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Muslims Receive Support from Americans Denouncing Racist Attacks
By Ayesha Ahmad
WASHINGTON, Sept 17 (IslamOnline) - In a framework of unity that this nation has never seen before, Americans of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds have flooded Islamic centers, Islamic websites and made personal contacts with Muslims with messages of support and unity decrying the acts of violence that have been directed against Muslims, Arabs and South Asians since last Tuesday.
Their outpouring has accompanied an unprecedented range of coverage of Muslims in the U.S. as ordinary American citizens who profess a peace-loving faith - a stark contrast to years of stories depicting Islam only in terms of the "radicals" who commit acts of violence in the name of Allah against the entire West.
Alongside continued coverage of Tuesday's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, nearly all major news sources, and local papers as well, have taken a deeper look into regional and national Muslim communities, asking Muslims to explain their faith and share their reactions and experiences.
Next to its "backlash" story, ABCNews.com provided links to "What the Koran Really Says" and "Most Americans Know Little About Islam," allowing readers to find out more about the religion whose name is so freely tacked on to acts of terrorism.
ABCNEWS anchor Peter Jennings hosted a show Saturday morning that brought together children from different schools to answer each other's questions on the attacks. The show attempted to clarify the true teachings of Islam, and many of the children distinguished between the faith of Islam and the actions of the terrorists, but others thought that the "Muslim bible" teaches Muslims to kill and to hate Americans.
A CBS News article Monday described the "profound disapproval" Muslims in the U.S. feel regarding the "extreme brand of Islamic fundamentalism espoused by… Osama bin Laden," distancing American Muslims from violence committed in the name of Islam, and spoke with a hopeful note of interfaith services at a cathedral in Seattle that showed "solidarity" among Christians, Muslims and Jews.
CNN has run more than one "backlash" story, and Monday's article on the rise in hate crimes - the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has reported more than 350 as of Monday afternoon - detailed recent attacks on Sikhs and Muslims across the country, and reported that the student body of the University of North Texas delivered "50 posters with greetings, flowers, condolences and prayers" to the Islamic center in Denton, Texas, that was damaged by a Molotov cocktail attack last week.
A September 13th Washington Post article quoted Muslim and Arab leaders as using harsh words to denounce Tuesday's attacks, such as "despicable," "appalling," "horrifying," "an act of war," and referred to several Muslim citizens and leaders who described Islam as a peace-loving religion and distanced the religion from the acts of terrorism.
A story by the Reuters news agency, run by the New York Times, explained the incongruence between the violence of terrorist acts and the spirit of Islam, with its strict rulings on the protection of human life and the value of peace, quoting Islamic scholar Jamal Badawi, among others, who said that, "Anyone denying any person in the world the right to life, or the right to practice their own religion in freedom, or to think freely, would be demeaning to Islam and acting against Islam itself."
And the Los Angeles Times published an article by regular commentator Khaled Abou Fadl, who explained that, "Classical Islamic law explicitly prohibits the taking or slaying of hostages or diplomats even in retaliation against unlawful acts by the enemy," while exploring what might have happened to Islamic civilization that allowed "radical" elements to form.
Local media also carried stories about their own Muslim communities and what they felt as Americans and as Muslims in the wake of the attacks.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press, the New York Post, the Raleigh News and Observer and Internet broadcasting channels in Boston and Greenville, N.C. were some of the media that sent reporters into their local Muslim communities.
The News and Observer's story, for example, found that for many Muslims and Arabs, the shock and horror concerning the tragedy of the attacks was compounded by "the added agony of knowing that the suspects shared their heritage, even their faith." The story captured the double horror of the reactions of so many Muslims to last week's events, and showed local Muslims drawing strength from their faith to unite and to show Islam in its true light.
Online stories have been accompanied by message or discussion boards, in which users post their opinions about an article's topic or their responses to a story. The first few days after the attack, many message boards were flooded with hate messages and vulgarity directed at Islam - as were the guestbooks and message boards on many Islamic web sites as well.
But very soon, Americans of all backgrounds began to respond, pleading with Muslims not to believe that all Americans hated them and wanted to hurt them, and to know that the majority of Americans understood that Islam had nothing to do with what happened Tuesday morning.
And Muslims all over the country have received personal responses from their neighbors denouncing racist attacks against them and offering support and prayers.
IslamOnline, which had a threatening message left on its answering machine by an angry caller denouncing Islam, found a message Monday morning left by a woman offering apologies for any attacks that may have been directed at the web site, and offering the support of the local community.
And a member of the Beverley Hills Community United Methodist Church in Alexandria, VA, came in person to IslamOnline "just to offer our support".
Hugh MacDonald said that his church, at an outreach meeting on Saturday, discussed the rash of attacks in the area against Muslims. "It's terrible… I just detest any of this," MacDonald told IslamOnline.
MacDonald remembered turning 16 just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and recalled coming to school one day to find that the 30 Japanese-Americans in his high school class of 60 were gone, "interned" in camps. He said he recognized the same "knee-jerk reaction" now against Muslims, and said it was "just unbelievable" that the same sentiment could be expressed again with such violence.
Also, the office director of the Muslim American Society in Alexandria, VA, Azzam Huwil, commented that aside from three threatening phone calls they received after Tuesday's attacks, they also heard from several non-Muslim Americans who called to offer their help and support.
"We got about 10 support calls from [non-Muslim] Americans," Huwil said. "People are very good."
He said that some members from Great Falls Citizen Association, offered escorts for Muslim women who needed to go to the store, but were afraid to go alone.
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