9/11 and 9 Years Later: Is Anti-Muslim Anger Higher Today?

September 13th, 2010   (86 views )

NEW YORK (AP) - Nine years of denouncing terrorism, of praying
side-by-side with Jews and Christians, of insisting "I'm American,
too." None of it could stop a season of hate against Muslims that
made for an especially fraught Sept. 11. Now, Muslims are asking
why their efforts to be accepted in the United States have been so
easily thwarted.
"We have nothing to apologize for, we have nothing to fear, we
have nothing to be ashamed of, we have nothing that we're guilty of
- but we need to be out there and we need to express this," said
Imam Mohammed Ibn Faqih in a sermon at the Islamic Institute of
Orange County in Anaheim, Calif., the day before the 9/11
anniversary.
There is no simple way for American Muslims to move forward.
Images of violence overseas in the name of Islam have come to
define the faith for many non-Muslims at home. The U.S. remains at
war in Afghanistan, and although America has formally declared an
end to its combat operations in Iraq, U.S. troops there continue to
fight alongside Iraqi forces.
Within the U.S., domestic terror has become a greater threat,
while ignorance about what Islam teaches is widespread. More than
half of respondents in a recent poll by the Pew Forum for Religion
& Public Life said they knew little or nothing about the Muslim
faith.
Some U.S. Muslims say their national organizations share the
blame, for answering intricate questions about Islam with
platitudes, and failing to fully examine the potential for
extremism within their communities. Muslim leaders often respond
when terrorists strike by saying Islam is a "religion of peace"
that has no role in the violence instead of confronting the
legitimate concerns of other Americans, these Muslim critics say.
"There's a quaintness and naivete or outright whitewashing of
some very complex issues," said Saeed Khan, who teaches at Wayne
State University in Detroit. "This has caused a lot of frustration
for a lot of Muslim Americans, myself included."
The summer frenzy about Islam in America has revolved around
Park51, a community center and mosque planned two blocks from New
York's ground zero. Opponents and supporters of the center
converged on the area for protests and counter-protests Saturday
after the morning memorial ceremony at the World Trade Center site.
In recent months, mosques in Tennessee, California, New York and
elsewhere have been shot at and vandalized. Threatening messages
were left at one mosque. A Florida pastor caused a global uproar
with his ultimately unfulfilled threat to make a bonfire of Qurans
on Sept. 11.
Many Jewish, Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, evangelical,
atheist and other groups have responded with an outpouring of
support for Muslims, but suspicion remains high among many
Americans.
Islamic centers have become a focus of non-Muslim fears. Federal
authorities have placed informants in mosques, saying doing so is a
critical counterterrorism tool. Muslim groups have separately
created national campaigns encouraging congregations to monitor for
any sign of radicalization, but they have also complained bitterly
about the use of informants, worried the innocent will be caught up
in the net police have set for criminals.

Comments, Pingbacks:

Comment from: Mike G [Visitor] Email
I asked a similar question. Why does fear and anger toward Islamic extremists seem to be even higher now then before? The logical reason has to be primarily due to this Administration appeasing and apologizing for us and our freedoms and beliefs, so as not to offend Muslims. By acting this way and by the Imam indicating that moving the Mosque could “create anger in the Muslim world” gives people the impression that if a bad element were to infiltrate the good Muslims, especially in this country, then are leaders would fail to respond or act decisively against it. This is creating fear, tension and anger by many.
PermalinkPermalink 09/13/10 @ 15:09
Comment from: Ben [Visitor] Email
When people feel no qualms about generalizing against all Muslims instead of taking the time to differentiate between the terrorists and the majority of Muslims... and derogatory terms being used against Muslims get more frequent, and more severe, then absolutely.

[All of which is going on]
PermalinkPermalink 09/13/10 @ 18:02
Comment from: B.B.T. [Visitor] Email
Here's a question: Nine years after attacking America and killing over 3000 people,..do muslims hate us any less?

You liberals are a joke. You cry about conservative Christianity, but you pretend to love muslims??!! Even the moderate muslims treat their women like dirt.

I wonder how you'd feel living under sharia law, barefoot, veiled and in the kitchen.
PermalinkPermalink 09/13/10 @ 18:16
Comment from: Big Bob [Visitor]
They've had 9 years to show that islam is a religion of peace and have failed miserably. Next question.
PermalinkPermalink 09/13/10 @ 18:33
Comment from: Joe [Visitor] Email
You must understand that Islam is not a religion. It is a political system created by an illiterate warlord for the sole purpose of conquering the world and coverting everyone to his way of thinking. I lose my patience with all the liberals who speak about Islam as a religion of peace. IT IS NOT! What people need to do is read the Koran before they formulate opinions. One an follow Mohammed's teachings as they progressed from peace and tolerance with Jews and Christians, to later revelations that teach violence and subugation against Jews and Christians. The so-called fanatics today are merely following the more violent teachings in the Koran.
Do you know that the Koran contradicts itself often. And the way believers are to interpret these contradictions is to abrogate the old and replace them with the newer teachings. In others words, Allah can change his mind whenever he chooses.
There is real danger in this world today because of Islam. The objective of Islam is to conquer the world, using violence if necessary. Do you know of any other religion that takes this stance. And please do not bring up the Crusades. These wars were fought to defend the Middle East from Islam. This area of the world was originally Jewish and Christian. Muslims invaded these lands and began to rob and murder pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. It was in response to these acts that the Crusades began.

People today are so ignorant to history and they have no idea of what they are talking about. Study Mohammed, th eKoran and the hadiths of Mohammed. I would then be interested in hearing your opinion about the most anti-world, intolerant religion on earth.
PermalinkPermalink 09/13/10 @ 18:42
Spitting on the Lessons of 9/11:

September 13, 2010

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, practically every American understood and agreed with a powerful two-word sentiment that summed up the nation’s attitude during those traumatic days: “never forget.” Nine years later, it’s clear that great swathes of the populace have indeed forgotten and the leftist media’s coverage of the anniversary this weekend was symptomatic of the Left’s selective memory when it comes to Islamic terrorism. Oh sure, they remembered the victims of al-Qaeda’s barbarous attacks who fell in New York, Washington and Shanksville, but that’s the easy part. There’s nothing controversial or dangerous about mourning the murdered. It’s quite another thing to point out that the murderous ideology that put thousands of Americans in their graves nine years ago is as potent, as dangerous and as evil a force today as it was on that fateful fall morning in 2001. Yet, from the mainstream media’s coverage through President Obama’s remarks, leftists used the 9th anniversary of the attacks as another excuse to try to conceal Islam’s sharp talons beneath cloaks of respectability and even impotence.

Speaking at the Pentagon on Saturday [1], the president called the Muslim fundamentalists who carried out the attacks nine years ago “a sorry band of men” who had perverted their religion. “We will not give in to their hatred,” Obama said. “As Americans, we will not or ever be at war with Islam.” He called for tolerance of Muslims, seemingly alluding in part to the controversies surrounding the proposed Ground Zero mosque and Florida pastor Terry Jones’ aborted plans to burn copies of the Qur’an. He said that only through tolerance can we keep alive the legacy of the men and women who fell on 9/11.

The speech thus essentially became another other opportunity for Obama to soothe Muslim leaders across the globe, although why any Muslim should need reassurances about this administration’s conciliatory attitude towards the “religion of peace” is anyone’s guess. Citizens of this county, on the other hand, could be forgiven for taking another sort of message away after listening to the president’s remarks. The Obama administration will bend itself into rhetorical knots in order to separate the violent actions of individual Muslims from the political/religious ideology that motivates them. Yet Americans are supposed to assume responsibility for the actions of any fellow citizen that might somehow offend Muslims. In other words, according to the leader of the free world, acts of terrorism committed in the name of Islam are mere anomalies that should in no way reflect upon Islam, but it’s our responsibility if hyper-sensitive Muslims are whipped into a frenzy by the mere prospect of an obscure preacher in Florida [2] burning a few books.

But why worry about violent Islam at all any longer? Al-Qaeda and terrorist threats have been vastly overblown, right? That’s the remarkable view that Fareed Zakaria expressed in Newsweek in a bizarre September 4 [3] column in which he asserted: “It’s clear we overreacted to 9/11.” Zakaria took his first steps into fantasyland with this lead paragraph:

“Nine years after 9/11, can anyone doubt that Al Qaeda is simply not that deadly a threat? Since that gruesome day in 2001, once governments everywhere began serious countermeasures, Osama bin Laden’s terror network has been unable to launch a single major attack on high-value targets in the United States and Europe. While it has inspired a few much smaller attacks by local jihadis, it has been unable to execute a single one itself. Today, Al Qaeda’s best hope is to find a troubled young man who has been radicalized over the Internet, and teach him to stuff his underwear with explosives.”

It’s apparent Mr. Zakaria doesn’t share the same understanding of the world “threat” with the rest of us. He theorizes that we shouldn’t worry about Islamic terrorists because they haven’t been as successful in racking up western body counts over the past few years, so why all the fuss? The idea that one of the big reasons we have been able to avoid another 9/11 is that America’s (whisper: George W. Bush’s) commitment to defending its borders have frustrated the fanatics doesn’t occur to Zakaria. Somehow, in his deluded world, the incompetence of the would-be Christmas day and Time Square bombers is proof that our enemies are no longer worth worrying about. Zakaria doesn’t seem at all concerned that we avoided mass murder by a hairs-breadth in each case and that such attacks clearly show that our enemies aren’t going away anytime soon.

This is what 9-11 has become to the Left: a day to try and reconcile with enemies who show no signs of caring to reconcile with us. It’s a perversion of a day during which we should remember not just those who lost their lives, but the reason those lives were snuffed out. If we are not, as President Obama declared, “at war with Islam” then we are surely at war with Islamic ideals and ambitions. We may debate how far-reaching those ideals and ambitions reach in the Muslim world and into the hearts of individual Muslims, but there should be no doubt that the violent Islamic ambitions contained in the Qur’an still resonate with enough Muslims so as to represent a grave threat to the western world.

Putting another twist on appeasement, the New York Times used the anniversary of the attacks to highlight the story [4] of Mrs. Hadidjatou Karamoko Traoré, a Muslim who immigrated to the United States from the Ivory Coast. Her husband was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center, one of approximately 60 Muslims who died during that attack, according to the Times. Her story, like that of all those who lost a loved one on 9/11 is heart-rendering of course, but the Times’ purpose was clearly not so much to profile Mrs. Traoré as it was to use her. “Mrs. Traoré is also frustrated and troubled, she said, that so many Americans find it impossible to separate the pious of her faith from its fanatics” the Times Sam Dolnick wrote. He goes on to quote the widow thus: “After 9/11, everything has changed,” she said. “At the beginning after 9/11, they were saying terrorists are all Islamic people. But terrorists and the religious people are different. God doesn’t say kill people.”

We should take Mrs. Traoré at her word and assume that she, like so many Muslims living peacefully in America, believe what she’s saying. But the Times, like President Obama, Newsweek and leftists everywhere need to consider that there is gulf between what a woman like this believes and what the Qur’an actually says. Jihadists don’t see themselves as fanatics, they believe themselves to be the pious, because they are adhering to the absolute, inviolate Will of Allah, as unerringly expressed in his book. And, quite clearly, Allah does indeed instruct the faithful to kill people in that book. That is indeed the root of the problem. It’s a problem we will never come to grips with until we all can face the fact the terrorists aren’t ignoring the teachings of their religion, they’re rather following them – to the letter.

PermalinkPermalink 09/13/10 @ 20:08
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