EDITORIAL: Let justice, not hatred, be served

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.

   We are now more than two weeks removed from the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, yet all the emotions we felt then — horror, shock, revulsion, sadness, anger, fear — remain with us today, along with another, more ominous reaction: hatred.
   It is hard not to despise the terrorist groups responsible for killing thousands of innocent people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and hundreds more aboard four hijacked jetliners. Whether the responsibility is ultimately pinned on Osama bin Laden and his disciples in Afghanistan or a much wider network of amoral criminal conspirators scattered around the world, no penalty would be too harsh in retribution for their evil acts.
   But retribution 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, not vengeance. 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 even physical attacks are a sickening reminder of how easily we can forget these ideals and become infected with a terrorist mentality ourselves. 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 many of them have taken place too close to home to be dismissed so easily.
   There have been reports of brutal beatings in New York and down South, harassment in Jersey City and elsewhere and 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.
   More than 30 bias crimes are under investigation in New Jersey since last Tuesday’s attack, and countless other incidents that do not rise to that level — but are every bit as hateful in their intent — have been reported.
   The harsh atmosphere has forced Islamic groups around the country to confirm their allegiance to the United States and condemn the terrorists. No other religious or ethnic group would have been expected to do so.
   It is indicative of a general atmosphere of mistrust not unlike the paranoid jingoism 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 those cells of radical Islamic fundamentalists bent on terrorism and the overwhelming majority of peace-loving Muslims who pray to the same God as Christians and Jews.
   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.