Anti-Arab Backlash Grows

In America's zeal to find and punish those responsible for the terrorist attacks of September 11, the focus on Arab and Muslim suspects may be causing a wave of jingoism and scapegoating. Threats and hate speech have been directed against Arab Americans, transmitted in anonymous phone calls, email messages and websites.

In one case, gunshots were fired into the windows of an Islamic center that includes a mosque and a school in Richardson, Texas, a Dallas suburb. Attacks like this have put many Arab Americans on alert.

"We brought the police in today and we also hired private security," James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington-based political and policy organization, told Reuters. "Our hope, of course, is that it doesn't get worse, but we just don't know."

Sam Hamod, President of the American Islamic Institute, said that threats have been made to mosques in Ohio, San Diego and Detroit, but he said that as far as he knows no one from the Arab and Islamic communities has suffered bodily harm.

"The vast majority of the American people have been sane," said Hamod. "But there is always a crackpot fringe in every society and in every ethnic and religious group."

In addition to Americans of Arab descent, the scapegoating has targeted Islam as a religion. Muslim leaders in some areas have cautioned congregants who wear traditional Islamic clothing -- such as veils on women -- to stay at home, rather than face possible misplaced retaliation.

And some fear that the legitimate search for the culprits could become a witch-hunt in which everyone's civil liberties are trampled. "The biggest danger is that a state goes beyond the limit of acceptable precautions in the name of security, and tries to safeguard itself by scrapping the very freedoms and principles it's trying to defend in the name of counter-terrorism," Peter Chalk, a Rand analyst who specializes in domestic terrorism, told the San Jose Mercury-News. "Plenty of states have done that."

Indeed, reports Wednesday of a man being detained on a train outside Boston developed into a story of false identification - the man, a Sikh, was seen as "suspicious" for wearing a turban, traditional for men in his culture. Many expect such profiling to increase in the wake of Tuesday's events.

For Hamod, a man of Lebanese descent and a practicing Muslim, the threats, accusations and blame being pointed at American Muslims and Arabs is sad and misplaced. Born and raised in Gary, Indiana, Hamod taught American history at Howard University in Washington, DC, for many years. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon violated his freedom as an American, he says, adding that true Muslims would never have committed such a devastating crime.

"If someone who calls themselves Muslim did this maniacal deed, they are not behaving like Muslims," said Hamod. "They are behaving like animals."

Hamod goes on to say he wants the culprits found and punished quickly - but he doesn't want his neighbors to view him as the enemy because of his religious and ethnic heritage.

"I am just as American as the next person, because I was born here just like anyone else," said Hamod. "I have probably educated some of their children in universities where I was a professor. Anyone who discriminates against someone else because of their ethnic background, race or religion is anti-American, because we are a nation of immigrants."

While America may be a nation of immigrants, last week's horrific events have provided an excuse for many Americans to express hatred toward Arabs and Muslims. In the days following the attacks, bomb threats shut down several Arab American charter schools in the Detroit area, home to one of the largest Arab American communities in the nation. On Wednesday night, 300 people - some carrying American flags - were stopped by police in the Chicago suburb of Bridgeview, Illinois, after trying to march to a mosque.