Posted on 11/04/2001 10:18:19 PM PST by hawaiian
The following letter was published in the Gazette, Hyattsville, MD, October 11, 2001, on the Community Forum page.
"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 anymore. I notice you, and it worries me.
"I notice you because I can't help it anymore. People from your homelands, and 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 nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.
On Sept. 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 have 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 differentiate between you. 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, ... [edited for brevity]... while they plot the next attack that will slaughter those very same good neighbors and children? The answer to my own questions that it is past the time for me to try to determine this. The events of Sept. 11th changed the answer. It is time for every Arab-Muslim in this country to determine it for me.
I want to know, I demand to know, if you love America. Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation that He will protect and prosper it? 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? Are you willing to preserve this freedom with the spilling of your own blood? Do you love America? And 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 religion to protect the United States of America. Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the "innocent" (I worry who you regard as "innocent") and condemnation of "unprovoked" attacks (I worry what is "unprovoked" to you.) I am not interested in any more sympathy; I am interested only in action. What will you do for America-- the country -- at this time of crisis, at this time of war?
I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting "Allah Bless America." I want to see Arab-Muslim young men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money and 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. Deliver them up, 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 reprisal.
The few Arab-Muslim representatives that have appeared on the media are defensive and equivocating. They seem more concerned with making sure the U.S. prove who is responsible before they act, and protecting their own people from any violence directed toward them, here in the U.S. and abroad.
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.
Because even if the teachings in the Koran are good and pure and true, it matters little if large numbers of current Islamic practitioners interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion.
I want to know where every Arab-Muslim in this country stands and I think it is within 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.
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."
"Those who trade liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety".
redrock
This letter was published nearly a year ago, just one month after the tragedy of 9/11/01. One would think that, even though only a fraction of a percent of the millions of Muslim-Americans probably read this letter, what the writer wrote might have occurred to the rest of them -- and that those who do not condone the 9/11/01 abominations would stand up and declare their love of this country.
It’s not happening among the Muslim community.
I know that if members of my family, or members of an organization to which I claim allegiance, perpetrated such an evil upon innocent people, I would be doing all within my power to tell the survivors that the evil ones do not represent me – that they were somehow ‘bad apples.’
It’s not happening among the Muslim community.
Sometimes silence sends the strongest of messages.
It appears that the large majority of Muslims in this country are feeding off (as in being educated by, and sharing in the prosperity of …. ) a system that they either (1) despise, or (2) feel nothing more than apathy toward.
Yet, at the same time, the author of this letter asks American Muslims:
Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation that He will protect and prosper it? 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? Are you willing to preserve this freedom with the spilling of your own blood? Do you love America?
I would ask the author of this letter why he believes we should expect answers in the affirmative to the above questions from Muslim-Americans, when ‘native’-Americans (as in those of us whose families have been here for generations) probably wouldn’t even answer half of them affirmatively either.
I would dare to guess that the average ‘native’-American would answer the above questions something like:
Yeah
No
When I take the time to think about it (every few years)
You’re being melodramatic
Hell no!
I pay my taxes, don’t I?
The author of this letter requests that 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.
It’s not going to happen among the Muslim community. There is no chapter, and no verse within it, from the Koran that teaches tolerance and peace and love for all people.
Instead (just a small sampling) ….
chapter 4, verse 56: [As for] those who disbelieve in our communications, we shall make them enter fire; so oft as their skins are thoroughly burned. We will change them for other skins, that they may taste the chastisement; surely Allah is mighty, wise.
chapter 4, verse 89: They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.
chapter 9, verses 5-6: Kill those who join other gods with God wherever you may find them.
chapter 9, verse 12: When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
chapter 9, verses 39-42: Say to the Infidels: if they desist from their unbelief, what is now past shall be forgiven; but if they return to it, they have already before them the doom of the ancients! Fight then against them till strife be at an end, and the religion be all of it God's.
chapter 22, verse 19: These are two adversaries who dispute about their Lord; then (as to) those who disbelieve, for them are cut out garments of fire, boiling water shall be poured over their heads.
The best estimates of the Muslim population of the United States place the figure somewhere between two and three million, or roughly one percent of our population. Nineteen Muslims were responsible for the worst terrorist attack ever to occur on American soil. Where are the remaining two million-plus of them? Where is their repudiation of their ‘brothers’? It will not be forthcoming, because any true Muslim embraces the Koran as his holy book, and the Koran’s message is one of intolerance and the proselytizing of a religion through violence against those who reject its teachings.
Call me a bigot. I prefer to consider myself a realist. There’s a world of difference.
On September 12th, my wife saw him...wearing a cowboy hat and boots, and carrying an American flag. He's kept that up, too. Good for him!
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