Muslim center here copes with increased Islam-bashing
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Imam Muhammad Musri, of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, peeks into the window at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla. on Wednesday. He later met with Terry Jones, pastor of the church, who is under pressure to drop his plan to burn copies of the Muslim holy book Saturday.
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Last week, the voice mail at the Muslim Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh in Monroeville yielded an unwelcome surprise: a threatening message from an identified caller.
"It was mostly derogatory slurs about the Muslim religion," said Safdar Khwaja, 57, of Murrysville, who said the mosque notified the police and the FBI about the calls -- the first they'd received since the days after Sept. 11, 2001.
While distressing, the calls were minor, he added, compared to the furor stirred up this week by Florida pastor Terry Jones' plan to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, which prompted condemnation Wednesday from the Vatican and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and, earlier on Tuesday, by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who called the action "disrespectful and disgraceful."
As the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center approaches, anti-Muslim rhetoric has been escalating to unusually high levels. There's the ongoing controversy about a Muslim community center near Ground Zero in New York, the stabbing of a Muslim cab driver in Manhattan, the attempted arson at a Tennessee mosque and an aborted mosque bombing in Jacksonville.
Websites such as Stop Islamization of America and Creeping Sharia only fuel the flames, and a Gallup Poll conducted late last year found 43 percent of Americans admit to feeling some prejudice toward followers of Islam -- more than twice the number who feel that way about Christians, Jews or Buddhists.
While hate-filled phone calls are about the worst acts being reported by Pittsburgh Muslims, there is also a sense of unease here that hasn't been present since the difficult days after 9/11, "when people were calling and yelling and screaming, 'your places are going to burn,' that sort of thing," Mr. Khwaja said.
"I'm not angry, but I'm frustrated and sad. We are creating a nation of know-nothings, people are trying to create artificial points of hate by feeding us false information about Islam. It's just wrong."
A perfect storm of factors have made this 9/11 anniversary a particularly tense one, he believes. The last day in Islam's Holy Month of Ramadan -- the most important holiday in the Islamic calendar -- ends Thursday, two days before the 9/11 anniversary, and Eid al-Fitr celebrations, to break the Ramadan fast, are to be held on Friday.
First Published September 9, 2010 12:00 am
