Radicalizing the Civil, the making of a Terrorist 

Why does one become a Terrorist ? What drives a person like you or me to commit acts of violence on innocent people, simply because they are from a certain ethnicity or religion ?

My answer is "the media". In both the Western and Eastern hemisphere's media, the general inhabitants of a country or region are demonized, instead of the elite few individuals responsible for the grievance.  In the Western world, non-caucasians are vilified, and visa versa, in the Eastern World, non-easterners are stereotyped.

Such propaganda results in violence and vengeance towards individuals guilty of only being of a certain racial group such as white, African, Arab, Chinese, Japanese,  Spanish, etc...  Why does one become a Terrorist ? For some Americans today, one needs only to look in the mirror:

ALABAMA In Alabama, women in traditional Islamic garments were jeered and
spat upon.

ARIZONA The terrorist attack on Sept. 11 led to one more death on Saturday
afternoon in Mesa. A white male in a pickup truck drove into a gas station
and shot and killed the Sikh owner of a Chevron station on Saturday
afternoon, then 20 minutes later fired on the Lebanese clerk at a Mobil
station and proceeded to shoot into the home of an Afghan family. The man
arrested for the murder told police, "I'm an American. Arrest me. Let
those terrorists run wild." University of Arizona President Peter Likins
made a statement Thursday: "I have been receiving reports that my fears of
irrational retribution against members of our community are being realized
in the form of death threats and harassment of Islamic students.. This
behavior is a disgrace to our university and will not be tolerated."

CALIFORNIA An Egyptian man was found murdered Saturday night at the store
he owned in San Gabriel. In San Francisco someone left a bag filled with
pig's blood on the doorstep of a community center that serves Arabs. An
anonymous caller said he had left a package "for your brother Osama bin
Laden." Maha Elgenaidi, executive director of the Islamic Network Group in
San Jose, reported that callers told her to "get the hell out of this
country. You people have done nothing but ruin this country, and you will
all die. You don't belong here. Your religion is vile and evil." Muslim women wearing hijabs over their hair reported being harassed. In Los Angeles, there were at least eight hate
incidents following the attacks, including one in which a gun was put to a
woman's face. An Antelope Valley convenience store owned by a Syrian
American was shot at twice. At Mohammad Kasmaei's Ali Baba Restaurant in
Anaheim, "You can't stay in the U.S.,'' was one message. Another caller
simply reeled off bitter obscenities. Three teen-agers hurled a skateboard
through the window of the Sinbad Ranch market in Anaheim. Pacifica
resident Senam Khairie, who has a "Free Palestine" sticker on his car,
said he was cut off and flipped off half a dozen times by motorists
Tuesday. A Palestinian grocer in San Francisco reported people walking by
making comments like, "Go back to your country" and "We should kill you
all." The San Francisco Islamic Society received threatening calls. Cars
drove past the closed Granada Islamic School, some blaring horns, a few
drivers shouting curses. In Fremont, a 13-year-old student was called
``camel jockey'' and ``terrorist'' by schoolmates who hurled a rock at her
in the schoolyard. On Sunday, an M-80 exploded on the sidewalk outside the
Islamic Center of San Diego. On Monday, a fire that destroyed much of an
Afghan and Persian restaurant in Encino after the owner received threats
to burn it down. On Monday, an Orange County judge postponed indefinitely
the murder trial of an Egyptian immigrant after nearly 20 prospective
jurors said they were so angry that they could not be fair to an Arab. At
Berkeley on Thursday, Tejinder Singh was walking when two drunk guys
approached him and called him "Terrorist!" and "Towelhead!" In San
Francisco, Sean Fernandes, a 26-year old Indian Catholic, was walking with
a white Australian friend Saturday, when a man came up, called him a
"dirty Arab," and punched him and the friend. His friend was stabbed in
the ensuing brawl. 

COLORADO In one Colorado town, a group of men threatened to burn down a
mosque.

CONNECTICUT  Two University of Connecticut students of Middle Eastern
descent have decided to leave UConn and return to their home countries
after encountering harassment in the aftermath of last Tuesday's terrorist
attacks. Rashed Alvaabi reported his physics professor asked the class
what they thought about Islamic people, and approximately five people
responded: "We hate the Islamic people." Alvaabi said the professor told
these students that they should not have said that and the discussion of
Islamic people did not continue. Mark Wentzel, director of the department
of international services and programs, said his office has received
approximately five or six complaints of harassment a day since the
terrorist attack, a trend which he said grows daily. On the north side of
campus when people in a vehicle drove by a female who appeared to be of
Middle Eastern descent and shouted intimidating comments at her.

FLORIDA Most female Muslim students decided not to go to class at the
University of South Florida Thursday, fearing their head scarves would
make them targets. At least three radio stations falsely reported that
Muslim students were celebrating the terrorist attack. An Ocala
businessman taped a "No Muslims" sign on the window of his store, Golf
USA. In Tampa Bay, police found a bullet Thursday in the county's only
mosque. A St. Petersburg man of Palestinian heritage found splattered
paint on his truck and a threatening note that read, "You cannot live in
my world. Get out of it." On the white door of a family's garage in Temple
Terrace on Thursday, someone wrote "Muslims Fuck." Someone scrawled
Hispanic racial slurs and Arabs Go Home Fuckers on the wall of a
drive-through liquor store that is owned by a Hispanic couple, and also
attempted to light a fire there. On Tuesday, the Islamic Center of
Tallahassee's entrance window was smashed and eggs and cantaloupe thrown
on the walls. Three Muslim women spoken to in Tallahassee declined to
report their stories of verbal harassment, fearing publicity will provoke
further harassment.

ILLINOIS Unidentified men beat two Muslim women at Moraine Valley
Community College the night after the terrorist attack. In the Chicago
suburb of Bridgeview Wednesday night police turned back 300 people who
were shouting "USA, USA" and marching on a local mosque, with 19-year-old
Colin Zaremba declaring, "I'm proud to be American and I hate Arabs and I
always have." The next night, about 500 demonstrators gathered near Oak
Lawn High School, saying they had come out in the name of patriotism. One
teenager on a bicycle, wrapped in an American flag, shouted, "Kill the
Arabs," and others shouted insults at cars with people who appeared to be
Arabic. Three men beat a Pakistani cabdriver on East Chicago Avenue late
Tuesday, and Muslims in Lake County reported vandals had spray-painted
"USA" and "No Forgiveness" on a Muslim worship center in Beach Park. In
Palos Heights someone used a 2-foot machete to attack a gas station
attendant he thought was Arabic. A firebomb exploded at an Arab-American
community center in Chicago. A Muslim grade school was attacked with a
Molotov cocktail; "Kill the Arabs" graffiti was scrawled along a major
street.  In Evanston, police said a Chicago taxi driver and college student, Mustapha Zemkour, was injured Monday when two men--including a Cook County corrections officer--chased him on motorcycles, then allegedly hit him in the face and yelled, "This is what you get, you mass murderer."

INDIANA In Gary, on Wednesday, a man in a ski mask fired a high-powered
assault rifle 21 times at the gas station where Hassan Awdah, a U.S.
citizen born in Yemen, was working behind bullet-proof glass. In
Evansville, Indiana, a neo-Nazi was arrested early on Friday after ramming
his car repeatedly into a building housing the local Islamic Center and
shattering two windows.

KANSAS An Arab college student in Kansas City reported that strangers had
approached him menacingly and asked whether he knew "the ones who did it."

LOUISIANA In Louisiana, schools in Jefferson Parish were closed on
Wednesday because students of Middle Eastern origin were taunted and
harassed. U.S. Rep. John Cooksey, R-Monroe, declared that a person
"wearing a diaper on his head" should be subject to more scrutiny when
traveling on airlines.

MARYLAND Muslim businesses in Maryland were the targets of arson.

MASSACHUSETTS A 20-year-old Boston University student was stabbed three
times as he left a nightclub early Sunday morning by assailants who yelled
"You Arab (expletive)." In Quincy, the windows and front door of Halal
Market were smashed and another, Almaeedah Market, was vandalized. Three
teens in Somerset were arrested after lobbing a firebomb onto the roof of
a convenience store owned by an American citizen from India. The teens
told police "they wanted to get back at the Arabs for what they did in New
York." The Islamic Center of New England received several threatening
calls. In Weymouth, a man and a woman doused a pump with gas and set it on
fire at a gas station owned by a man from Lebanon. In Everett, vandals
threw softballs inscribed with "God bless America" and "Freedom for all"
through the window of a cafe owned by a Greek-American, apparently
targeting a nearby Middle Eastern cafe. 

MICHIGAN Windows at the Muslim Students Association at Wayne State
University were broken and several businesses and schools have received
bomb threats. A 14-year-old Palestinian, Deemh Monoyidden, received death
threats from fellow students at a Detroit area school. In Dearborn,
Michigan, a community with more than 30,000 people of Arabic descent,
there were bomb threats against Muslim schools, and racial slurs or death
threats in phone calls or e-mail messages sent to Islamic community
leaders. A quarter stick of dynamite exploded outside the mosque at dawn.
Police investigated three men in Taylor, Michigan who said they were going
to go to Dearborn and "kill all the Arabs." False rumors were circulating
by e-mail that Arab-Americans at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Orchard
Lake, Michigan celebrated after Tuesday's attack; someone printed copies
of the e-mail and taped them to shopping carts outside a grocery store
near the restaurant. Arab-American and Muslim students at the University
of Michigan receive e-mailed death threats, some signed by "a Christian
American." Other anonymous e-mails warned "your life will be a living
hell," and "this is war." In Fair Haven, Mich., the windows of Mazen
Mislmanion's family service station were shot up by vandals Wednesday
night. Issam Koussan told the Detroit News that men in a car pulled into
his supermarket parking lot and yelled threats and racial slurs at his
customers.

MINNESOTA In Minneapolis on Tuesday, Majdi Wadi, owner of the Holy Land
food market, received a call at 9:45am: "You fucking Muslim people. You're
all going to die today. Why don't you go back to your own country." The
caller phoned back several times, and Wadi called the police. At the
University of Minnesota, the Arab Student Association received threatening
messages on its answering machine Wednesday, and some Arab students have
been called "terrorists" or cursed at on campus.

NEW JERSEY In Astoria, New Jersey, a man who wears a turban for religious
reasons had garbage and stones thrown at his car. And on Long Island,
authorities arrested a man who made an anti-Arab threat and pointed a
handgun at a gas station employee. False rumors spread across the country
that Arab-Americans had celebrated of the terrorist attacks. In one case,
a New Jersey college student who lost both parents in the bombing now must
also deal with the fear of being harassed because he is of Arab descent.
In New Jersey, a carload of people waving American flags told a group of
teens that they would be bombed when they slept. The president of an
Arab-American civic organization in Paterson received several threatening
telephone messages. A Muslim gas station attendant in Monroe was punched
in the face by a motorist, and a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a Hindu
temple in Matawan. In Asbury Park, a graphic message threatening acid
attacks against Muslim women was found on Thursday on an answering machine
of the Masjid Mosque.

NEW YORK On Long Island, authorities arrested a man who made an anti-Arab
threat and pointed a handgun at a gas station employee. In Huntington, New
York, a 75-year-old man who was drunk tried to run over a Pakistani woman
in the parking lot of a shopping mall. The man then followed the woman
into a store and threatened to kill her for "destroying my country." One
Sikh man in Richmond Hills, New York, was severely injured in an attack by
an assailant wielding a baseball bat, and two other Sikhs were attacked
with a paintball gun. At the permanent mission of Afghanistan to the
United Nations, which represents the Islamic State of Afghanistan fighting
against the Taliban, death threats have become common: "Every hour or so
our recording device becomes full," said spokesperson Haron Amin. "The
threats have said such things as `Good luck staying alive over the next
week' and `Every Muslim shall be killed.'" Friday morning at the Brooklyn
Islamic Center in the Bensonhurst section, a man carrying a bottle with a
"smoking wet cloth on top" approached the mosque but dropped the firebomb
when he saw police nearby After services on Friday, a man driving past the
Islamic Society of Bay Ridge stopped and yelled obscenities at the Muslim
men while waving an American flag. A man claiming to be an off-duty
firefighter came to the front door and began cursing at the Muslims,
saying they were responsible for the deaths of 12 of his firefighter
friends. In New York City, a motorist yelled "sand nigger" at Arabs, and
passersby spat on the window of Damascus Bread and Pastry. A young man ran
past an Arab-run convenience store in Brooklyn Heights, shouting "Fuck
you, Arabs!" Two veiled women pushing baby strollers were surrounded by an
angry group of youths who hurled epithets at them. A 66-year-old man from
India, who follows the Sikh religion and wears a turban, was beaten
Tuesday by men who mistook him for an Arab. Early Wednesday in Manhattan,
a Sikh man was attacked by three white men yelling "terrorist" at Broadway
and 52nd Street. Cab driver Jejiemder Singh, another Sikh New Yorker, said
people threw bottles at his car on Tuesday. Shortly after the terrorist
attack, financial trader Amrik Singh was chased for blocks by group of men
who yelled, ''You better take that fucking turban off." Rabyaah
Al-Thaibani reported her uncle received a death threat from a supplier for
their Brooklyn grocery store, and they kept the store closed after the
terrorist attack. "He said he would kill my uncle and the whole family if
we didn't watch out. The Arab-American Family Support Center in Brooklyn
received hundreds of calls from Arab-Americans who have been threatened.
Roula Abu Hassan reported that her health teacher at a Brooklyn high
school declared in class, "Palestinian children all want to become
terrorists." Mohammed Abdur Rahman of the Islamic Center in Queens,
received numerous death threats on his answering machine: "I hope you have
fun with Satan and in eternal hell fire for a thousand millenniums because
that is where you're going to be." On Long Island, a market in Smithtown
owned by a native of Pakistan was the target of what the police considered
a probable arson attack Wednesday morning. In Ronkonkoma, a man was
arrested on suspicion of waving a pellet gun and shouting obscenities at a
South Asian gas station worker. An Islamic school was shut down after a
caller threatened to harm hundreds of students in the Islamic Institute of
New York: "He said he was going to paint the streets with our children's
blood." Although the school was closed, it still received several threats
a day. On Wednesday, a couple yelled insults at a Lebanese-American who
was desperately searching for survivors: "You should go back to your
country, you fucking Arabs, we should bomb the shit out of you." An Arab
American deli owner in Ardsley, was pepper-sprayed when he identified
himself as an Arab. Social worker Suad Abuhasna noted, "Girls have been
hit, kicked, touched in places they don't want, and threatened. They hit
two women in Bay Ridge yesterday. But everyone is too scared to call the
police." Verbal harassment of Muslims and Arab-Americans was common on the
streets of New York. In some cases, people who had lost friends or family
in the terrorist attack were yelled at or threatened because of their
appearance. At Syracuse University, a flier was posted that declared, "An
Orange a day keeps the Arabs away," which referenced an article and an
editorial cartoon in The Daily Orange's Friday issue, which depicted an
Arabic man clogging a pipe that represented the flow of world peace. On
Monday, a man in Washington Heights spit in the face of a man and made
anti-Arab remarks. In Ridgewood, Queens, a man threatened to kill a
Jordanian newsstand worker. In Manhattan, the Afgani-owned Chickens-R-Us
had "Don't support terrorists" spray-painted on the restaurant's awning.

NORTH CAROLINA At Duke University, junior Hazim El-Haddad said: "My
friends have been telling me to stay in my room and to lock my door. I
overheard stuff like 'fucking Palestinians,' and 'damn Arabs.'" At North
Carolina State University in Raleigh, a student who wore a black scarf
said she had been spat upon, and many Arab students reported harassment.
Rania Masri, a national board member of Peace Action, reported: "In
Raleigh, N.C.--where I live -- the local mosque received two bomb threats
the day of the attack. The Islamic School in Raleigh had to close--due to
fear for its students' safety. People driving by the mosque have been
spewing racist statements--such as 'sand niggers go home' and 'death to
you all.' Several Arab women wearing Hijab had stones thrown at them from
passing cars, and have been spat on at the main university campus."

OHIO In suburban Cleveland, Sukhwant Singh, a Sikh priest who lives at the
Guru Gobind Sikh temple, awakened early Wednesday to find bottles filled
with gasoline hurled in the temple's windows and flames rising. On Monday,
a 29-year-old man smashed his car through the entrance of an unoccupied
Ohio mosque at 80 m.p.h., landing in a fountain.

OREGON On Sunday, near Eugene, a California woman was arrested for trying
to pull the turban off the head of a Sikh man at a highway rest stop. A
man in Portland, Oregon called an NPR show to say that any Arabs who are
American citizens should turn themselves in to the FBI for interrogation:
"If they aren't with us, then as far as I'm concerned, they need to be
exterminated as brutally as they exterminated us."

PENNSYLVANIA Looters pillaged two Arab-American grocery stores in
Philadelphia. On Sept. 19 in Meadville, a man attacked a high school
student of Middle Eastern descent in the parking lot of the teen-ager's
school. Sheik Hisham Kabbani, chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of
America was threatened by motorists and then stopped by police on the
Pennsylvania Turnpike for looking suspicious because of his robes and
beard. Kabbani was returning from the memorial service at the National
Cathedral, but the FBI advised him not to fly.

TENNESSEE In Tennessee, an anonymous caller directed two Arab American
clinic workers to "get out of our country" and called them "foreign fags."

TEXAS In Dallas, a Pakistani man was found shot to death at his store on
Saturday night, with no evidence of a robbery. In Irving, six shots were
fired into a window of the Islamic Center. A mosque in Denton, sustained
thousands of dollars of damage after an unknown assailant pitched a
Molotov cocktail at the building on Thursday. Two other Dallas-areas
mosques were vandalized Wednesday. At the University of Texas in Austin,
Muslim students have had their baggage searched and meetings in their
student union broken up. Monday night, Ashraf Khan, a 32-year-old San
Antonio businessman from Pakistan, was removed from a Delta Airlines
flight to Dallas before takeoff because the crew was not comfortable
having him on the plane.

UTAH At University of Utah (where a press conference by the mayor against
intolerance was delayed by a bomb threat), doctoral student Farah
Ramezanzadeh reported two students directed hateful statements toward her:
"One person told me, 'How dare you show your face at the university.'"

VIRGINIA Hazim Barakat arrived at his Islamic bookstore in Alexandria,
Virginia, to find two bricks thrown through the window, with notes tied to
them. One was addressed to "Arab murderers;" the other said, "You come to
this country and kill. You must die as well." A sign announcing the new
home of an Islamic community center near Dulles International Airport here
was defaced with profane, anti-Muslim threats. The Dar al-Hijrah Islamic
Center in Falls Church called police to the mosque four times this week
and canceled prayers. An 11-year-old Muslim girl was taunted and cursed by
other students. The Muslim American Society in Alexandria was closed after
receiving several telephone threats. Someone broke into the All Dulles
Area Muslim Society, a mosque near Sterling, Va., and painted obscene
graffiti in the worship hall and on the outside of the building. A Muslim
taxi driver had a bottle thrown at him and was chased in a car near his
home in Manassas. The Manassas Mosque reported receiving messages on its
answering machine saying, "We hope you die." On Friday in Alexandria,
Afghani-American Mustafa Nazary ended up in the hospital, after being
beaten by Michael Wayne Johnson. Nazary says Johnson pulled up alongside
him, asked if he was Afghan and then said, "I'm gonna kill you," following
him to the car parking lot. Johnson insists that it was Nazary who uttered
an incendiary threat.

WASHINGTON At Washington State University in Pulliam, Adly Natsheh,
president of Friends of Palestine, said he spoke with several upset
students who were called terrorists, told to go back to their country or
heard other comments. Anita Rao, a member of the Indian Students
Association, reported: "A couple of my friends were walking down the mall
and some people called them 'Palestinian bitches." "You will all die'' and
"Get out of this country'' were among the messages left on an answering
machine at an Islamic center in Bellevue. The Islamic School of Seattle
suspended classes out of concern for students' safety. A 40-year-old man
stormed into a Seattle mosque on Tuesday and threatened to burn it down.
Late Thursday, an armed man was arrested for trying to set fire to a
mosque in Northgate and firing a gun when employees tried to stop him. The
sign in front of a Lynnwood mosque was splattered with black paint. Three
white men attacked a Somalian Muslim woman with a knife Saturday in a West
Seattle grocery parking lot, screaming at her and cutting the bottom of
her dress with the knife. On Sunday, two white men threatened an
East-African employee of a South Seattle home-improvement store, and
someone vandalized an Iranian-owned grocery in Edmonds. In SeaTac, an
Indian Sikh taxi driver was beaten up.

WASHINGTON DC James J. Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute in
Washington, reported on a threat left on the answering machine: "Jim, you
towel-head, I'll slit your throat and kill your kids."

WISCONSIN In Milwaukee, six threatening phone calls Tuesday forced the
cancellation of classes at the Salam School at the Islamic Society of
Milwaukee. There were death threats directed at a Sussex family and the
beating of a Sikh man the night of the attacks. In Milwaukee, a Sikh
driver's cab tires were punctured and oil was poured over the vehicle the
night of the attacks, and other Sikh had received threats.

WORLD The attacks weren't limited to America. In India on Saturday, Hindu
fundamentalists rioted in a Muslim area during a protest against the
terrorist attacks. Two people were killed and dozens were injured during
the riots. In Brisbane, Australia on Wednesday, a school bus carrying
Muslim children was pelted with stones and bottles. Vandals tried to set
fire to a Lebanese church in Australia. An Asian woman in Swindon, England
was attacked by two men and beaten with a baseball bat. An Afghan taxi
driver in London was left paralyzed from the neck after he was dragged
from his cab and beaten up by three men who made comments about the
attacks in New York. The Islamia School in Kilburn, North London had to be
shut down after parents and children were threatened In Bolton, 20
worshippers, some of them children, escaped serious injury after a mosque
was set alight with a petrol bomb. Bricks have been thrown at mosques in
London, Manchester, Southend, Glasgow and Belfast, and the Times of London
reported, "Many Muslims have been spat at and suffered verbal abuse." In
South Shields, red letters 6 feet high declared, "Avenge USA - kill a
Muslim now" on a wall near a mosque. In the same town a 20-year-old
Bangladeshi man suffered a broken jaw after being beaten and kicked by a
gang of youths. At a Montreal high school on Tuesday, three Muslim
students were attacked by students "with family ties in New York." Giulia
El-Dardiry, a McGill University anthropology student, said she was
insulted on campus Tuesday and told: "You Arabs should go home. You're
just terrorists." A fire was set at the entrance of the former Yunus
Mosque. Five school students with Arabic-sounding names were assaulted in
Oakville, Ontario, by schoolmates. In Calgary, an Islamic grade school was
closed to protect 600 children. More than a dozen Muslims have received
threatening phone calls at home and on the street, such as "You guys
should be thrown out of here, you guys should be blown up." Around the
world, "vigilante hacking activity" by U.S. groups has disrupted Internet
service to countries hackers associate with the airline hijackings.

WYOMING In Laramie, a woman and her children were chased from a Wal-Mart
by angry shoppers who screamed in her face telling her to go back to her
country.

The aim of terrorism is to cause fear. And by attacking and terrifying Arab-Americans and Muslims (and those mistaken for them, such as Sikhs), all too many Americans contributed to
terrorism.  The Council on American-Islamic Relations says it has received reports of more than 542 attacks against Arab-Americans around the country in one week, ranging from verbal harassment to physical assaults, many of them against school children. It also received reports of dozens of mosques firebombed or vandalized. More than 200 Sikhs had reported incidents to a Sikh anti-defamation group. 

Laws need to be passed on media outlets world wide for responsible reporting, the media is killing us, it shouldn't be surprising that major media outlets are also owned by weapon makers, the elite few who benefit regardless of what happens. Bush may have prevented a holy war by graciously clarifying the myths towards Islam and stated "Islam means Peace", this was helpful for Muslims world wide. Although thousands of Muslims in America still live in fear, with disrupted lives, too afraid to go shopping, many are standing up, and proudly declaring, "Being a Muslim is not a crime"

Peace