Economist Paul Krugman says there was no anti-Muslim sentiment after 9/11

Muslims and other minorities recount experiences of hate crimes and surveillance after Krugman's controversial comments on attack anniversary

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman won 2008 Nobel Prize in economics (AFP/File photo)

By 

Rayhan Uddin

Published date: 11 September 2020 16:42 UTC|Last update: 14 hours 34 mins ago

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Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has sparked outrage by suggesting there was no anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States after the 11 September terrorist attacks in 2001. 

On the anniversary of 9/11, in which 2,977 people were killed in four coordinated attacks by al-Qaeda militants, Krugman posted a Twitter thread reflecting on the aftermath. 

“Overall, Americans took 9/11 pretty calmly. Notably, there wasn't a mass outbreak of anti-Muslim sentiment and violence, which could all too easily have happened,” the economist and New York Times columnist said. 

“While GW Bush was a terrible president, to his credit he tried to calm prejudice, not feed it.

“Daily behaviour wasn't drastically affected. True, for a while people were afraid to fly: my wife and I took a lovely trip to the US Virgin Islands a couple of months later, because airfares and hotel rooms were so cheap. But life returned to normal fairly fast.”

Social media users were very quick to criticise Krugman, pointing out a plethora of examples of anti-Muslim sentiments and violence post 9/11.

“This revisionist nonsense is a slap in the face of American Muslims and Muslims around the world killed and maimed and left destitute by collective punishment sanctioned by the American people,” wrote Aisha Ahmad, a PhD student at the University of Oxford.

One user said that former New York mayor and former Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg oversaw a surveillance programme that spied on and targeted Muslims. 

During his presidential campaign earlier this year, Bloomberg defended the policy, claiming that sending informants to spy on mosques was "the right thing to do". 

"It does not incidentally mean that all Muslims are terrorists or all terrorists are Muslim," the 78-year-old said. "But the people that flew those planes came from the Middle East and some of the imams were urging more of the same."

Many Twitter users shared their experiences of being Muslim after the so-called "war on terror" was launched by former US President George W Bush in response to the attacks. 

Some noted out that it wasn’t just Muslims who were victims of discrimination and hate crimes after 9/11, but also Sikhs and other minorities. 

Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh-American gas station owner from Arizona, was killed on 15 September 2001 in what is thought to have been the first hate crime murder in response to the attack on the Twin Towers. 

Krugman went on to say that “the Bush team used 9/11 to take us into an unrelated and disastrous war”, in reference to the invasion and subsequent war in Iraq, which began in 2003.

“Almost two decades on, it's now clear that the real threat to America comes not from foreign terrorists but from home-grown white supremacists. But you know what? That was true even in 2001,” the thread concluded. 

Despite the qualification, the damage had already been done by his earlier tweet. 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/paul-krugman-anti-muslim-911-attack-islamophobia