The Terror faced by Arabs and Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11

There is so much out there about 9/11, cruise the web and you bump into it all over the place.This is a book review I happened upon, its a moving story of one  mans memories of that awful day.

http://www.alternet.org/world/148115/

The Terror Faced by Arabs and Muslims in the Aftermath of 9/11
In an excerpt from

"A Country Called Amreeka," 

by Alia Malek.

a priest takes heart when a piece of history emerges from the rubble. 
 

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Monsignor Ignace Sadek was where he always was on Tuesday mornings: in the rectory of Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Cathedral in Brooklyn, New York. He was in his quiet office buried within the recesses of the church, preparing his homily for the midday mass.
Around 10:00 a.m., he decided to check on the young gardener tending to the grounds that surrounded Our Lady of Lebanon on its shaded block at the corner of Henry and Remsen Streets in Brooklyn Heights, separated from Manhattan by the East River. As he came out into the daylight, he noticed that the sky had changed -- no longer was it the clear blue day that he remembered; instead, it had become clouded by debris.
In front of the church he bumped into a parishioner, a gentleman his age from Lebanon, who anxiously asked him in Arabic, “Did you not hear? Are you a stranger to Jerusalem?”
Ignace explained he had been at work in his office, away from the radio and television.
“Two airplanes have hit the Twin Towers, and they are falling down!” the parishioner exclaimed.
Ignace had been to the towers just two weeks before, when his friend, a bishop, had come to visit him. He often took visitors to the Twin Towers for their views, so high in the heavens that people below were rendered the size of ants. They had waited nearly two hours on line to ascend to the top.
Ignace began to shake.
What can I do? he asked himself. I am a priest, I have to do something!
His seventy-one-year-old legs began to move quickly, and he almost ran toward the Promenade, a scenic overlook on the East River with views of lower Manhattan and its skyline dominated by the Twin Towers. When Ignace arrived, he could not see a thing. He could not see whether the towers had truly fallen or whether they were hidden behind the curtain created by the wind chasing debris across the river.
As he stood on the edge of Brooklyn, the waters of the East River obscured but restless below him, the black suit he had worn since he was twenty and his own signature black beret which he had worn since he was twenty-five turned the color of the white collar he wore around his neck.
***
In the airplanes, in the field in Pennsylvania, in the towers, Our Lady of Lebanon in Brooklyn lost eight souls on September 11, 2001. They were Robert Dirani, Catherine Gorayb, Peter Hashim, Mark Hindy, Walid Iskandar, Jude Moussa, Jude Safi, and Jacqueline Sayegh.
Ignace presided over no funerals for the eight that died because there were no bodies to be buried. Instead he said a memorial service for those whose families requested it.
Some of the victims were part of the larger community of the church; others, Ignace knew quite well personally.
He had baptized Catherine’s infant daughter just two Sundays before. During the baptism, he had noticed that Catherine had cried through the entire ceremony. He had wondered why then, and after she died, he said to himself that she must have been touched by a prophecy that she would soon lose sight of her daughter.
Jude had been raised in the Brooklyn church. Though his mother was Druze, he was a dedicated and joyful member of the congregation, who always had a hug and a kiss to share.
And Jacqueline had contacted him Friday evening just before that horrible Tuesday, telling Ignace that she was engaged! She had asked him to prepare a copy of her baptismal certificate, which was required so that she could marry her fiancé in his church. She had told Ignace that she would come by on Monday morning to pick up the paper; when she didn’t, he had told himself she would be by on Tuesday. Now, he didn’t know what to do with the envelope, so he left it where it had been waiting for her, in the sacristy where the priests vest.
Just beyond the church’s doors, all of America was reeling as well, and some New Yorkers sought scapegoats among themselves in Brooklyn. On the other side of Atlantic Avenue, the executive director of the Arab American Family Support Center had quickly yanked the group’s name off the front door right after the attacks; she had bolted all the doors that led to her office, barricading herself inside with a legal pad and telephone. She fielded two sorts of calls -- threats of violence from outside the community and desperate pleas for help from within.
At the Dawood Mosque on Atlantic Avenue, people spat and cursed at members. The Brooklyn Islamic Center was the target of a firebombing attempt. Someone hurled a Molotov cocktail at a mosque in Bensonhurst, while pork chops were flung over the back fence of the Al-Noor Muslim School in Sunset Park. In Park Slope, a motorist blocked the path of a cab driver, yelling “Get out of the car, Arab,” pounding on the hood as he shouted, “You are going to die, you Muslim.”
And a Bangladeshi mail sorter coming home to Brooklyn on the subway was knocked to the train floor and kicked and punched repeatedly by anonymous men.
New York police officers were soon standing sentry outside many of the city’s mosques, and Atlantic Avenue and Steinway Street in Astoria -- a Queens neighborhood also home to many Arab Americans -- were both lined with police. A man stood outside a Steinway Street mosque holding a homemade placard that read “get out of our country.”
Outside New York, the trauma played out similarly. A mosque in suburban Dallas had its windows shattered by gunshots; in San Francisco, a mosque found on its doorsteps a bag of what appeared to be blood; in Virginia, a vandal threw two bricks through the windows of an Islamic bookstore with threatening notes attached; and in Chicago, a mob of hundreds set upon a mosque shouting “Kill the Arabs,” while an Assyrian church on the north side and an Arab community center on the southwest side were damaged by arson. Women reported having their head scarves yanked off or being spit at, businesses were vandalized, employees were suddenly fired or demoted, and children were bullied by classmates and teachers alike.
In some cases, individual Arab and Muslim Americans responded by taking off their hijabs, keeping the kids home from school, displaying the American flag everywhere, and changing their names to something a little less “foreign.” Institutionally, every major Arab and Muslim organization immediately denounced the attacks; national leaders who had gathered in D.C. to prepare for a meeting with President Bush the afternoon of September 11 refocused their efforts on releasing such a statement the same day. Other Americans -- neighbors, friends, colleagues, classmates, lovers -- reached out in solidarity.
The federal government quickly released statements warning that any violence or discrimination against Arab or Muslim Americans or anyone perceived to be so were wrong, un-American, and unlawful. Within one week, nearly a thousand incidents of hate and bias were reported; several Sikhs -- non-Arab and non-Muslim South Asians who wear turbans -- were murdered or attacked. Investigations and prosecutions quickly followed.
But while one government hand had given, another was taking. Immediately following the attacks, over 1,200 resident aliens in the United States from Arab and Muslim countries who were not named or charged with crimes disappeared without notice to anyone into undisclosed detention centers.
Suggestions were made that camps be established for U.S. citizens from the Arab- and Muslim-American communities, while the denaturalization of naturalized citizens from these groups was also considered.
Arab and Muslim Americans and legal residents were pulled off planes in front of other passengers and subjected to interrogation; some were allowed to board eventually, many weren’t. Polls in September found that a majority of Americans favored the profiling of Arabs, including those who were American citizens, and subjecting them to special security checks before boarding planes.
The attorney general -- who earlier in the fall had attended a Ramadan Iftar -- ordered the “voluntary” interviewing of 5,000 legal residents from Arab and Muslim countries and singled out for arrest another 5,000 Arab and Muslim immigrants who did not leave the country after being ordered deported, though they represented only a fraction of the 320,000 people of all backgrounds who violated deportation orders. The issuing of visas to people coming to America for business, school, and tourism ground to a halt.
Fearing that harm could come to his parishioners, Ignace decided to hang the American flag outside Our Lady of Lebanon. He also cautioned his flock not to speak Arabic audibly outside the safety of the church.
***
In early 2002, Ignace received a call from Bovis Lend Lease, the construction company that was clearing the World Trade Center site. They had been told by the chaplain of St. Peter’s Catholic Church, near the foot of the towers, to contact him. Workers had come across something in the wreckage of stone and steel that might interest him.
As soon as Ignace fully grasped the meaning of the chaplain’s words, he responded, “I’m leaving immediately!”
The destruction of the towers had unearthed the cornerstone of St. Joseph’s Maronite Church, the original parish from whose rib Our Lady of Lebanon had been founded.
With the help of four men, Ignace transported the 400-pound cornerstone across the East River to his church in Brooklyn, making the same journey most of the inhabitants of Little Syria had made a hundred years before.
The bruised cornerstone was placed in the church’s vestibule on a marble pedestal made by a parish member. A survivor of the attacks, its engraved testament reads for anyone to see: SANCTI JOSEPHI, ECCLESIA MARONITA, ROMANA CATHOLICA.
*****************************************************

Alia Malek has written for Salon, The Columbia Journalism Review, and The New York Times. She is currently editing the next volume in the Voice of Witness series, a collection of first person oral histories from communities impacted by post 9/11 backlash.

Her website is

http://aliamalek.com.