Free Republic

Chicago, Illinois / Arab writer and Chicago resident Aladdin Elaasar is overwhelmed by the hateful responses his article on the third anniversary of 9/11 generated in the US. Mr. Elaasar wrote an article titled “Let’s not let fear cripple us” expressing the viewpoint of the Arab and Muslim communities in the US. The article was written for the Progressive Media project and distributed by the Knight Ridder/ Tribune Information Services. The article was published by six newspapers around the US and was posted online by the Free Republic, a self-declared conservative republican activism group in the US. Members of the...

The anniversary of Sept. 11 will be painful for Arab and Muslim-Americans - as it will be for all Americans. After the terrorist strikes, Arab and Muslim-Americans became targets for random hate and violence. They became the latest ethnic group to be singled out in an American time of crisis. In the 1850s, Irish immigrants were persecuted. During World War I, German immigrants were suspect. During World War II, Americans of Japanese backgrounds bore the brunt of that conflict. America's legacy of nativism - the intense opposition to an internal minority because of its supposed foreign connections - reared its...