Islamic community voices outrage over mass killings

Islamic community voices outrage over mass killings
Jennifer Chambers The Detroit News
November 07, 2009 12:42 PM

Dearborn -- Metro Detroit Muslims struggled with dual angst Friday after the deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood -- outrage over the attack and fears that a backlash will dismantle years of progress toward better understanding of Islam.

"All the hard work we do taking a step forward -- this takes us 10 steps back. It's really tragic," Victor Begg, of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan, said of the massacre Thursday that shocked the nation.

On Friday, local and national Muslim and Arab-American civil rights groups and other organizations mobilized to denounce the shootings and to reiterate that their religion stresses peace, not violence.

Osama A. Siblani, publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News, said many Muslims already feel the need to defend themselves. He said threatening e-mails blaming all Arabs and Muslims for the attack have arrived in his in-box. He forwarded one that read "I know where you live" to the FBI and requested security around his office.

"We need to focus on the cause of all of this and not the ethnic background of this person," Siblani said.

The shooter, who killed 13 people in the rampage, is suspected of being Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who has been identified by authorities as an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent.

Mosque raid discussed

The Fort Hood rampage comes at an especially difficult time for Muslims in Metro Detroit, which has one of the nation's largest concentrations of Arab-Americans nationwide.

Luqman Ameen Abdullah, imam of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, was killed by the FBI last week during a raid in which he was to be arrested on a raft of federal charges including conspiracy, receipt of stolen goods and firearms offenses. Many Muslim leaders have called for an investigation into his death and said a federal complaint painted him as a violent jihadist, even though neither he nor his 11 followers were charged with terrorism.

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(Image: Madalyn Ruggiero / Special to The Detroit News)
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