[iwar] [fc:Backlash.against.Arabs.hits.North.America]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-14 12:33:51
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 12:33:51 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Backlash.against.Arabs.hits.North.America]
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Backlash against Arabs hits North America
By SASHA NAGY
Globe and Mail (Canada)
Thursday, September 13
An outbreak of racial intolerance and violence brought calls from calm from
leaders across North American on Thursday.
As investigators paint an increasingly clear picture that points to the
involvement of Muslim extremists with ties to Osama bin Laden, the mood has
turned from mourning to anger.
Attacks have been reported across the United States and in Canada, even as
far away as Australia. In all cases, the victims have been either Muslim
organizations or people of Muslim appearance.
Prime Minister Jean ChrÈtien asked for people to stop singling out members
of Canada's Muslim community.
"I also want to emphasize we are in a struggle with terrorism, not against
any one community or faith," he said.
Former U.S. president George Bush urged people all over the globe to
exercise tolerance and calm in the face of increasing anger.
"We've got to be tolerant. If this, as the evidence suggests, is an act of
bin Laden or an unrelated group, we should be mindful. This was not the act
of all Muslims," Mr. Bush said at Lotus Corp. in Boston. He called the
perpetrators of this attack "religious extremists who act out of hate."
A Montreal mosque was firebombed Tuesday night. No one was injured in the
attack and there was no estimate of damage. The mosque, located in the north
end of the city, has been vacant since July.
The Arab-speaking community numbers about 300,000 in Canada.
In Calgary, students returned to the Calgary Islamic School on Thursday. It
had been closed for two days.
"When the children woke up on Tuesday, and were getting ready to go to
school, it was the first thing they saw," said Najah Hage, chairman of the
school. "All that was being talked about was Muslim extremists. The kids get
scared. A lot of the kids are second, third and fourth generation
[Canadian]. We feel we are part of this country."
More than a dozen Muslims have received threatening phone calls at home and
on the street, Mr. Hage said.
"They say derogatory things like, 'You guys should be thrown out of here,
you guys should be blown up.' Things like that. We're Canadian."
Jehad Aliweiwi, executive director of the Canadian Arab Federation, said
employees in the organization's national office in Toronto have received
phone calls "that were less than flattering."
"They were abusive and threatening and one said, 'You will pay for
this,' "
Mr. Aliweiwi said.
The largest Arab-Canadian community, he said, is in Montreal, which has a
population of more than 100,000, followed by Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver.
Police in St. Catharines, Ont., arrested a 43-year-old man and charged him
with uttering death threats after a woman answering the phone for the
Islamic information centre in nearby Niagara Falls received threats Tuesday
evening.
The B.C. Muslim Association said it was horrified by the terrorist attacks
and urged the media not to "engage in generalized stereotypical labelling."
It noted there are more than 1.4 billion Muslims around the world comprising
more than 60 ethnic groups.
While Mr. Aliweiwi and Mr. Kubursi said there were no abusive attacks on
their groups' Web sites, there were reports in the United States of
anti-Arab and anti-Muslim messages spreading on the Internet.
In an America Online chatroom, many used racial slurs against Arabs.
The media have drawn some criticism following the publication of a picture
of a Sikh man being removed from a train in Providence, R.I., on Wednesday.
The man was detained for wearing a kirpan, a ceremonial dagger central to
the Sikh religion. He was later released.
"I was horrified to see the picture [in newspapers] of this Sikh man
arrested for carrying a kirpan ... on a train. The headline states 'Bin
Laden link appears solid,' " said Paul Grewal, a vice-president at CIBC in
Toronto. "The man was released within one hour and he had nothing to do with
the catastrophe. However, uninformed citizens of our society may associate
all people who wear turbans as being involved with this horrific incident."
Mr. Grewal, who is Sikh, said he noticed people staring at him while taking
commuter transit to work on Thursday.
"Let's not act irrationally here," he said. "Not every Christian, Muslim or
Sikh is a terrorist."
Mr. Grewal said everyone is mourning the loss of life at the World Trade
Center, where people of all backgrounds undoubtedly lost their lives.
In Montreal, Marie Rejouli, editor of the Lebanese newspaper Almoustakbal,
which covers Canada's Arab community, described the attacks as "a crime
against humanity."
She said the Arab community fears that it will be blamed for the terrorist
attacks.
"Everybody is ready to take it for granted that it's the Arabs," she said.
"Officially, there's no answer yet."
The violence spread across the United States and abroad:

In Bridgeview, Ill., 300 marchers ó some waving U.S. flags and shouting
"USA! USA!" ó tried to march on a mosque in a southwest Chicago suburb late
Wednesday.
Three demonstrators were arrested, Bridgeview Police Chief Charles Chigas
said. There were no injuries and demonstrators were kept blocks from the
closed Muslim worship place.
In Chicago, a Molotov cocktail was tossed Wednesday at an Arab-American
community centre. No injuries were reported.
In Huntington, N.Y., a 75-year-old man who was drunk tried to run over a
Pakistani woman in the parking lot of a shopping mall, police said.
A man in a ski mask in Gary, Ind., fired a high-powered assault rifle at a
gas station where Hassan Awdah, a U.S. citizen born in Yemen, was working
Wednesday.
Tamara Alfson, an American working at the Kuwait Embassy in Washington,
D.C., spent Wednesday counselling frightened Kuwaiti students attending
schools across the United States.
Abu Nahidian, director of the Manassas Mosque in Virginia, said his
congregation has been the target of insults and hate messages left on the
office answering machine.
A mosque in Lynnwood, Wash., was vandalized, and no one showed up for
afternoon prayers at the Islamic Center of Spokane.
In a news release, B'nai Brith Canada condemned the scapegoating of Muslim
communities. "B'nai Brith Canada strongly encourages all Canadians to remain
calm and not jump to conclusions or generalize from individuals to whole
group."
Even in Australia, a school bus carrying Muslim children was the target of
stone-throwers in Brisbane, and vandals tried to set fire to a Lebanese
church in apparent acts of retaliation for the terrorist attacks in the
United States, officials said.

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Next message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:bin.Laden.asserts.that.the.US.is.preparing.to.massacre.the.Muslums]"
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