Were Muslims celebrating in N.J. on 9/11? Here's what one professor found

Felician University professor Irfan Khawaja says a small gathering of Muslim teenagers in Paterson may have fueled rumors of mass 9/11 celebrations

LODI -- Donald Trump triggered a national debate earlier this week when he insisted he saw thousands of people celebrating in Jersey City after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Experts and public officials have denounced Trump for spreading false rumors. But, some New Jerseyans insist they also saw Muslims celebrating on the streets of Jersey City or Paterson either in person or on television on 9/11.

It is a familiar debate for philosophy professor Irfan Khawaja, who spent years researching reports of Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey.

After extensive study and face-to-face interviews, Khawaja concluded there was no evidence of large-scale celebrations by Muslim in New Jersey on Sept. 11. But, he did find some witnesses to a small gathering of Muslim teenagers in Paterson that he said may have been the root of some of the rumors.

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Khawaja, an assistant professor of philosophy at Felician University in Lodi, and co-author Gary Alan Fine published his initial findings in a chapter of the 2005 book, "Rumor Mill: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend." Khawaja continued to speak to eyewitnesses and chronicle rumors of Muslim 9/11 celebrations in New Jersey for several more years.

The professor's research has been cited in some of the reports attempting to fact-check Trump's claims of mass celebrations in New Jersey.

NJ Advance Media spoke to Khawaja Tuesday about his 9/11 research and his reaction to Trump's statement.

Were there any Muslims who were publicly celebrating here in New Jersey on 9/11?

If you put the question as a "yes-no," it's impossible to answer. The real answer to the question is there is no evidence of anything larger than a dozen or so kids doing something celebration-like on one block of Main Streeet in South Paterson. So, if you look at what Donald Trump says, it's obviously false. There's nothing more than a couple of kids making noise in the streets of Paterson. That's the bottom line.

Where did that event happen in Paterson and could that be the origin of the stories that there were thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey?

The location that I have always heard is the 900 block of South Main Street. There is a public library in the vicinity.

The story that comes out is a dozen or so young men or teenagers gathered in front of the library and began to yell and act in a way that seemed like a celebration. And they were then reprimanded and they dispersed and that was the end of it.

What are you basing this on? Did you talk to people who saw it directly?

I did. It actually took quite a long time, but I walked up and down South Main Street and just talked to people on the street in stores and restaurants and so on. After a lot of looking around, I found one store owner who claimed to have been an eyewitness and I found another claimed eyewitness by following some leads that some reporters had given me.

Over the years, I asked anyone who was from Paterson what they knew about it. Over several years, I gathered witnesses of this event. And it was always the same story -- this gathering in front of the public library on South Main Street.

Again, there is no way to have absolute certainty that every one of these people was an eyewitness as they said they were and that they saw exactly what they claimed to have seen.

My claim here is that this is the best evidence that I've ever gotten here of any kind. And that's pretty sparse.

Was the gathering in Paterson brief?

You are talking about something that lasted between five and ten minutes.

Paterson has a tie to 9/11 because some of the hijackers rented an apartment there before the attacks. Did you find any of the teenagers or young men who were allegedly celebrating on 9/11?

No.

I know you didn't work on this research full-time. But, how many years did you spend spend chasing down the 9/11 celebration rumors?

I spent a concentrated two years, then three or four further years of follow up.

Why was this important to you? Why did you decide to study this?

As a personal matter, I just found it very hard to believe that such an event would take place. If it didn't take place, I found it hard to believe that it would come to have the credence that it has grown to have.

At the theoretical level, I am a philosopher and one of the bread and butter issues in philosophy is the status of testimonial evidence. That is, how reliable is eyewitness evidence? It seemed an interesting case study to follow out.

I underestimated how difficult it would be to work through all of the rumors and the rumor complexes. I had no idea it would take years. But I spent years on it.

I worked through what must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of internet versions of the rumor. I talked to people face to face. I encountered versions of the rumor in the print media. I worked through everything I could get my hands on.

Did you find any evidence of Muslims celebrating on 9/11 in Jersey City?

There is a now famous Washington Post item that briefly mentioned (law enforcement officials detained and questioned people allegedly seen celebrating on Jersey City rooftops on 9/11) and I contacted the reporters to get some more specificity on it. And I couldn't get any more specificity than what they had already outlined in the article.

When Gary Alan Fine and I wrote up some of the findings I had come up with from my field research, we simply noted the Washington Post report and left it at that without expressing any view one way or another as to the veracity of their reporting.

Why do people care so deeply about this? Trump's comments have elicited passionate responses on both sides - people who swear this is true and people who are horrified that this rumor is so widespread.

This story has been driven by people who want it to be true.

The rumors were driven by the idea that terrorists could be living right next door to you. If you really have a commitment to believing that, if you are vested in that idea that they are nearby, that they are a Fifth Column, that they are amongst us, a rumor like this gives plausibility to that belief.

The terrorist attacks (in Paris) and the controversy about Syrian refuges together have given this story the legs that it has gotten.

In the interest of transparency, do you have any biases that may have influenced your research? Are you from Paterson? Are you Muslim? What are your political beliefs?

I don't think I have any biases that have influenced my research. At the time I did my research, I lived in Princeton, N.J. At the time, I was a registered Republican. I am now a registered Democrat, but that's a decision I made about a month ago. I am not a believing Muslim. Honestly, I don't think I have any bias here.

At the time I did the research, I was absolutely open to the idea that celebrations had taken place and I looked high and low to discover whether or not they had taken place.

Do you plan on continuing your research into this?

I really don't think there is any further evidence to excavate here. I did what I think was a pretty thorough job of hunting down every lead that I could get my hands on. And what I turned up with was basically nothing in terms of corroborating evidence. There was no celebration that took place of any appreciable size. The attitudes of Muslims here do not coincide with what this rumor is trying to suggest.

Trump's claims are blatant, obvious lies. There is nothing more to be said about them.

The burden of proof is really on him to produce evidence for the claims he is making. He, so far, has not produced any. I don't think there is anything left to say, except to continue to point that out as long as I need to point that out.