THE DAILY BLADE: The Definition of Chutzpah: Part XIV And XV – A Two-Fer!
“In the mosques of Jersey City and Arab-owned shops along Main Street in Paterson, opinions differed about whether the death of the world's most notorious terrorist would alter perceptions that have persisted for nearly a decade,” USAToday reports:
Hours after Osama bin Laden's death was announced, the American Arab Forum received a phone call. The person on the line was looking for Aref Assaf, the Paterson, N.J.-based organization's Ivy League-educated president.
"'Tell your boss that we got his friend and we're going to get him,'" the man said, according to Assaf, who dismissed the threat as kids pulling a prank. While the call represented a kind of hostility Assaf said many Arabs commonly endure in the United States, he believed bin Laden's death might create an opportunity "to open a new chapter."
"We have been paying the price for bin Laden for the last 10 years," Assaf said. "Enough castigating our community. We hope this will serve as a reminder to America that the real source of terror was not in Paterson or Dearborn, Michigan, but in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
Oh, really? What about this:
Ahmed Ferhani, a 26-year-old of Algerian descent, and Mohamed Mamdouh, a 20-year-old of Moroccan descent, plotted to bomb a "major synagogue" in Manhattan and bought several weapons and an inert hand grenade from an undercover officer, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
Officials said they had been watching Ferhani for several months and that he had said he was fed up with the way Muslims were treated around the world. He's the one who expressed interest in the Empire State Building attack, Kelly said.
"They're treating us like dogs," Ferhani said once, according to Kelly.
Ferhani showed a pattern of growing anger, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said.
"His plans became bigger and more violent with every passing week," Vance said.
The men were charged under state terror laws.
And this? And this? And this (second item)? And this? And … (The Stiletto can go on and on and on).
It’s no wonder Arab Christians in the U.S. are distancing themselves – literally – from Muslims, The Washington Times reports:
[M]any Americans assume all Arabs are Muslims. That's made life in a post-9/11 world difficult for a group of people who is proving religion has no borders.
"On many, many, many occasions, if you're an Arab, you might as well be a Muslim to many people here," Mr. Abi Haydar said. "Unfortunately, the majority don't see the dynamic that Christianity came from the Middle East, that Jesus was from the Middle East." …
Oftentimes the stereotyping depends on where they live, said Shirin Fakhri, a member at Arabic Brethren Assembly Church in Sterling Heights, where she lives. She immigrated to the U.S. from Iraq in 1995, and has been fortunate enough to avoid stereotyping, because the community is more familiar with the Arab Christian population than in other areas. …
[M]any Arab Christians have disengaged from their Middle Eastern roots, Mr. Abi Haydar explained. While many Muslim communities keep their identities, many Christians "melt into American society."
"The Christians don't want to be around Muslims," Mr. Abi Haydar said. "They just want to stay away from them."
Miss Fakhri admits it would be difficult to settle down in Dearborn, because the Muslims customs are so different from her own and she would feel "weird living there."
"I think it's very hard for a Christian to live there in a Muslim community," she said. "I would feel uncomfortable to live there. You feel like the whole community is total different."
Meanwhile, Usama bin Laden’s children are “not convinced on the available evidence in the absence of dead body, photographs, and video evidence that our natural father is dead” and are reportedly planning to seek “justice” in international court because “[h]is sudden and un witnessed burial at sea has deprived the family of performing religious rights of a Muslim man” and because he “was not arrested and tried but summarily executed without a court of law.”
Considering that the Americans who died in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks were executed without being guilty of any crime, and many of their families were deprived of performing religious rites because remains were never found, this is chutzpah of biblical proportions.
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