As we sat numbly watching the horror of the attacks on September 11 play out on our television screens, another American tragedy started to loom ominously on the horizon. Reports began to filter in of citizens turning against citizens, reports of threats and assaults against our neighbors, our fellow compatriots, spurred by fear, anger and ignorance. With alarming frequency in the days following the attacks, American Moslems, Americans of Middle Eastern descent and people mistaken for Arabs or Moslems were targeted for threats, slurs and intimidation.
Given the breadth of the calamity in New York, I found this incomprehensible. The egregious attacks in New York struck the most phenomenally diverse city in the history of humanity. The widest imaginable panoply of human identity walks the streets of New York daily -- every nationality, race, religion, sexuality, height, weight, size, gender, creed, political opinion, physical ability -- all are represented.
Without a doubt, that same breathtaking spectrum of humanity lies now dead in the carnage of New York. It must be noted that Moslems died in the World Trade Center attacks. Arabs are buried under the thousands of tons of rubble. People of Middle Eastern descent were murdered in these attacks.
Yet reports still came in of rocks thrown through mosque windows. I heard stories of white businessmen in Seattle refusing to get into a cab driven by a man in a turban. I cried over the newspaper as I read of a Sikh man murdered in Arizona. I read reports of people afraid to go to their mosques to pray -- afraid of attack from their fellow citizens. How tragic, truly tragic, that in our grief we would dare deny to anyone the right to turn to their God, to turn to their religion for comfort and solace.
These men and women and children are our fellow citizens and compatriots. Many of these people have come to our shores fleeing exactly the terror and destruction witnessed this week in New York. Imagine the fear and horror of Afghan refugees who fled the Taliban's oppression only to see that terror arise in the land where they sought safety. Imagine the shock of Iraqis and Iranians and Palestinians who fled the brutality in their native land and now see visited upon them the exact terror from which they fled.
All of these people -- refugees, immigrants, citizens born and raised within our land -- now share the fear of every single other American: the fear of being the random target of hatred and violence. It bears repeating that Moslems and Arab-Americans died in the destruction of the Twin Towers. And now imagine the fear felt by these same people, already as traumatized as every other American, that they may now be the target of pointed violence, born of ignorance, fear and anger.
In the days that followed the attacks, I began writing to entreat every one of my friends, neighbors and compatriots to take some step to allay the fears rampant in Islamic communities in America. And then stories of a decidedly different nature began to fill the newspapers. In Seattle and other cities and towns, non-Moslem people have gathered at mosques to stand guard against any attacks or harassment while their Moslem neighbors pray inside. Following reports in my hometown in Maryland of local Sikh shop-owners receiving threats, my mother took down a bouquet of flowers as a gesture of goodwill. She was the third person that day to bring flowers by the store. And how amazed was I to see Bush giving a speech praising Islam as a religion of peace, demanding tolerance and respect, speaking in stocking feet from the largest mosque in Washington, D.C.
Tolerance and respect for nonmainstream religion is apparently in far better shape in this country than ever I had dared hope. Making this fact even more astonishing is that this outpouring of respect and support for minority religions in America is coming from people who know little or nothing about the tenets and practices of Islam or Sihkism yet are fervently voicing tolerance for all religions and denouncing, even protesting physically, threats to religious diversity in the United States.
Witness the response to the vituperative statements by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. These two men, supposed proponents of a religion founded by a pacifist who preached only love and tolerance, blamed pagans, homosexuals and civil rights advocates for bringing on the bombing of the World Trade Center. They claimed that because of us, God had "lifted the veil of protection" from America. I remember a time not too long ago when such views would have been at least tacitly supported by the White House and the prevailing political rhetoric. But instead what filled the editorial pages of magazines and newspapers across the nation was a sound denunciation of Falwell and Robertson, with innumerable letters, columns and cartoons demonstrating that the same hateful thinking is shared by Osama Bin Laden and Jerry Falwell -- hatred in God's name.
In the wake of the attacks of September 11, even as we prepare for and carry out brutal attacks of our own on Afghanistan, even in these dark and painful hours, there is an amazing light growing, illuminating a national community where people really can worship whomever and however they wish to and feel secure in the knowledge that the overwhelming majority of our populace really does believe in the founding principles of religious freedom. We need to nurture and spread this light. In the candles we light at our own ceremonies, let each flame represent a broadening understanding of the myriad paths that religions take toward worship and understanding of the Divine.