Muslims can only feel unease about 11 September (Indepedent BARF ALERT)

They ask if we will also pray for the uncounted, innocent - maybe inevitable - victims of war in Afghanistan

I have been dreading 11 September for a good two months. And now it is nearly upon us that weight has become almost intolerable. What happened to the 2,823 Americans and their families was unutterable and I hate the malevolent malcontents who perpetrate these acts – indeed the Tunisian-Swedish hijacker arrested on Friday may be one such plotter. However, I have to make this unambiguous proclamation to avoid misunderstanding as I explain what my true feelings are about the anniversary.

I know that the world is supposed to accept the premise that this was the worst tragedy to befall us all and that in order not to be seen as a supporter of global terrorism, we must show our stars and stripes, participate faithfully in the surfeit of remembrance which has already begun.

Most will oblige, so cowed are we, jittery and daunted, by the Bush test: "You are with us or against us". Muslims in America are under the worst pressure. They avoid meetings or centres; some pray quietly behind closed curtains, avoid mosques and are teaching their children not to tell their classmates that they are Muslim. Altaf Ali, a director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has just warned all those who choose to ignore the order to display their grief: "If we do not go out and show support in acts of solidarity it will backfire and harm us." Meanwhile, almost completely unreported and largely unknown is the arrest a week ago of a 37-year-old doctor – Robert Goldstein – who was found in Florida with ammunition and detailed plans to blow up 50 Islamic centres and mosques.

So the right things will be done and said by Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic. What we feel is another matter. And for most people in the world, this only confirms that American lives are more valuable than others. So many questions have been stifled because of this great suffering of America.

On Friday evening I went to ArRum, a stylish cultural centre in Clerkenwell, frequented by successful British Muslim professionals and their non-Muslim friends or partners. The space, which reflects modernity and Islamic aesthetics, was set up by Ridah Nijabat, a sharp Muslim woman who knew a niche existed for such a place. Where else do trendy Muslim Britons or, come to think of it, Sikhs, Hindus or black Britons go? The Groucho and other clubs are hardly going to welcome them – you have to be Art Malik to get a look in – and such punters would find those places uncomfortably cliquey and boozy. Here they relax, and feel safe enough to talk honestly about the future, of their own lives as the in-between people – of Islam, globalisation, the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Europe and the almighty US.

I met a banker in Armani suit, a flash city broker, a pharmacist, a playwright and a theatre producer, a radio and television journalist, an art collector, a civil servant, a wannabe actress, and Shazia Mirza, the daring stand-up comedienne whose star is rising fast although some mullahs would love to smite her down.

In one corner they were getting heated about the excessive sentences just handed out to some of the men who rioted in Bradford last summer. I share their sense of outrage. The men did wrong; their families delivered them to the police and yet they were given more than four years. One chap, the banker, asked: "Did the judge punish them more because he thinks all Muslim men are secret terrorists? How can this be right when rich footballers get away with nothing for beating up Asians?"

None of these people is an apologist for the extremists, the haters and killers who say that they do what they do for the good of Islam. But most are uneasy about this coming anniversary. They ask if we will also pray for the uncounted, innocent – maybe inevitable – victims of war in Afghanistan? Do we even know how many children were orphaned and whether anyone will provide compensation for them?

And can we be told what is happening to the prisoners in Cuba? The media has lost interest but these men are being held – uncharged – in violation of the most basic standards of legal justice. Oh, and those black victims in Kenya and Tanzania when Osama Bin Laden's bombs exploded near the US embassies (12 Americans died, hundreds of Africans were killed or maimed). Are any monuments planned to these first victims of Muslim Stalinists?

These questions are on the lips of non-Muslims too. In fact, if your ancestry is in the so-called Third World, you cannot but question the theatrical anniversary we are about to experience. This week, we will be manipulated by emotional stories about babies who were born on that day in New York, healthy babies to two parents who feel damaged. I wonder how many of these sensitive couples remember 2 December 1984? Would they recognise the name Bhopal? And, if they did, would they recall that between 16,000 and 30,000 Indians were choked to grisly death by acid fumes, and that 500,000 were wounded? In his book, Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, Dominique LaPierre calls this "the most murderous industrial disaster in history". Read this, if you can, without screaming. A young girl with bells on her ankles was piled in with the dead, still alive with frothy bubbles coming out of her burnt insides; Muslim graves had to take 10 victims each; hearts, livers and spleens tripled in size and victims drowned in their own secretions.

An Indian court last week reminded the world that, 18 years on, Union Carbide, the American company responsible, and the chief executive officer James Anderson have escaped justice. So do US couples who gave birth on 2 December feel a sense of horror?

Not all Americans are indifferent. Radicals, human-rights activists and lawyers, some prominent African-Americans too, are dissenting, even in this period of enforced mourning. Legal challenges are being mounted against arbitrary detentions of all creatures brown across the country. The novelist Walter Mosley said last month: "Most Black Americans were appalled but not surprised by the hatred and anger which produced the attack. Black Americans are aware of the attitude of America towards people who are different, people whose beliefs are different, people of a different colour."

Earlier this year I shared a platform with Ryan Amundson, whose brother Craig – a young husband and father – was killed on 11 September. Craig's wife, Amber, and Ryan had been to Afghanistan and brought pictures to show of the suffering there. They spoke out against revenge and said they did not want their story to be repeated endlessly; instead the focus should move to other victims of this war against terrorism.

Last September, Arundhati Roy wrote that America's grief has "been immense and immensely public". It would be a shame if this became an opportunity for the US to usurp the world's sorrow and to mourn and avenge only their own, leaving it to others to ask the harsh questions. Sadly, that is exactly what has happened, except that British and US Muslims have been pushed into such a corner that they no longer dare to ask the questions openly. And the frustration of this is palpable, especially at this time.

Bump

I've been trying to say this since 9-11. I guess I will be labeled as a bigoted American. By: An American Airlines Pilot - Captain ???? ?????????

September 11 Grievances
"You worry me. I wish you didn't. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country. But you don't blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me. I notice you because I can't help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don't fully understand their grievances and hate but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.

On September 11, nineteen ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children's mothers. So I notice you now. I don't want to be worried. I don't want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that has destroyed the soul of these terrorists.

But I need your help.

As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you, and the Arab/Muslim terrorist. How do I differentiate between the true Arab-Muslim-Americans and the Arab-Muslims in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter those very same good neighbors and children?

The events of September 11th changed the answer. It is not my responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of it's religions, with ALL of it's different citizens, with all of it's faults. It is time for every Arab-Muslim in this country to determine it for me.

I want to know, I demand to know, and I have a right to know whether or not you love America. Do you pledge allegiance to it's flag? Do you proudly display in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation, that He will protect and prosper it?

Or do you pray that Allah with destroy it in one of your "Jihads"? Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords? A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America?

If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it. Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America.

Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent because I worry about who you regard as innocent. And no more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks because I worry about what is unprovoked to you.

I am not interested in any more sympathy ...I am only interested in action.

What will you do for America-our great country-at this time of crisis, at this time of war?

I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting "Allah Bless America". I want to see young Arab-Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time, and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole.

The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize in Muslim communities. You know them. You know where they are.

Hand them over to us, now!

But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action.

Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals. The very few Arab-Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating. They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States prove who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing "leaders" like Khadafi, Hussein, Farrakhan, and Arafat.

If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Koran are good and pure and true when your "leaders" are teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance. It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if large numbers of the world's Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion.

A form that has been demonstrated to us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide. A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members defended Johnny Cochran and O. J. Simpson after the latter butchered his wife and murdered an innocent friend. A form whose members (some as young a five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America, the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted, that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.

Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because our women proudly show their faces in public rather than cover up like a shameful whore? Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because we drink wine with dinner, or celebrate Christmas? Do you and you fellow Muslims hate us because we have befriended Israel, the ONLY civilized democratic nation in the entire middle-east? And if you and your fellow Muslims hate us, then why in the world are you even here? Are you here to take our money? Are you here to undermine our peace and stability? Are you here to destroy us?

If so, I want you to leave. I want you to go back to your desert sandpit where women are treated like rats and dogs. I want you to take your religion, your friends, and your family back to your Islamic extremists, and STAY THERE! We will NEVER give in to your influence, your retarded mentality, your twisted, violent, intolerant religion.

We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us: Our rights under the greatest constitution in the world.

I want to know where every Arab-Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your family. I am pleading with you to let me know. I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American. But there can be no gray areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand." "

Until then ... you worry me." ""

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