The Huffington Post:
Waqar Hasan was a Pakistani Muslim immigrant who had come to New Jersey to live the American dream. Leaving his family in Milltown, NJ, he went to Dallas, TX, to open a grocery store. Four days after 9/11, a gunman came to his store and shot him in the face. The killer went on to shoot two more Muslims that same week, avenging the 9/11 attacks.
9/11 unleashed the most intense manhunt in American history. After a decade, Bin Laden was finally killed in Pakistan, bringing relief and closure to some of Bin Laden’s victims. Some — non-Muslim and Muslim — continue to suffer. I, just as Mr. Hasan and his family, am one of them. I am a Muslim-American.
Bin Laden was a mass murderer who exploited religion only to further his nefarious agenda. He did not represent Islam. Most of his victims were Muslims — including some of those martyred on 9/11. However, some people continue to see him as representative of Islam’s teachings and wrongly blame the Muslim-American community for his actions. Apparently, such people do not learn from the mistakes we made a few decades ago when German-American and Japanese-American communities were wholly treated with suspicion.
Categories: Americas, Islamophobia, Terrorism