9/11 10th anniversary: ‘Aroma of fear’ lingers for Western Massachusetts Muslim Americans
Republican file photo Dr. Mohammad S. Bajwa, left and Dr. Kimat Khatak are seen before morningprayer at the Islamic Society of Western Massachusetts in West Springfield Muslims living in Western Massachusetts are diverse in their cultural origins, but their Islamic faith has made them and their places of gathering the focus of crimes in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“I remember President George (W.) Bush at a Washington mosque saying right after 9/11 that the country had nothing against Islam but, at the grassroots level, this was not heard,” says Mohammad Saleem Bajwa, 66, a Holyoke-based internal medicine physician and pulmonologist.
“The attacks on Islam have been constant. Defaming the religion, equating it with terrorism and putting all Muslims in one basket. It creates a poisonous environment and hurts a lot. Most of us have been living with that.”
Among the several hundred Muslim families who live in the Pioneer Valley, an “aroma of fear” settled on their lives, some say, and in some respects evolved into an environment of hate dependent on events in the news.
“Before 9/11, there was criticism of Islam, but that would be with every religion,” said Bajwa recently. “But after 9/11, there is a more active campaign, not only in the print media but in everyday talk, with the radio talk shows the worst.”
Sunday will mark 10 years since the attacks by Arab terrorists committed to killing Americans in the name of Islamic supremacy. Close to 3,000 were killed when hijacked airplanes were used to bomb New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
Passengers on a fourth plane, believed to have been bound for the U.S. Capitol, were killed after they staged a mutiny on the hijackers and the aircraft crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
Bajwa describes the 19 mostly Saudi-born hijackers as “animal-like people with no faith or with a faith that has nothing to do with mainstream religion.”
Muslims at work in the trade center and flying as passengers on the planes were killed in the attacks, and Bajwa notes a high number of Muslims who have been killed as the result of what has been the international terrorism of al Qaida.
According to a 2009 study from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the majority of those killed in al Qaida attacks against the West between 2004 and 2008 were Muslims.
Saudi -born millionaire Osama bin Laden, opposed to U.S. policies in the Middle East, eventually took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks by members of his al Qaida organization of terrorist cells.
Bajwa is a founding member of the Islamic Society of Western Massachusetts that has its mosque and center in West Springfield.
His sentiments are echoed by another society member, Dr. Kimat G. Khatak, of Holyoke.
“Every year on the anniversary it is repeated over and over in the media that Muslims are evil,” Khatak said. “Images of a mosque and the call for prayers – prayers that are about God is great and that prayer is good for you – are shown and then images of fire and deaths.”
“It gets in the subconscious that the call for prayer is a call for murder and that we are bad people and people think it is true,” Khatak added. “They look at you like you are a strange person.”
The framers of the 9/11 attacks used the Islamic concept of “jihad,” an Arabic word which means “exerted effort” as in to improve oneself and fight oppression, to call for the murder of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Muslims here and abroad have denounced this use of the Koran and the language of jihad to justify terrorist acts.
“There is no clash of civilizations. A jihad has not been fought in 500 years,” said the Pakistan-born Khatak, referring to the war against the Christian crusades. “I have been here 36 years, and all I do is take care of sick people in America. I love my patients and my patients love me.”
Naz Mohamed, 58, of Hadley, shares a similar reaction to 9/11 and its aftermath.
“I was stunned something so horrific could have happened and embarrassed and sad that Islam and Muslims will be blamed for the acts of some fanatics who are ignorant of their own religion and felt justified to take innocent lives. This is not jihad,” said Mohamed, a former early childhood educator.
“Jihad in Islam is not against innocent people. It is a personal struggle to improve oneself and to improve your surroundings,” Mohamed said. “Nothing happens on that scale without a deep-rooted, long-term cause.”
A native of Pakistan who came to the United States in 1977 to attend Mount Holyoke College and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mohamed said she received mostly support from friends and colleagues in the aftermath of 9/11. She also gave a number of talks about Islam.
