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Daily Times – February 15, 2005
9/11 Pakistani victim’s mother
questions treatment of Muslims
WASHINGTON Feb. 14, 2005: The mother of a Muslim Pakistani-American who was killed in the World Trade Centre to which he had rushed to help victims told a news conference on Monday that it was a pity thousands of Muslims had been subjected to interrogation after 9/11.
Mrs Talat Hamdani’s son, 23-year old Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a Pakistani-born paramedic who was not even on duty that day, rushed to the World Trade Centre to help victims after the first plane hit one of the towers.
Mrs Hamdani said in a tearful voice that her son’s death was not because of his ties to Islam. “He was killed because he was an American,” she added. She joined other Muslims at the news conference to release a written response to the 9/11 Commission report, hoping that Congress will consider the views of Muslims on terrorism-related issues.
Hamdani recalled the thousands of Muslims who were interrogated for alleged connections with terrorist activities and said her son was also investigated by the FBI as a potential suspect after he was reported missing. “As a Muslim-American woman, it was horrific,” said the public school teacher in Queens. “I came to realize that Islam and terrorism have become synonymous.”
Mrs Hamdani offered her support to the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations on Monday as the group released a newly expanded response to its earlier report. ‘First Impressions: American Muslim Perspectives on the 9/11 Commission Report,’ was first released in August at the Islamic Society of North America’s convention in Chicago. “We are concerned that the 9/11 commission excluded the voices of Muslim Americans,” Imam Johari Abdul Malik, Washington-area Council chairman told the journalists.
Bonita R McGee, a member of the steering committee that oversaw the Muslim group’s report said it had several problems with the way Muslims were portrayed in the 9/11 Commission’s report. “I think the major concern was when they define terrorism, they define it as Islamic terrorism. When you have the idea that this faith is linked to that, then you have a problem,” she added.
Corey Saylor of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the report would be vital in helping Americans understand how Muslim- Americans were affected by the 2001 terrorist attacks. “Really, for most people, their introduction to Islam was the image of an airplane hitting a building. Unfortunately, the reality is that Muslims have been here working for a long time, doing good work, but it’s hard to erase that image,” she added.
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