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UPDATED Friday, September 14, 2001
1:00 PM Cairo time
Praying for patience and moderation
by Tarek Atia
"I live in a predominantly Arab and Muslim neighborhood of Brooklyn," says Ali Sachedina, a lawyer with Morgan Stanley in New York. The company's offices in the World Trade Center were leveled along with the rest of the building in Tuesday's unprecedented terror attack on one of the world's largest buildings.
Sachedina, a Muslim of Indian-East African ancestry who was born in the United States, works at the firm's Brooklyn office. "On my way to work," he recounts, "I walked by a group of people and heard, "They should just bomb Atlantic Avenue."
Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue is famous for its popular Arabic and ethnic grocery stores, restaurants, bookstores, sheesha cafes, community centers, and mosques. Sachedina's experience is certainly not isolated in an America that it trying to come to terms with the worst attack anyone can remember. With the initial suspicions veering towards culprits who were Arabs or Muslims, probably working for Osama Bin Laden, the boogeyman of global terrorism and enemy # 1 of the United States, it was inevitable that the first suspects subsequently booked -- as investigators attempted to follow literally thousands of leads -- were also Muslim and Arab.
Since Tuesday's disaster, Mohamed Omar, a Virginia college student, has had a couple of people taunt him with things like, "Oh, look what your cousins did, and nonsense like that, but I just ignore that kind of nonsense and try not to say anything at all."
Omar is lucky it only came to that. "Police in the naval city of Portsmouth, Va.," reported AP, "detained two 'Arabic-looking' men for questioning Wednesday night and turned
them over to federal immigration agents because they lacked identity documents." The arrest, the report said, took place without a search warrant. Ashraf Atia, an Arab-American engineer, could only wonder, "Isn't this kind of thing illegal anymore?"
Perhaps it might no longer be -- at least for some people. These examples -- both official and non -- of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry have made some Muslim and Arab Americans virtual prisoners in their own homes. Veiled women in particular have been feeling particularly vulnerable when in public. Amongst the dozens of incidents already being investigated: Someone threw a brick through the front window of Hazim Barakat's bookstore in Alexandria, Virgina. And a mosque in Dallas, Texas was shot at in the middle of the night.
All this despite the fact that every major Muslim and Arab organization in the United States condemned the bombing, encouraging their members to do whatever they could -- including donating blood, gathering donations, and helping in the relief efforts. The millions of Muslims and Arabs across America have been watching the carnage with the same disgust and horror as everyone else.
And yet the attacks continue. There have been numerous death threats. A mosque in California had pig's blood thrown at it, and left in a bag at the front door. Someone then called the mosque and said, "they had left a message for Osama bin Laden."
Osama bin Laden is not only America's boogeyman. He is the Muslim world's as well. He has no followers in the real sense of the world, since for most people he is a phantom-like cartoon villain of hate, and a symbol of everything a Muslim is not.
There is wisdom, perhaps, in nations joining together in the aftermath of this tragedy to share intelligence in fighting terrorism -- whether or not Tuesday's attack was masterminded by bin Laden or by a yet-to-be revealed entity -- as long as that pact does not result in a severe loss of civil liberties in general for the populations of the world, and especially Arabs and Muslims in the United States. The Bush administration is wise to opt for this potential solution, rather than a speedy physical retribution on a vaguely connected target that is too emotionally catalyzed to be well thought out -- and thus less effective.
George W Bush is clearly a religious man. He has declared Friday a day of prayer. Muslims around the world will be gathering on Friday as well, for their weekly noon prayer in mosques everywhere. They will also be praying for the souls of the deceased. And hoping to God that reason and moderation are the path their country -- America -- chooses to take.
...Developing...
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Previous stories:
Unimaginable terror:
Who will be hit next?
Cairenes -- like the rest of the world -- remain glued to their television screens early Wednesday morning, shocked by the events unfolding before the world's eyes.
Confusion on the second day:
New developments from around the world
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