Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/nation/15892350.htm
CHICAGO - David Huffman told police it was just a prank gone wrong: On April 22, at a McDonald's in Tinley Park, he tapped a Muslim woman on the head, nearly pulling off her headscarf.
The woman, a young mother with her children, didn't see it as harmless. She was scared and embarrassed; her faith had been attacked. She told police, and they called it battery.
But in a twist that surprised everybody, a Cook County judge did not fine or jail Huffman. He was instead ordered to undergo sensitivity training at the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights organization.
During the past three months, Huffman, 18, has spent 40 hours listening to and talking with Muslims across Chicago. He has completed required tasks that, at times, seemed ripped from reality television: watching Muslim youths play basketball, attending a 9/11 event and visiting area mosques, which Huffman called "synagogues" at the beginning of his training.
But just what exactly did David Huffman learn?
When Huffman first arrived Aug. 4 at the CAIR office in downtown Chicago, his hands were shaking from nervousness, and he appeared as if he would have preferred to been anywhere else. He was late, for starters. He arrived with his shoes untied and a patchy stubble, looking more like he'd just stumbled out of bed than spent the better part of an hour commuting from Tinley Park.
"I'd rather not talk about it," Huffman said of the April incident, soon after arriving. "I want to forget it."
He eventually did retell a version of the events that day. He said he knew he did wrong, but was confused as to why the woman became so upset.
"I understood immediately after I did it. But even after I apologized, she was still so angry," he said. "I didn't understand that."
Explaining that would be the responsibility of Veronica Zapata, CAIR's sensitivity training coordinator. That day, she led Huffman around the corner to the Downtown Islamic Center on South State Street, where she showed him the empty mosque.
"Religion is a waste of time," Huffman said without apparent malice, as his fingers traced tiles that spell out the 99 names of God in Islam. He checked his mobile phone text messages with his other hand.
Zapata, 32, winced at the comment, but she later said she was optimistic about the next several weeks.
"I don't know how reflective he's going to be. I feel the resistance," she said. She hesitated: "I think he has good potential."
Huffman's April arrest came less than two months before the teen graduated from Tinley Park's Andrew High School, where he said he struggled to stay out of trouble for various antics.
"I'm a legend in my high school," Huffman said with a diffident swagger.
Still, his brushes with authority have not soured him on wanting to become such himself - he plans on applying to a police force upon graduation from community college. It's a calling Huffman said he feels because he wants to help people and because he's a good communicator.
Those communication skills were initially absent as he spent a Friday evening with numerous youths at the Muslim Youth Center in Bridgeview. Huffman was timid around the teens, which could have come from the fact three young men inquired why he was there soon after his arrival, and they left little doubt they already knew the answer.
"I got in trouble with some Muslims," Huffman said, as the teenagers waited for a longer answer. "I tapped a woman on the head, and they gave me 40 hours."
Conversation turned to sports and video games until everyone broke for evening prayers.
Luqman Rashad, the center's energetic director, led prayers that evening on the basketball court, where Huffman watched intently, taking off his baseball hat as if the national anthem had begun. For a few minutes, only the humming from overhead lights and a Pepsi machine punctuated the sounds of kneeling on the hardwood.
Rashad filled his sermon with several topics, telling the 30 or so gathered boys that one must always struggle to do right. And he said that Muslim women have it hard in America because the hijab, or headscarf, tells all around them of their religion. "It's important to understand the struggles our sisters are going through," he said.
Huffman looked away.
Minutes later, he was sitting at a conference table with three Muslim teenagers who all wear the hijab.
"It protects modesty. It's not just a scarf; it's who you are. You're representing all of Islam," said Amneh Noubani, 19, who like one of the younger women said she started wearing her hijab at the suggestion of her parents and to honor God.
The young women explained that the hijab is part of Islam's call for modest dress, although Muslims disagree what exactly constitutes that. The hijab has become a lightning rod in recent years as the religion has increased its presence in non-Muslim countries, where it is sometimes seen as oppressive, and protests have recently surrounded it from Florida to France.
The group asked Huffman if he had any questions or comments. He said he had none.
"There is no question to ask," he smiled weakly. "It makes sense."
By the beginning of October, after other activities around town, Huffman was back at the CAIR office, where he worked hard to complete a PowerPoint presentation he was required to give to the CAIR volunteers at the end of his 40 hours. The month of Ramadan had begun, and the CAIR office was full of people fasting from dawn to sunset. Huffman however was taking no break, and surrounded his computer with a spread of cookies, pasta salad and soda.
He told all who would listen that he was going to be a millionaire one day by inventing a parachute that deploys when you drop your cell phone. He spoke loudly, and often, and seemed unaware his chosen conversation topics, such as the proliferation of bikinis on MySpace, were doing little to endear him to the office.
But he was learning something.
"What time does fasting end today?" Zapata asked another Muslim sitting nearby.
"6:15 p.m., I think," Huffman responded out of nowhere.
They both smiled.
Not because he was right - he wasn't - but less than 10 minutes off, he was pretty close.
At their last meeting on Oct. 13, Zapata and Huffman playfully teased each other like siblings who couldn't be more different: she a Mexican-American Muslim convert, finishing graduate school. He is himself.
In Huffman's PowerPoint slides, he described Zapata as "probably one of the nicest" persons he's ever met. "She made [it possible] for me to understand the religion."
He smiled at her in the darkened room.
"I really did learn a lot from this experience. It made me (realize) some things that I might not have noticed without this training," he said. "And I am going to take this experience with me through my entire life, cause it meant something to me."
Of course, he was supposed to say all of this, but Huffman seemed as serious and as earnest as he had ever been. And he took the time to reach out to those in the office, many who had spent weeks either talking to or ignoring him.
"I hope you guys take away from this that I am a really nice guy, and I care about other people, and look beyond one small mistake," he said. "People make mistakes; don't let it judge the person for the rest of their life."
The group applauded, and several people patted Huffman on the back, telling him he should return to CAIR as a volunteer, although next time without the threat of jail time.
Ahmed Rehab, CAIR's executive director, later said he was so impressed with Huffman's development that he is now planning to write the young man a letter of recommendation for the police department.
"The great thing about Dave's progress is that he didn't come in full of hate. He, like so many people in the general population, had simply come to his opinions because he never knew a Muslim."
For the first time since his initial day at CAIR, Huffman again visited the Downtown Islamic Center, walking with two young Muslim men from the office who did not talk to him the whole way there. There was a crowd at the mosque this time, as it was during Ramadan, which ends Monday, according to the Islamic Society of North America.
Once inside, one of the men told Huffman he could wait in the hallway, which Huffman did, returning to stare at the tiles listing the names of God: The All Forgiving. The Hidden. The Majestic, among others.
As the imam preached of peace and togetherness, Huffman was feet away but not listening, in a different world altogether. The faithful packed the mosque that day; Huffman checked text messages.
He did however go into the stairwell to check those messages, which, based on the previous weeks, was a small step of improvement.
Is there any other kind?
