Oklahoma bombing and the brunt of racial abuse

Oklahoma bombing and the brunt of racial abuse

The Oklahoma City blast had nothing to do with the Mideast,
but American Moslems still bore the brunt of racial abuse. Farhan
Haq of Inter Press Service reports.

NEW YORK: When Dr. Mohammed T. Mehdi entered his office the
day after a federal building was bombed in Oklahoma City last
month, he found familiar hate calls.

Some 40 angry callers had left messages on the answering
machine of his office, the National Council on Islamic Affairs.

That was the day after the blast when the news media and
most U.S. officials still believed Moslem and Middle Eastern
groups were connected to the April 19 car bombing of the Alfred
Murrah Federal Building.

One day later, police named alleged members of the Michigan
Militia, a heavily-armed rightwing group, as the culprits in the
attack which killed more than 120 people.

"I hope the news media and the politicians recognize they have
to eat their words," Mehdi says now. "Their original, prejudicial
opinion of identifying any act of violence as the responsibility
of Islam is wrong."

Other Moslem leaders share Mehdi's mixture of relief at no
longer being accused, and anger at having been automatically
singled out in the first place.

"We're happy that some people have been caught and that they
weren't Moslems," says Ibrahim Hooper, director of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). "And we feel frustrated that
we had to defend ourselves when it wasn't even true."

"In dealing with the pain of Oklahoma, we have to deal with
other pain -- the harassment, hundreds of phone calls and other
threats against Moslems and Arabs," says Hamzi Meghrabi, chairman
of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

Claudette Schwiry of the Arab-American Institute puts it
simply: "This stereotyping and scapegoating really needs to stop.
We're grieving, the same as anyone else."

Hooper notes that Moslems throughout the United States were
harassed in the aftermath of the bombing which one retired
Oklahoma congressman, Dave McCurdy, immediately suggested might
be the work of the small Moslem student community in Oklahoma
City.

Moslem organizations from New York to Los Angeles reported
threatening phone calls, broken windows and anger directed at
anyone who looked Middle Eastern.

One Pakistani cab driver, Assad Siddiqui, was arrested by
Oklahoma police officers after he asked a policeman for direction
near the site of the blast. Immediately, three New York papers
trumpeted Siddiqui's connection to the "Islamic terrorist' attack
-- even though police released him hours later, saying he had
played no role in the bombing.

The irony of the hunt for Moslem or Mideast suspects is that
one of the heroes after the blast was in fact an Arab. Gary
Massad, a doctor who saved the life of a young woman trapped in
the rubble for a day by amputating her leg, is an Arab American.

CAIR, for its part, sent a relief delegation comprising
members of three major Moslem groups to Oklahoma immediately
after Friday prayers at the Dar al-Hijra mosque in northern
Virginia. But those stories of helpful Moslems were initially
obscured by the specter of Islamic militants stalking the
heartland of America -- even though President Bill Clinton
himself warned: "Let us not jump to conclusions ... this is not a
question of anybody's religion."

The media focus on Islam has been so strong, says researcher
Sam Husseini of the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting (FAIR), that the search for a Middle East connection
has continued even after the white supremacist link was found.
"The way they've acted, they're not saying, `This is the
evidence.' They still really want to pin this to the Middle
East," Husseini says.

Top U.S. newscasters took to the airwaves after the arrest of
Timothy McVeigh to decry the beating the Moslem image took in the
media. But, notes Husseini: "Who's been giving them that beating
in the first place?"

Mehdi agrees: "Their new code word is `Mideast-looking'."
Siddiqui was described in that manner prior to his brief
detention by the police.

Last December, New York police searched for a `Middle East-
looking' man, as well, after a firebomb exploded on a New York
subway, injuring dozens of people. But the suspect arrested by
police afterward was in fact an unemployed worker of Irish
descent, Edward O' Leary.

Mehdi contends that Moslems will still be assumed to be behind
attacks since the United States "is a racist, anti-Islamic
society". He adds: "Americans need a foreign villain. They have
found Islam as the new candidate."

For politicians like Representative Henry Hyde, chair of the
House Judiciary Committee, and commentators like filmmaker Jeff
Kamen, the image of Moslem terrorism was serious enough to prompt
calls for a crackdown on illegal immigration.

But as Husseini notes: "Who's (found to be) behind this? The
people who are most hawkish against immigrants." He adds that the
media has lingered so long over the prospect of Moslem terrorism
that they have ignored the dangers of the right-wing paramilitary
groups, believed to number as many as 10,000 across 40 states.

But those right-wing groups not only have been ignored by the
mainstream media, FAIR says, they have been featured approvingly
in right-wing radio talk shows where they can joke about shooting
the president or mimic rifle noises.

Husseini says, the U.S. media should learn from this crisis to
examine such groups more closely and, at the same time, focus on
the five million Moslems in the United States in contexts outside
of terrorism.

Mehdi adds that Moslems themselves must lead the process to
educate people against the myths about Islam. Says Mehdi: "By
now, my skin has become so thick that nothing hurts me. But if
hurting me educates Americans, it is worth it."

-- IPS