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A Times Editorial
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 21, 2001
This is no time for Americans to turn against each other. Indeed, it is time to draw closer, a message President Bush delivered during a recent visit to the Islamic Center of Washington. "Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior," the president said. "In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect."
Such admonitions should go without saying in a civilized nation, but twisted thinking and bigotry have made them necessary as a wounded nation struggles to come to terms with the enormity of its loss after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Bush's words came in response to hundreds of incidents of harassment and violence directed at Arab-Americans, Sikhs and others who look Middle Eastern. More than 40 of these cases, including three shooting deaths (one involved a Sikh mistaken for a Muslim because he wore a turban), are being investigated as possible hate crimes by federal authorities.
Is this how some ignorant bigots -- waving an American flag with one hand and hurling rocks with the other -- would honor the victims of the atrocities in New York and Washington? Is this the face they want to put on our country's pain and sorrow? Do they not realize that the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks were people of many races, religions and cultures?
Stereotypes are dangerous at a time such as this. As Bush pointed out, "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is about. Islam is peace."
Let's remember who our real enemies are and stop terrorizing fellow Americans, including children, because of they way they look or dress. We need each other, now more than