A day after suspected terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Arab-American, Muslim and Sikh leaders reported sporadic vandalism and assaults against their communities.
Mosque windows were shattered in Texas, a New York man was arrested for an alleged anti-Arab threat, and a prison fight broke out over Muslim slurs in Washington state.
“I’m urging people not to play into the hands of the terrorists, not to act like them,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C.
The prime suspect for the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, authorities said, was Osama bin Laden (news – web sites), a wealthy Saudi fugitive who authorities have blamed for several past terrorist attacks.
In Suffolk County, N.Y., authorities arrested a man who allegedly made an anti-Arab threat and pointed a handgun at a gas station employee.
In Texas, at least six bullets shattered windows at the Islamic Center of Irving. A window at the Islamic Center of Carrollton also was broken by a slingshot-type device, police said.
Authorities there and in several other jurisdictions said they were unsure whether the threats were related to the terrorist attacks.
In Asbury, N.J., Ramandeep Singh, a Sikh who wears a turban for religious reasons, said he had garbage and stones thrown at his car and stayed home from work.
In a Washington state prison, a fight broke out during television reports of the attacks. A sheriff’s spokesman said that one inmate loudly criticized Muslims and then a Muslim inmate threw him to the floor, causing cranial hemorrhaging.
At the Kuwait Embassy in Washington, Tamara Alfson spent Wednesday counseling frightened Kuwaiti students attending schools across the United States. One student was told, “You should all die,” Alfson said. Another was moved to avoid a harassing bus ride to class.
Hate messages and insults were left on the answering machine of the Manassas Mosque in Virginia, said director Abu Nahidian.
Muslims in Oklahoma City said motorists made obscene gestures outside the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City, said Suhaib Webb, imam of the center’s mosque.
“We have no more to do with Osama bin Laden than you do,” said Sheryl Siddiqui, a member of the board of the Islamic Society of Tulsa, Okla. “He certainly doesn’t represent Islam, and we’re just devastated.”
In Virginia, an Islamic bookstore was vandalized in Old Town Alexandria, and officials at two Virginian mosques reported vandalism and threatening phone calls.
About a dozen members of the Muslin community in Tampa, Fla., urged friends and relatives on Wednesday to donate blood, heeding calls by blood banks for donations for victims of the terrorist attacks.
“We’re suffering all ways – as Muslims, as Americans,” Fatima Hussain said.
American Airlines chief executive Don Carty echoed community leaders in urging Americans not to scapegoat entire ethnic and religious communities because of “our collective grief, anger and shock.”
In a recorded hot line message to airline workers, he said: “We simply cannot do that. Muslims and Arabs are our co-workers and our customers – and they grieve over this tragedy as well.”