Muslim students voice concern about racism

NEWSMAKERS A woman prays for victims of the World Trade Center. Arab Students' Association at Yale in conjunction with Yale HIllel has organized a prayer vigil for the victims of Tuesday's attacks today, Fri., Sept 14, at 5 p.m.

"I just want to reenlist and bomb whoever did this," an ex-member of the United States Army told an ABC reporter on Tues., Sept. 11 upon learning of the deadly attacks made on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

This man's feelings and the need for retaliation are likely shared by millions across the country as people try to come to terms with the deadliest terrorist attack ever in the United States. As images of a faceless Arab terrorist comingle with an increasingly unified call for vengeance from the American public, many Americans have already begun to exact revenge indiscriminately on Arabs or Muslims in the United States.

Such racist offenses have come to be expected by Arabs and Muslims after decades of stereotypes and media typecasting. After the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1994, a number of Arabs were harrassed and exposed to violence when the bomber was still thought to have been an Arab.

Consequently, at Yale, the Office of International Students and Scholars sent out an e-mail following Tuesday's events warning international students to report violence. A number of Arab and Muslim student organizations sent out similar e-mails urging caution.

Fadi Kanaan, CC '02, co-president of the Arab Students' Association (ASA) at Yale, went one step further, counseling Arab students that if they felt unsafe walking around campus, other students could escort them. "We are forming a sort of buddy network," Kanaan said, "so that people who feel unsafe can call up a friend in order to be comforted or in order to be escorted."

No violence has yet been reported to authorities. Furthermore, some have found the Yale community to be open-minded and supportive.

While overt action has thus far spared Arab students at Yale, more subtle forms of discrimination have been exhibited, according to Faida Issam Rafeedie, LAW '03: "It is highly upsetting that students assume that since I am Arab, I would be any less sympathetic towards those who were affected by the bombings."

"To assume that Arabs and Arab Americans would feel less sympathy for those who died in the attacks is a common and troubling phenomenon," Rafeedie said. "I sense it in the awkward sideways glances from some students, and in the knee-jerk reactions of commentators who give themselves free license to discuss the `Arab psyche' and the interpretations of the holy Koran which they've neither read or known."

"It is unfortunate that while Arab and Muslim students grieve with the rest of the country over the terrible tragic attack, we must also face unwarranted and inexcusable attacks," Sammy Mansour, DC '03, said. He also notes that Yale has not always been free from anti-Arab sentiment: "In the past year before these attacks, many students of Arab backgrounds at Yale received ethnically based threats in different forms."

But Rafeedie hopes the support she has generally encountered among Yale students will extend to Americans throughout the country, and that "it will lead to a deeper understanding of the concerns, cultures, religions, and aspirations of Arab people everywhere, whose lives are directly impacted in many ways by U.S. policy, but whose values were not reflected in any meaningful way by the criminals who died in the tragic missions of their own making."

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