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Tuesday, December 01, 2009 Message from the President By CM @ 4:21 PM :: 1217 Views :: News Articles, Mosque Foundation, A Message From the President, Featured Articles   Click for President's Message archive Message From the President: The Other Victims of the Fort Hood Tragedy   A few weeks ago, the St. Petersburg Times reported that a marine reservist, Jason Bruce, a muscular young blond white man, attacked a Greek Orthodox priest, father Alexios Marakis, with an iron rod. Father Marakis, who was bearded, wearing a robe and spoke English with an accent, reportedly was lost and approached the young man asking for directions. Mr. Bruce reportedly told the Tampa Police that the man yelled "Allahu Akbar," Arabic for "God is great," the same words some witnesses alleged the Fort Hood shooting suspect uttered last week. Mr. Bruce then went on to say, "That's what they tell you right before they blow you up." Not surprisingly, the report failed to mention the religious affiliation of Mr. Bruce, his church or his pastor.   Two days after the Fort Hood tragedy in Tinley Park, Illinois, Amal Abusumaya, a Muslim woman wearing a scarf, was attacked while shopping in her local supermarket. The female attacker reportedly shouted at the victim while aggressively tugging her scarf, "The guy that did the Texas shooting, he wasn't American and he was from the Middle East." Again, not surprisingly, the media reports made no mention of the attacker’s church or religious affiliation.   One day earlier, my Mosque received a threatening hate email from someone with a Christian sounding name, who wrote “This country is built by my father and my grandfathers. You don’t belong here. The time will come when you and the walls of your Mosque will disappear!"   By now the Muslim American communities throughout the US are accustomed to the demonizing process that follows a crime or a terror plot in which the suspect happens to be Muslim. We are also used to the ramifications of such demonization, ranging from the insensitive media rush to report, unwarranted law enforcement scrutiny, a surge of hate emails and calls, hate based attacks and crimes, profiling and discrimination against Muslims or anyone who may look like a Muslim, and possibly enactment of new laws further infringing on our civil liberties in order to satisfy our politicians' false sense of security.   The demonization process follows systematic steps such as leaking personal information about the religious beliefs and practices of the accused, like praying in a Mosque, discussing religious beliefs, or even worse, conversion to Islam. That is accompanied by interviewing random Muslims who pray in the same Mosque or the Muslim community leaders about their knowledge of the accused and their explanation of the crime or the plot.  After that initial phase, terrorism experts and pundits jump onto the bandwagon analyzing certain signs of extremism that were missed in the accused, such as disagreeing with our wars or foreign policy, what they read on the internet, or even worse, praying in a Mosque where other suspects prayed in the past. All this while bloggers and so-called experts write about the inherent violence and intolerance of Islam. Finally, some call for increased profiling to scrutinize all Muslim Americans who meet certain criteria. The aftermath of the Fort Hood tragedy was no different. From the first day, the American public knew that the accused Major Hassan was a “devout Muslim" who looked Middle Eastern, wore “Islamic” dresses, discussed his religious beliefs with his friends and superiors, shouted 'Allah Akbar' while shooting the victims, prayed in certain Mosques and reportedly said that he was “Muslim first." As if being Muslim first undermines someone’s patriotism or is an indication of disloyalty to America. [1]   For the past thirty years, and especially after 9/11, the American public has been primed to look with suspicion at Arabs and Muslim Americans. We are bombarded with the same messages from every different direction by Fox News, Glen Beck and Sean Hannity, by Hollywood, syndicates and freelance journalists, by fictional and nonfictional best-selling books, and by many religious and political leaders. We are primed to be suspicious of “devout" Muslim men, who look “middle eastern" or “Islamic," who pray in a Mosque, or wear something “Islamic” or who disagrees with the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan or with our foreign policy.  The victims of such incidents and crimes are not only Arab or Muslim looking men, but the more vulnerable Muslim women because of the way they dress, and because they are easy targets.[2]   In response to the Fort Hood crime, all major Islamic organizations offered their heartfelt sympathy and condolences to the families of the victims of the Fort Hood shootings and their condemnations of the senseless and heinous crimes. Many opened funds to assist the families of the victims. Our hearts and thoughts are with the victims of the Fort Hood tragedy and their families. We should also pray for the other victims of this tragedy, Muslim women, like Mrs. Abusumaya, Muslim children and men, the 3500 active Muslim service men and women in the army who will be under continued and undue scrutiny. We should pray for the safety of all those who look “Muslim, Arab or Middle Eastern ” whether they are Greek, like father Marakis, Sikh, Italians, Armenians or Christian Arabs.   More importantly we should pray for our fellow Americans so we can learn from our history and our mistakes, not to fall into the trap of demonizing Arab and Muslim Americans the same way we did to Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, German Americans, Japanese Americans, African Americans and Latino Americans in the past.     Dr. Zaher Sahloul       [1] Pew Research Center, “MUSLIM AMERICANS: MIDDLE CLASS AND MOSTLY MAINSTREAM”, May 22, 2007. [2] Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11, Louise A. Cainkar. Publication Date: August 2009

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