JOURNAL ENTRY
Bazzi, Mohamad
JOURNAL ENTRY Mohamad Bazzi The Arab Menace For years, I heard my relatives complain about the suspicious questions and endless searches they must endure when they travel. In the summer of 1991,...
...I should also have pointed out that I was only nine years old at the time...
...he asked...
...The few that did talked of being victimized and stereotyped...
...This was done with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible...
...They were simply asked the routine questions...
...It was a troubling scene...
...Hezbollah...
...In the summer of 1991, I experienced the humiliation firsthand...
...And the press did not besiege Hill's church, even though it could be argued that, like the Trade Center bombers, he was motivated by radical religious beliefs...
...The Irish Republican Army has used car bombs extensively in Northern Ireland and England...
...Outside the mosque, people leaving the Friday prayer sessions were besieged by reporters and television cameras...
...In the following weeks, the mosque was repeatedly vandalized...
...After my travel documents were approved, my luggage was checked by X-ray...
...The stereotypes perpetuated by the media also have more subtle effects than outright violence...
...They shape a social climate in which all Arabs and Muslims are treated as potential terrorists...
...Few in the media described Paul Hill, the anti-abortion activist convicted last year of killing a doctor in Florida, as a "militant Christian fundamentalist...
...During the Persian Gulf War, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee reported a drastic increase in hate crimes against Arab Americans nationwide...
...An Arab restaurant was burned down in Detroit and a bomb was found in a mosque in San Diego...
...I think the answer lies in the same Post editorial, which went on to say that the bombing "underscores a new reality: international terrorism has replaced the Soviet Union as the central threat to American security...
...According to the ADC, while only five bias incidents were reported for the first seven months of 1990, thirty-four such crimes were logged for the four months immediately following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August...
...Then, unlike everyone else's, it was thoroughly examined again, by hand...
...Arab Americans can tell you about the dangerous consequences of this type of fearmongering...
...He noticed a visa stamp from Alia International Airport in Jordan...
...Why do some in the media want to promote a singular and dehumanizing view of Islam...
...In due course, we'll learn which particular faction the terrorists identified with—Hamas...
...No one was skimming through their passports, nor was it necessary to "clear" their papers...
...The cartoonist modified Emma Lazarus's famous poem to read: "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, your terrorists, your slime, your evil cowards, your religious fanatics...
...Car bombings, of course, are not the exclusive domain of Middle East terrorist groups...
...This scenario is all too common...
...And lately, things have grown worse...
...Neither did the men who passed by the mosque that afternoon in trucks, shouting: "They should kill them all," and, "Why don't you go back where you came from...
...so have Basque separatists in Spain...
...Fifty-eight hate crimes were reported in January 1991 alone, most of them after the war broke out...
...Two days after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the New York Post published an editorial cartoon showing the Statue of Liberty under siege...
...Unfortunately, the Post was not the only media outlet that tried to promote anti-Muslim hysteria...
...The Islamic Jihad?—and whether or not the perpetrators leveled specific demands...
...After asking some routine questions, an airline security guard examined my Lebanese passport and green card...
...He then asked me to wait, while he "cleared" my travel papers...
...The suspicions and harassment will persist as long as the media respond to tragedies like Oklahoma City by drawing caricatures of bomb-throwing Arabs.M Mohamad Bazzi is a student at the City University of New York and a staff writer for New Youth Connections, a magazine written by teenagers...
...While returning from a trip to Paris, I was stopped even before I reached the check-in counter...
...In the statue's shadow stood three tur-baned, bearded men—smiling and waving, as one held a bomb and the others burned an American flag...
...The same double standard, and the old Arab stereotypes, reemerged in the wake of the Oklahoma City blast...
...So in other words, Islam is the new Red Menace...
...Steven Emerson, one of these "experts," even suggested that there may be some inherent cultural trait behind the bombing...
...Two years ago, the day after Mohammed Salameh was arrested for the World Trade Center bombing, I was assigned to interview people at the mosque he attended in Jersey City, New Jersey...
...Within hours of the bombing, members of the "terrorism industry"—the experts and organizations that shape our view of terror—hit the airwaves and op-ed pages to pitch a Middle East link...
...That was when I noticed how quickly everyone else was getting through security...
...The only terrorists mentioned are Muslim groups...
...Daniel Pipes, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, told USA Today, "People have to understand that this is just the beginning...
...Out of anger and frustration, many refused to speak...
...What were you doing in Jordan in 1985...
...But the media people didn't pay much attention...
...A Post editorial made this sweeping accusation: "Knowing that the car bomb indicates Middle Eastern terrorists at work, it's safe to assume that their goal is to promote fear...
...That is a Middle Eastern trait," he said on the CBS Evening News...
...The fundamentalists are on the upsurge, and they make it very clear that they are targeting us...
...During the bombing trial, newspaper and television stories often described the defendants as Muslim "fundamentalists," "extremists," and "militants...
...A few days later, the New York Daily News ran a front-page photo of Salameh— a bearded Palestinian—under a headline that screamed Face of Hate...
...I told him that I was, as the visa indicated, in transit—changing planes to get from Beirut to New York...
Vol. 59 • August 1995 • No. 8
