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Palo Alto (CA) Weekly - October 13, 2004
Palo Alto Weekly interviews Samina Faheem Sundas
By Don Kazak
There was a portable table set up in the Palo Alto Civic Center Plaza Friday evening, Sept. 10.
The table was full of chips and homemade baked goods, while a couple of women in colorful flowing dresses sat shyly behind the table, smiling at visitors. A third woman wasn't quite so shy, although soft-spoken. Samina Faheen Sundas warmly greeted visitors to the gathering, which was a 9/11 vigil. She also fixed the sound system so a folk singer could entertain the small crowd.
Sundas seemed to have an eye on everything, taking caring of everything.
So it made sense when I found out later she has run a small day-care business out of her Palo Alto home for 18 years -- she's used to keeping an eye on things.
Sundas, 49, is the co-founder of a group, American Muslim Voice, which she started a little more than a year ago. She had been active in a different group, the American Muslim Alliance, which urged and coached American Muslims to run for public office. But 9/11 put a big crimp in that group's efforts. "If people are calling us terrorists, they are not going to vote for us," she said.
The purpose of American Muslim Voice is to educate non-Muslims about Muslims. "I began thinking about doing something that would build a foundation and help fellow Americans truly understand who Muslims are, and really bridge the gap between our communities," she said.
Sundas lives in Palo Alto, but much of her work with American Muslim Voice is in the East Bay communities of Newark, Fremont and Union City -- the center of the Muslim population in the Bay Area. "I am an American by choice," Sundas told the crowd in Palo Alto Sept. 10, She is proud of being a Muslim, and wants the rest of us to become more comfortable with the realization that Muslims also love their adopted country.
She has spoken at rallies in San Francisco, to a college crowd at University of California, Davis, and on KPFA radio. Sundas says, matter-of-factly and with no rancor, that she's fed up with the way the United States government has been treating foreign-born Muslims.
"9-11 silenced our community," she said. "So we don't complain when the FBI comes into our mosques and (the agents) don't take off their shoes. So we don't complain about being profiled at the airport, that's OK. But it (is) not OK because it just humiliates people. You cannot ask a community to stand up if they have to keep putting up with this nonsense."
Sundas moved to America from her native Pakistan to join her former husband, who was studying here. But she encountered a visa problem with her young daughter that left her initially bitter about America. In fact, she vowed never to have any American friends. But as an inherently friendly person, her anger didn't last in the face of meeting real people.
She hopes she can help Americans warm up to Muslims. "We have a campaign that says, 'Each one, teach one,'" she said.
She tried that out with her long-time Palo Alto neighbor, Betty Lowman, who laughed and said that she had been doing that all along. Lowman said that Sundas is a "high-minded person" who is charitable and kind.
Not everyone thinks so, though. "I get hate messages on my cell phone after every press conference," Sundas said. But messages don't make her angry. "After 9/11, a lot of people panicked," she said. "The people who started practicing racism ... were already prejudiced and racist, but 9/11 gave them a license to practice."
She's trying to change that, one person at a time. It already sounds as if she's gotten a big start. Having cared for more than 200 day-care children over the years, many parents of those children called after 9/11 to make sure she was all right and that no one was harassing her. So it's already is happening, one person at a time.
"Muslims are asking fellow Americans to be patient, don't give up on us, and keep your minds open and your hearts open," she said.
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/2004/2004_10_13.town13.shtml
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