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Attorney Shah Peerally (right) consults with Muna Omar and her daughter Reyan, 4, during a legal clinic in California. |
By KIM VO
SAN JOSE, Calif.--Minal Hasan was exploring careers--teacher? journalist?--when two planes sliced through the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon.
In the days and months that followed, friends and relatives exchanged tales of harassment, dubious arrests and assaults nationwide. Someone threw rocks at Hasan's car. Someone else spat at her.
The Fremont, Calif., woman then followed an increasing number of American Muslims, rocked by the fallout of Sept. 11: She applied to law school.
The "civil rights of our community are being encroached upon, and we don't even have enough lawyers in our community to help us. A lot of people in our community thought that," said Hasan, who graduated from Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law in May. "I thought that, too."
Though firm numbers are elusive--law firms and schools don't ask about an applicant's religion--the number of Muslim lawyers and law students is growing. The National Association of Muslim Lawyers, which began in 1996 with 24 members, now has 500. Half of the 100 members of the Bay Area Association of Muslim Lawyers, known as BAAML, are law students, a sign of the swelling ranks. And Muslim law student associations are sprouting from Berkeley to Yale.
Muslims' growing interest in law is also part of social evolution that occurs as children of immigrants explore professions beyond the medicine and engineering paths available to their parents.
The increase is felt in myriad ways. Lawyers and law students are fanning out to teach Muslims about civil rights. A legal clinic at a Santa Clara, Calif., mosque offers free community consultations, and there's talk of more opening across the nation.
And they're working on cases such as the Muslim woman who believes she mistakenly is on the Transportation Security Administration's no-fly list, and another who claims she was improperly fired for wearing a hijab.
"People are realizing that law is a noble--and just as much viable--profession as engineering," said Sajid Khan, starting his third year at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. The son of an engineer and biologist grew up admiring the late Johnnie Cochran Jr. despite a bias he sensed in his religious and ethnic community that "lawyers are liars."
The profession's high regard--and high pay--in the United States has changed some immigrants' perceptions of lawyering. Some credit lawyers' rising profiles as they take on issues vital to the Muslim community: immigration and discrimination.
Khan, a member of the Hastings Association of Muslim Law Students, is drawn to civil rights work, specifically in employment law. "Civil rights is the best forum to make social change," he said.
Apparently, many feel the same way. Though their interests range from corporate to immigration to family law, Muslim lawyers and law students said they feel an obligation to work on civil rights cases, whether as a specialty or as pro bono work.
Shirin Sinnar, with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, said Muslim students are increasingly calling her about internships and civil rights work.
"Overall, it's really impressive how many Muslim students are interested in law," she said. "I think Sept. 11 had a lot to do with it. The rights of their community were threatened like never before."
Sept. 11 certainly changed Sinnar's mind. She expected to focus on international human rights when she enrolled at Stanford Law School in 2001. But the aftermath of the attacks made her more aware of domestic issues such as affirmative action and racial profiling. "Issues I care about now," she said, "but, to be frank, rarely thought of before."
Attorneys from all backgrounds work on civil rights cases, said Marwa Elzankaly, who said she couldn't have taken up the Transportation Security Administration no-fly case without approval from the non-Muslim partners at her San Jose law firm, McManis Faulkner & Morgan. "I definitely couldn't do this work without that support," said Elzankaly, who is Muslim.
Still, clients sometimes prefer a lawyer who shares their faith, and lawyers say cultural nuances can affect one's understanding of a case. Also, there are times when knowledge of both the religion and law are vital: If you enter an Islamic marriage contract, have you given up some communal property rights allowed by the state?
"The benefits of having a Muslim lawyer is they will better understand your life and so better understand your problems," said Elzankaly, president of BAAML. "I think they feel more comfortable with me because they know if they say, 'I got a call from the FBI,' I'm not going to panic and say, 'Oh my gosh, what did you do?'"
