http://www.msnbc.com/news/627565_asp.htm

Backlash targets Arab Americans

Scattered violence, threats after terrorist attacks in U.S.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sept. 13 "� An anti-Arab backlash hit several communities in
the
United States and abroad as federal officials said there was mounting
evidence that radical Muslims planned and carried out the terror attacks
in
New York and Washington.

POLICE TURNED back 300 marchers - some waving American
flags
and shouting "USA! USA!"� - as they tried to march on a mosque in
Bridgeview,
Ill., late Wednesday.
Three demonstrators were arrested, said Bridgeview Police Chief
Charles Chigas. There were no injuries and demonstrators were kept blocks
from the closed Muslim worship place.
"I"m proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I always have,"
� said
19-year-old Colin Zaremba, who marched with the group from Oak Lawn.
Federal authorities said they had identified more than a dozen
hijackers of Middle Eastern descent in Tuesday's attacks and gathered
evidence linking them to Saudi-born terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and
other terrorist networks. In all, perhaps 50 people were involved in the
plot, government officials said.

In Chicago, a Molotov cocktail was tossed Wednesday at an
Arab-American community center. No one was injured, and there was little
damage.

"TEAR AT THE FIBER OF OUR DEMOCRACY"
"The terrorists who committed these horrible acts would like
nothing
better than to see us tear at the fiber of our democracy and to trample
on
the rights of other Americans,"� Illinois Gov. George Ryan said.
In Huntington, N.Y., a 75-year-old man who was drunk tried to run
over
a Pakistani woman in the parking lot of a shopping mall, police said. The
man, Adam Lang, then followed the woman into a store and threatened to
kill
her for "Destroying my country."�

In Gary, Ind., a man in a ski mask fired a high-powered
assault rifle at the gas station where Hassan Awdah, a U.S. citizen born
in
Yemen, was working, the Gary Post Tribune reported. Gary police are
investigating it as a hate crime.
"I lived in the Middle East for most of my life and have never
seen
anything like this,"� Awdah said.
In Australia, a school bus carrying Muslim children was stoned and
vandals tried to set fire to a Lebanese church in apparent acts of
retaliation for the terrorist attacks in the United States, officials
said.
Queensland state Islamic Council Chairman Sultan Deen said stones and
bottles
damaged the bus Wednesday in Brisbane. No one was injured.

STUDENTS HARASSED
Tamara Alfson, an American working at the Kuwait Embassy in
Washington, D.C., spent Wednesday counseling frightened Kuwaiti students
attending schools across the United States.
"Some of them have already been harassed. People have been quite
awful
to them,"� said Alfson, an academic adviser to roughly 150 students.
In a show of patriotism, 45 people from Tampa, Fla." Islamic community
registered to donate blood Wednesday and 30 members of the Muslim
Students
Association at the University of South Florida signed up.
"Yu feel the pain twice: Once because of what has happened and
once
because of the looks you get,"� said Sami Al-Arian, an engineering
teacher at
the University of South Florida.
Abu Nahidian, director of the Manassas Mosque in Virginia, said
his
congregation has been the target of insults and hate messages left on the
office answering machine.
"We have some recordings in our tapes that say, "We hate you
so-and-so Muslims and we hope you die,"Abu Nahidian said.
A mosque in Lynnwood, Wash., was vandalized and no one showed up
for
afternoon prayers at the Islamic Center of Spokane.
"We must not hurt or terrorize Americans of Arab descent or
Islamic
faith,"� Gov. Gary Locke said Wednesday during a memorial service at the
Puyallup Fair.
Issam Koussan told the Detroit News he bought large U.S. flags to
fly
in front of his home and outside his supermarket after men in a car
pulled
into his parking lot and yelled threats and racial slurs at his customers.
"I just feel I needed to show my loyalty to this country,"� he
said.