For NYC Muslim, Dodging Bullets is the American Way

Cassandra Uretz

March 1, 2004

Mohammad Razvi would never say his new life started on Sept. 11. But the terrorist attacks changed him in ways he didn't expect, and gave him an unforeseen calling.

Like his neighbors from Brooklyn's Little Pakistan district, Razvi mourned the victims of the World Trade Center attacks, in which three local residents died. As a businessman, he feared the economic impact from the attacks might crush his working-class, mostly Muslim community, whose immigrant strivers already suffered from a deepening national recession.

Then the bullets started flying.

"After Sept. 11, we had gunshots fired in our neighborhood. Bullet holes were all over, and nobody covered it," Razvi said. He recalled watching business after local business fold overnight as fear swept the community.

Razvi's Pakistani neighbors came into his stores -- a restaurant, grocery, and discount outlet on Coney Island Avenue, between Avenue H and Forster Avenue -- asking for help. Razvi had come to America from Lahore when he was 6, and speaks English with street-smart ease. Could he possibly navigate New York City's bureaucracy to find a husband, a brother, a son whom the FBI had detained? Could he translate for immigrants on the brink of being deported?

Because so many Pakistanis are practicing Muslims, the local mosque often served as the community's hub, where families could find emotional support and exchange information. But when the U.S. justice system swooped down on Little Pakistan after Sept. 11, the mosques were not qualified to provide the legal defense their followers needed to protect themselves from arrest or deportation, especially in a community already burdened by financial hardship.

Within 5 months, the 32-year-old aspiring real estate mogul with a wife and four children to support was filling the gap, transformed into the Executive Director of the Council of Pakistan Organization (COPO), an advocacy team whose influence reaches beyond its Pakistani base to the wider South Asian community.

The fledgling non-profit started in a storefront on Coney Island Avenue in Midwood, a vibrant but hardscrabble area with a large population of undocumented immigrants. The Pakistani Embassy estimates there are 30,000 "non-status" Pakistani nationals living in the U.S., although Razvi believes there are thousands more than that in Brooklyn alone. Many are COPO clients, with low incomes and limited access to city services like healthcare and affordable housing, Razvi said.

So the Council became a liaison between the U.S. government and Muslim-Americans, negotiating with Federal agents who cased Little Pakistan for potential terrorists. As the organization became stronger, it also offered help in securing English lessons, food stamps, medical and mental health services, and assistance for women left alone in America after their husbands were deported.

Word about COPO spread in the South Asian community. In their home countries of Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, Hindus and Muslims are in constant conflict with one another. But in Brooklyn, they all showed up at COPO for advice, throwing out centuries of cultural strife for their common cause of surviving the Sept. 11 backlash.

"When people came here, they were like, oh my God. There's a Pakistani community helping the Indians and the Bangladeshis. That is so cool!" said Razvi, who knew nothing about social service work before he started clocking 60 hours a week at COPO.

Now, Razvi said, he is having the time of his life taking on the government as he and his colleagues help rebuild the neighborhood. He said his database has logged 3,800 clients since COPO opened its doors on Feb. 1, 2002, and he seems to remember every detail of their stories, even though the daily injustices they live with try his patience.

In one COPO case, Razvi said, police spotted a vacationing Brooklyn South Asian taking photos of Niagara Falls along with four dark-skinned friends, and alerted the FBI. Back in Brooklyn, the photographer was on his way home one evening when he saw police parked outside his front door. He hid for 4 days, then came into COPO for help. Razvi downloaded the Niagara Falls pictures on to his computer and showed them to police to prove the photographer's innocent intentions. With reluctance, the police signed documentation that cleared the suspect and his friends of wrongdoing.

Razvi said he has also intervened in discrimination cases, such as an incident in which a Pakistani man contacted COPO after a car accident. A Brooklyn police squad car hit the man while he was standing in a street safety zone and knocked him to the ground. At first, the responsible officers rushed to learn if he was hurt. When they realized he was an immigrant, however, they wrote him a jaywalking ticket, Razvi said.

"In his native language, he said yes, (he was okay). The officers immediately were different. They said, 'You moron, what are you doing crossing in the middle of the road? Either you go to jail or you get a ticket.' The guy says, 'Oh please, no ticket. I can't afford.' The officer goes, "You're an idiot.'"

Razvi said he reported the incident to the officer's precinct captain, prompting an investigation. As a result, he said, the ticket was dismissed.

The fledgling Department of Homeland Security registered more than 83,000 immigrant Americans from 25 nations by May 2003, with an emphasis on men from Muslim or Middle Eastern backgrounds. FBI agents left business cards around Little Pakistan with orders for Muslims to contact them. They entered private homes without a search warrant, questioned people who barely spoke English, and arrested them on legal technicalities.

One wrong word, and a suspect could be detained and legally jailed for months without charge. Or, if one target was nowhere to be found, agents might arrest a bystander in his place, Razvi said.

Over 15,000 Little Pakistan residents fled or were deported in the two years after Sept. 11. The Pakistan Embassy said its nation's foreign exchange holdings have jumped tenfold to $10 billion as husbands try to keep their American families afloat, according to the Washington Post. Thousands more Pakistanis have fled across the Canadian border and requested asylum, never to return.

Back in New York, people like Razvi are volunteering their language skills and legal expertise to keep the neighborhood intact, in a climate of fear where the slightest misunderstanding can lead to the breakup of one more family, the loss of another business, or refusal to seek critical medical attention.

One Midwood man appeared weeping on Razvi's doorstep, clutching his stomach in agony but afraid to visit a hospital because of his immigrant status. Razvi delivered the man to an emergency room, where doctors immediately operated on the man's life-threatening condition.

Still another man was stabbed in his hallway and left for dead. When police arrived, the still-conscious victim, who required 40 stitches, refused to identify his attacker and insisted he had inflicted the wounds on himself, because he was undocumented and feared he would be deported if he reported an attempted murder.

Razvi recently sold his outside businesses to work at COPO full-time, and expressed frustration with immigrants who believe no one cares about their problems.

"People say, what difference is it going to make. I'm just a small, little guy. But they don't realize that when you take a stand, you are letting the world know that you are against injustice. You have to make that stand. That voice really goes a long way."

(Updated April 9, 2004)