Posted on 09/13/2001 8:26:11 AM PDT by oxi-nato
A perhaps predictable backlash hit several communities as federal officials said there was mounting evidence that radical Muslims planned and carried out the terror attacks in New York and Washington. Police turned back 300 marchers -- some waving American flags and shouting "USA! USA!" -- as they tried to march on a mosque in this southwest Chicago suburb late Wednesday.
Three demonstrators were arrested, said Bridgeview Police Chief Charles Chigas. There were no injuries and demonstrators were kept blocks from the closed Muslim worship place. "I'm proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have," said 19-year-old Colin Zaremba who marched with the group from Oak Lawn. Federal authorities said they had identified more than a dozen hijackers of Middle Eastern descent in Tuesday's attacks and gathered evidence linking them to Saudi-born terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and other terrorist networks. In all, perhaps 50 people were involved in the plot, government officials said.
In Chicago, a Molotov cocktail was tossed Wednesday at an Arab-American community center. No one was injured, and there was little damage. "The terrorists who committed these horrible acts would like nothing better than to see us tear at the fiber of our democracy and to trample on the rights of other Americans," Gov. George Ryan said.
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. The man, Adam Lang, then followed the woman into a store and threatened to kill her for "destroying my country."
In Gary, Ind., a man in a ski mask fired a high-powered assault rifle at the gas station where Hassan Awdah, a U.S. citizen born in Yemen, was working, the Gary Post Tribune reported. Gary Police are investigating it as a hate crime. "I lived in the Middle East for most of my life and have never seen anything like this," Awdah said.
In Australia, a school bus carrying Muslim children was stoned 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. Queensland state Islamic Council Chairman Sultan Deen said stones and bottles damaged the bus Wednesday in Brisbane. Nobody was injured.
Tamara Alfson, an American working at the Kuwait Embassy in Washington, D.C., spent Wednesday counseling frightened Kuwaiti students attending schools across the United States. "Some of them have already been harassed. People have been quite awful to them," said Alfson, an academic adviser to roughly 150 students.
In a show of patriotism, 45 people from Tampa, Fla.'s Islamic community registered with blood services to donate Wednesday and 30 members of the Muslim Students Association at the University of South Florida signed up. "You feel the pain twice: Once because of what has happened and once because of the looks you get," said Sami Al-Arian, an engineering teacher at the University of South Florida.
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. "We have some recordings in our tapes that say, 'We hate you so-and-so Muslims and we hope you die,"' Nahidian said.
A mosque in Lynnwood, Wash., was vandalized and no one showed up for afternoon prayers at the Islamic Center of Spokane. "We must not hurt or terrorize Americans of Arab descent or Islamic faith," Gov. Gary Locke said Wednesday during a memorial service at the Puyallup Fair. Issam Koussan told the Detroit News he bought large U.S. flags to fly in front of his home and outside his supermarket after men in a car pulled into his parking lot and yelled threats and racial slurs at his customers. "I just feel I needed to show my loyalty to this country," he said.
You should be more careful with your comments, lest someone think you are a bigot.
Impressive.
How ever did you resist the urge to laud these folks as you posted the thread?
Very impressive!
You obviously couldn't resist the urge to use an excerpt and insult to tar someone. You are no better than Colin Zaremba!
"I'm proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have," said 19-year-old Colin Zaremba...
Organize a fund drive for the families and children of the firefighters and police who aren't coming home in New York City or the people who were on the planes, or working in the offices in New York and Washington. Get these people involved in that. Channel their energy into something constructive.
We are not the same as the people who did this. There will be a time, and a place. Now is not the time, the streets are not the place.
In God We Trust.....Semper Fi
Prove that they are Americans first, and Muslims second. Otherwise, their cries of victimhood will fall on deaf ears.
Americans are the most gracious, generous, and giving people in the world. They have defended the freedom of democracies in every world war, then paid to rebuild the countries they defeated. We even defend the freedom of naysayers to speak their mind, even after thousands of us are butchered by murdurous scumbags. That is different than any other country in the world, and THANK GOD for it.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
It's not just Muslims. Sikhs, who have beards and wear turbans, are also being attacked. With all these attacks on Sikhs and Muslims, we're turning into India.
We must have more exposure of these acts of violence instead of more talking heads telling us that bin Laden is a bad guy.
Garbage. We helped the Afghanistan nation by providing support when they were occupied by the soviets. And this is how they repay us. With a knife in the back. Our support of Israel is immaterial to these bastards. If we didn't support Israel, had we not made any attacks on Middle Eastern nation, this still would have happened.
I'll keep that in mind when some cretin hijacks a school bus and drives it into your living room.
Those of the arab descent need to realize that they WILL be looked at with suspicion. How many of the terrorists mingled in their local society, acting as harmless friends, being treated as harmless friends, and then turned around and committed such atrocities?
Do you need more examples (and there are dozens) to know that the militant Muslims only care about conversion or destruction?
Would you like an accounting of the injured as well, before you realize that jihadists are going after our innocent brethren?
May we peruse the Koran and find the citations that instruct good little Muslims to lie, cheat, steal, and defile non-believers.
Shall we check out a few hundred tv shots of Palestinians celebrating our dead, burning our flag, chanting "Death to USA", and calling us the "Great Satan" before it rings a bell that this is WAR, and their brethren are just as 'fair game' as ours?
It's awfully sweet of you to only want the guilty to be punished. Just know that those thousands of Muslims who were dancing in the streets, or in their hearts, as we mourned our dead, will be happy to know that you won't be putting up much of a fuss about them supporting those who murdered your family.
It's WAR, they chose sides, they attacked first, they've been attacking for years, they almost always target civilians... and you worry about their friends getting rocks thrown at them?!?!?
Whose side are you on?
It is quite obvious that the some in the muslim-American community have harbored and assisted the terrorists. As non-hyphenated Americans, how do we coexist with these people knowing that fact? Do we just ignore the fact that islam and American culture are opposite and unequal? Hyphenated Americans exist only because something in their culture / religion impinges on American fundamentals and it is they who seek our tolerance. I now say we should no longer be tolerant to those who would use our society against us.
This guy is an idiot.
There are reasonable precautions about mid-easterners on visa's or recently emigrated, and then there's this numbnutz.
I agree with your sentiments, and you calls for restraint, and your strong and consistent devotion to Justice...
but this isn't the time or the place.
This is WAR.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.