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immediately after 9/11, Zarif told me, his Jewish 5
pediatrician showed up to make sure the family
was all right. Even in those tense times, Zarina
said, “we had no troubles, no friction, no fight.” Kathryn Schulz
The fight, when is arrived, came in the form of
Bret Colvin, the founder of Stop Islam in Gillette.
Colvin, who is forty-nine, grew up on a Wyoming
ranch, left after high school, and spent the next
decade in the Marines. Later, he worked in private
security, in crab fishing, and in the oil and methane
fields of the West. But these days oil is down,
Gillette’s economy is suffering, and employment is
Courtesy of Dana Arbaugh this town,” Colvin said; to get by, he’d been doing 45
hard to find. “You can’t even get a fast-food job in

some computer and cell-phone repair.
That left him with a lot of time to stare at
the Internet, which is how he learned about the
mosque. Colvin was the one who organized the
The town of Sheridan recently memorialized
Zarif Khan with this statue of him. protests against it, and, according to the Khans,
What do such public displays of art tell us threatened to train a scope on it as well. He also
about what a community values? How does menaced the town’s Muslims more generally;
this statue characterize Khan? when he heard about a public lecture on Islam
being held in Gillette, he used a podcast he
4
5
Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha , at births and produces to announce his plans to attend . . . and
weddings and funerals. urged his listeners to come help him “run [them]
Many of the Khans contributed money to out of town.” At some point, the threats grew
fund the mosque in Gillette, and the threats sufficiently serious that the F.B.I. got involved.
against it came as a shock to them all; none Like the Khans, Colvin’s family has been in the
had ever personally experienced such vitriol in West for a long time, though it represents a very
Wyoming. Zarif Khan’s children, in particular, different strain of the American character. “There’s
seem to have been shielded from whatever racism been Colvins in Wyoming since the wagon-train
and xenophobia they might have otherwise days,” he told me. “My great-grandfather used
encountered in nearly all-white Sheridan by their to shoot Indians for the cavalry for five dollars
father’s standing. “Growing up here, it was great,” a head.” That conduct — the effort by a group
Zarina, who now owns Sheridan’s Holiday Lodge, of newcomers co subdue or eradicate their
said. “We had friends. No one asked about our predecessors through violence — is precisely
skin. No one asked about our religion. No one what Colvin fears from Muslims. He believes that
would say, ‘Where are you from?’ ” Instead, the they are planning a violent invasion of America,
community recognized the Khans as its own; and considers himself personally responsible for
trying to stop it. That is why, he told me, he went
to investigate the mosque after it opened. “I’m
4 The Islamic Festival of Breaking the Fast at the end of Ramadan, one of those people that just does stuff, O.K.?” he
a month during which Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. — Eds.
5 Muslim holiday called the Festival of the Sacrifice to honor said. “I went down there and beat on the door and
Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son at God’s command. — Eds. asked them who the hell they were and where
47
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