-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-muslim-americans-struggle-to-find-an-identity","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post: Muslim Americans struggle to find an identity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>His\u00a0name is a daily message to his fellow Americans: They must deal with him for who he is \u2014 a Muslim who loves his country and proudly sells American flags.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of people use a nickname to make it easier for Americans to pronounce,\u201d says Fawaz Ismail, who for decades went by &#8220;Tony,&#8221; \u201cbut now, I don\u2019t care. They\u2019re going to have to pronounce my name. It\u2019s not that hard \u2014 Fah-wahz.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There was pride in that decision but also a real and still-growing anger \u2014 at Americans who assume that anything Islamic is shorthand for terrorism; at the older generation of American Muslims, whose immigrant, old-world version of Islam paints them as rigid and intolerant; and at people who accept him if he\u2019s Tony but recoil at a name such as Fawaz.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s hard hearing your faith put down all the time as this scary, evil thing,\u201d he says. And hard to endure the cloud of suspicion that American Muslims feel has grown rather than dissipated over the past decade.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/under-suspicion-american-muslims-search-for-identity-10-years-after-sept-11\/2011\/06\/10\/AGPiqpQH_story.html\" target=\"_blank\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>His\u00a0name is a daily message to his fellow Americans: They must deal with him for who he is \u2014 a Muslim who loves his country and proudly sells American flags. \u201cA lot of people use a nickname to make it easier for Americans to pronounce,\u201d says Fawaz Ismail, who for decades went by &#8220;Tony,&#8221; \u201cbut&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[978,8],"tags":[2250,2201],"class_list":["post-3831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-muslims","category-news","tag-muslims","tag-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Washington Post: Muslim Americans struggle to find an identity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-muslim-americans-struggle-to-find-an-identity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Washington Post: Muslim Americans struggle to find an identity\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"His\u00a0name is a daily message to his fellow Americans: They must deal with him for who he is \u2014 a Muslim who loves his country and proudly sells American flags. \u201cA lot of people use a nickname to make it easier for Americans to pronounce,\u201d says Fawaz Ismail, who for decades went by &#8220;Tony,&#8221; 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