THESE ARE THE VICTIMS, murdered by Islamic Arabs:
Posted on 09/13/2002 1:07:23 AM PDT by Draakan
It’s not Americans who should be angry about being attacked, it’s Arabs in America who are justifiably upset about how they are being treated.
During the expanded, hour-long NBC Nightly News on Wednesday night, anchor Tom Brokaw highlighted the supposed awful plight of Muslims in the United States: “For many, this has been the year -- as one observer put it -- that the American dream for them descended into nightmares.”
Reporter Jim Avila proceeded to look at a woman who is “an American of Palestinian descent” who is “now worried everything she learned as an American about justice and civil rights collapsed along with New York’s Twin Towers.”
All because the FBI came to one woman’s house to see her son, who they thought was at least a teen, but turned out to be much younger, so they left; and another’s mosque was targeted one day by protesters.
Brokaw set up the September 11 NBC Nightly News story, as transcribed by MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth: “That brings us to America’s growing Arab and Muslim communities. For many, this has been the year -- as one observer put it -- that the American dream for them descended into nightmares.”
Avila began: “Weeks after the September 11th terrorist attack, Arab-American social service worker Aifidel Shilabi (sp?) heard a knock on her suburban Chicago door. It was the FBI.” Shilabi: “Someone had phoned in a tip anonymously about that I’m raising a terrorist for Hamas.” Avila: “The FBI was looking for a terrorist. Aifidel is a widow and her son’s in grammar school. When the boy they wanted to question was summoned, the agent’s eyes widened. He was eight years old.” Shilabi: “Shock and amazed, and I said, 'You didn’t know?’ They’re like, 'No, we thought he was older.’” Avila: “This is Jenin Ahman, an American of Palestinian descent. Born 42 years ago in suburban Chicago. Now worried everything she learned as an American about justice and civil rights collapsed along with New York’s Twin Towers.” Jenin Ahman: “All of a sudden, this, you know, the regular Constitution doesn’t apply to Muslims somehow.”
Without noting how the terrorists of 9/11 did meet in mosques to plan their deadly strategy, Avila relayed: “By evening September 11th, many of this country’s 1200 mosques were suddenly targets of retaliation. Here where Jenin’s family worships, riot police were called in to protect Muslims. Jenin heard President Bush tell America the attackers were not true followers of Islam. And right away, she knew that peaceful American Muslims needed to reinforce that message by connecting to the mainstream -- leave the cocoon, as she calls it, practicing Islam in isolation, her children in Islamic school, and tell her non-Muslim neighbors of the innocence of her religion.” Ahman: “I felt like really that Islam was taken hostage with, and hijacked along with those planes.” Avila: “Jenin found a receptive audience in a completely different culture -- the Catholic church in an adjacent suburb. Five Muslim women meeting monthly with five Catholic women...Elaine Rand says she had no Muslim friends before 9/11. Now she has five -- and new wisdom.” Elaine Rand: “Get to know a person always before judging them as a group, to know what the Islam religion is about, and to accept Muslim people.” Avila concluded: “Lessons millions of innocent Muslims pray their fellow Americans learn before that next knock on the door.”
Earlier, NBC offered a more positive assessment of how Arabs and Muslims have been treated in the U.S. as Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria assured Katie Couric on Today that “mostly I’ve had experiences that have been wonderful, that is people have been, have been nice, generous.”
MRC analyst Geoffrey Dickens caught this exchange on Wednesday’s expanded Today:
Couric: “In closing I wanted to ask you about life as a Muslim here in the United States. You have a PhD, you were editor of Foreign Affairs when you were just a pup, 28 years-old. You are a complete, brilliant guy, wonderful writer. And yet you’ve had some experiences here in this country in the aftermath of September 11th, haven’t you?” Zakaria: “Well mostly I’ve had experiences that have been wonderful, that is people have been, have been nice, generous. I’ve had a lot of searches at airports. You know people who say that young, young swarthy men aren’t being checked, you know, trust me, we’re being checked a lot. I don’t really mind it as long as the system is intelligent. As long as there is some, some purpose to it. Where I, you have the feeling that the government doesn’t have a good feel for how it should go about these things. But on the whole I’ve gotta say post-September 11th, for in the year that I’ve been here it’s made me all the more grateful to be an American citizen.”
THESE ARE THE VICTIMS, murdered by Islamic Arabs:
Inasmuch as the "end goal" of many Muslims is to supplant said Constitution with that sytem of codified religious and gender bigotry known colloquially as "Sharia law" (a misnomer if ever I heard one, in that there is no equality under the "law"), I fail to see what the gripe is here...
the infowarrior
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