EDITORIAL
We are now 16 days removed from the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, yet the emotions we felt then horror, shock, revulsion, sadness, anger, fear remain with us, along with another, more ominous reaction: hatred.
It is hard not to despise the terrorist groups who killed thousands of innocent people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and hundreds more aboard four hijacked jetliners. And the perpetrators and their direct supporters should be hunted and brought to justice.
But justice is not the same as revenge. As we dispatch war planes and aircraft carriers to the Middle East, call up reservists to bolster our armed forces and issue stern warnings to renegade terrorists and the countries that harbor them, our motivation must be justice. And our behavior here at home must reflect our nation’s commitment to the very ideals that these terrorists find so abhorrent: religious freedom, tolerance and equal protection under the law.
Reports that Arab-Americans and people of other ethnic origins mistaken for Arab-Americans have been the targets of harassment, threats and physical attacks are a sickening reminder of how easily we can forget these ideals. If these repugnant acts of bigotry were limited to a handful of incidents scattered around the country, we could pass them off as the products of a few depraved individuals or extremist groups. But too manyhave taken place too close to home to be dismissed so easily.
There have been reports of brutal beatings in New York and North Jersey and harassment in Jersey City and elsewhere. A former member of the Islamic Society of Central Jersey who moved to Dallas a year ago was shot to death in a small grocery store in what police say may have been a bias attack.
The harsh atmosphere even forced the Islamic Society to hold a press conference shortly after the attacks to confirm its allegiance to the United States and its condemnation of the terrorists. No other religious group would have been expected to pledge such an oath.
It is indicative of a general atmosphere of mistrust similar to the paranoia that placed so many Japanese-Americans behind barbed wire during World War II.
Before Sept. 11, many Americans knew little or nothing about Islam and its followers, about the Koran and its teachings, about the distinctions between cells of radical fundamentalists bent on terrorism and the overwhelming majority of peace-loving Muslims who pray to the same God as Christians and Jews.
A good place to start learning is the Muslim Interfaith Day being held Sunday at the Islamic Society’s Route 1 mosque on Sunday from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. The event will give the community a chance to meet their muslim neighbors and learn about one of the world’s great religions.
Luckily, South Brunswick has not succumbed to this ignorance. A standing-room-only crowd packed St. Augustine R.C. Church last week for an interfaith service sponsored by the township clergy association and the Human Relations Commission. The diversity of the crowd and the speakers representatives of Congregation B’nai Tikvah, the Durga Hindu Temple, the Islamic Society, St. A’s and St. Barnabas Episcopal Church offered prayers was a heartening reminder of what America is supposed to be.
We have all surely heard and read and seen enough in the last few weeks to rise above ignorance, reject stereotypes and uphold our nation’s most cherished values. To do anything less is the moral equivalent of surrendering to terrorism.