Mosques in US seek protection

[LahoreEstate]

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama stressed on Saturday that people of all faiths, including Muslims, served the US military, as mosques across America sought police protection.

On Thursday, a Muslim psychiatrist in the US Army, Maj Nidal Malik Hasan, killed 13 and wounded 30 people at the Fort Hood military base. And on Saturday, the US media warned that the shootings could likely post the sternest test for US Muslims since the Sept 11 terrorist attacks.

Officials at the White House told reporters that the shootings had deeply troubled President Obama who had made repairing US relations with the Islamic world an important element of his foreign policy. US policy makers now fear that a possible public backlash against Muslims may further complicate an already difficult task.

In his weekly address on Saturday, President Obama focussed on an immediate concern: preventing religious tensions within the US armed forces, emphasising that the military employed people of all races and creeds.

‘They are Americans of every race, faith, and station. They are Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers,’ said Mr Obama as media reports indicated that US armed forces employed as many as 10,000 Muslims.

‘They are descendents of immigrants and immigrants themselves. They reflect the diversity that makes this America,’ the US president noted.

‘What they share is a patriotism like no other. What they share is a commitment to the country that has been tested and proved worthy.’

In Washington, Virginia, Maryland, Illinois, Indiana, North and South Carolinas, New York and in several other states, mosques asked police for extra patrols. Some made their own security arrangements.

‘I went for Juma prayers today and was shocked that the masjid doors were locked from the inside and they had a camera pointed at the door to monitor the visitors,’ a Los Angeles resident, Sabahat Tanvir, told Dawn.


At some places in California, authorities have already deployed police officers outside mosques as a precaution.

Congressman Andre Carson, one of two Muslims in the US Congress, warned Americans at a news conference in Washington not to focus on the gunman’s religion.

‘This is no way a reflection of Islam any more than Timothy McVeigh’s actions are a reflection of Christianity,’ said Carson, who supervised an anti-terrorism unit in Indiana’s Department of Homeland Security and comes from a family of Marines.

Yet Muslim organisations complained that they had received dozens of death threats and hate e-mails since Saturday.

‘We do fear a backlash every time an Arab or a Muslim is found involved in an incident like this,’ said Imam Mohammed Abdullahi, of the Muslim Community Centre in Silver Spring, Maryland. Major Hasan attended this mosque before moving to Fort Hood.

In his Friday sermon, Imam Abdullahi urged worshippers to tell their non-Muslim neighbours that what happened was the act of an individual, not of a community.

Yet Bruce Hoffman, professor of security studies at Georgetown University, saw a pattern behind such attacks. ‘I’m not saying it’s part of an organised campaign or a systematic strategy, but we’re seeing a sea change when we have once a month a plot that is related somehow to Afghanistan, Iraq, or what these people see is a war against Islam,’ he told the Washington Post. ‘It’s too easy to dismiss them as unstable individuals when they have expressed strong religious beliefs with politics.’

Robert Salaam, a blogger and former US Marine who converted to Islam shortly after 9/11, warned that one man’s actions would affect all Muslims.

‘The actions of this mad man cost us, the many Muslims who have served this country honourably over the years, so much,’ he wrote. ‘Already our military loyalties, our honour, and our integrity are being questioned.’

He noted that some non-Muslims still believed that ‘an entire religious community shares responsibility for the actions of one guy that we didn’t even know existed until Thursday.’

All major US Muslim organisations urged Americans Muslims to be vigilant, both at home and at mosques.

The Council on American Islamic Relations, the Muslim American Society, the Muslim Public Affairs Council-DC, the Islamic Society of North America Office for Interfaith and Community Alliances and the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council and many others denounced the shooting as ‘a barbaric act of violence’ and urged other Americans not to blame an entire religion for the actions of one individual.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn...tion-hs-08