dragging out the scapegoats

[David Morris]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,554464,00.html

No national pride inspired in US Muslims

New York's Muslims are scared and angry - and indisposed to side with their 
adoptive country over their religion. Michael Ellison reports

Wednesday September 19, 2001

Mohamed Aissaoui, a son of New York City, wants to be a politician when he 
grows up; whatever else he lacks, the rhetoric is there already.
"The only take you can have on it is as a Muslim," says the 14-year-old 
outside Al Qaraween Islamic bookstore on Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, several 
blocks of which is a heavily Islamic neighbourhood.

"You're Muslim first and American second. We can only do as our religion 
says: we should fight back."

The boy's father is Algerian, his mother Palestinian and he was born in the 
United States.

"For a long time in my country they've been killing innocent children and 
nothing happens," he says on the opposite side of the East River to where 
over 5,000 people were killed in Lower Manhattan by the World Trade Centre 
suicide pilots.

"Who? The Israelis and the United States. It's about time something 
happened."

He is talking in front of a sign, appended to the divide between the shop 
and the Majid Al-Farooq mosque, that says: "In the name of Allah, the most 
beneficent, the most merciful: Koran, chapter six, verse 151: 'And kill not 
life that Allah has made sacred.'"

The boy rolls up the sleeve of his grey sweatshirt and says:

"The Americans should know one thing. If these people took two years to 
prepare for this attack, they took two years to prepare for the defence.

"When people are fighting for the cause of Allah, they're not easily 
defeated. If they were doing it for a good cause, then God bless them."

>From: "Nabeela Sheikh" <nabeela at sprint.ca>
>
>speaking of paranoia:
>
>excerpted:
>last night, on Charley Rose, the ex-CIA station head in Pakistan ominously 
>warned that (I paraphrase): "we need to be careful about how we retailiate 
>because there are 7 million Muslims, 3 million of them Arab, right here in 
>the US - we don't want problems with them..."
>
>but then is it really only paranoia if one of the 3 million or 7 million 
>turns out to be a nutjob?

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