Crowd demonstrates at mosque as backlash continues against Arab-Americans, Muslims

AP Worldstream, Sept 13, 2001

MELANIE COFFEE; Associated Press Writer, BRIDGEVIEW, Illinois

Dozens of anti-Muslim attacks were reported throughout the United States in an ugly backlash to the terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Police turned back 300 marchers - some waving American flags and shouting "USA! USA!" - as they tried to march on a mosque in this southwest Chicago suburb late Wednesday.

Three demonstrators were arrested, said Bridgeview Police Chief Charles Chigas. There were no injuries and demonstrators were kept blocks from the closed Muslim worship place. "I'm proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have," said 19-year-old Colin Zaremba who marched with the group from Oak Lawn.

U.S. authorities say they have identified more than a dozen hijackers of Middle Eastern descent in Tuesday's attacks and gathered evidence linking them to Saudi-born terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and other terrorist networks. In all, perhaps 50 people were involved in the plot, government officials say.

In Chicago, a Molotov cocktail was tossed Wednesday at an Arab-American community center and a firebomb was hurled at a mosque in Montreal. No one was injured in the attacks.

"The terrorists who committed these horrible acts would like nothing better than to see us tear at the fiber of our democracy and to trample on the rights of other Americans," Gov. George Ryan said.

In Huntington, New York, a 75-year-old man who was drunk tried to run over a Pakistani woman in the parking lot of a shopping mall, police said. The man, Adam Lang, then followed the woman into a store and threatened to kill her for "destroying my country."

Tamara Alfson, an American working at the Kuwait Embassy in Washington, D.C., spent Wednesday counseling frightened Kuwaiti students attending schools across the United States.

"Some of them have already been harassed. People have been quite awful to them," said Alfson, an academic adviser to roughly 150 students.

In a show of patriotism, 45 people from Tampa, Florida's Islamic community registered with blood services to donate Wednesday and 30 members of the Muslim Students Association at the University of South Florida signed up.

"You feel the pain twice: Once because of what has happened and once because of the looks you get," said Sami Al-Arian, an engineering teacher at the University of South Florida.

Abu Nahidian, director of the Manassas Mosque in Virginia, said his congregation has been the target of insults and hate messages left on the office answering machine.

"We have some recordings in our tapes that say, 'We hate you so-and-so Muslims and we hope you die,"' Nahidian said.

A mosque in Lynnwood, Washington, was vandalized and no one showed up for afternoon prayers at the Islamic Center of Spokane.

"We must not hurt or terrorize Americans of Arab descent or Islamic faith," Gov. Gary Locke said Wednesday during a memorial service at the Puyallup Fair.

Several other incidents were reported in Canada, where five school children with Arabic-sounding names were assaulted in Oakville, Ontario.