Seconds after the first tower of the World Trade Center collapsed last Tuesday, Usam Farmam, a Pakistani Muslim, was knocked to the ground by a cloud of dust and debris rolling uptown.
A Hasidic Jewish man approached Farman, looked at the pendant around his neck inscribed with an Arabic prayer for safety, and read the words aloud.
"What he said next, I will never forget," Farman wrote later in an account of the experience. "With a deep Brooklyn accent, he said: 'Brother, if you don't mind, there is a cloud of glass coming at us. Grab my hand, let's get the hell out of here.'" The two escaped safely.
US Senator John Kerry (D-MA) referred to Farman's account yesterday when speaking to more than 200 students, faculty and local Muslim leaders at a Fletcher-sponsored discussion on the treatment of Muslims since last week's events. While those two men were able to overcome their religious differences, albeit during extraordinary circumstances, some Americans have been less understanding. Not long after 5,000 people were killed in the attack, a new wave of violence spread - but this time claiming Muslim victims at the hands of angry Americans. Kerry visited Tufts as part of an ongoing government effort to condemn and quell the xenophobic retaliation.
Since officials named Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Islamic extremist, as the prime suspect in the US investigation, Muslims, South Asians, and Arabs around the country have reported incidents of harassment and violence. Authorities suspect that the incidents, including killings, were racially motivated, despite the fact that almost all Islamic countries have criticized the strikes.
"[The terrorist's] acts are outside of any religious preaching altogether," said Kerry, a senior member on the US Senate's Foreign Relations committee. "Islam is a peaceful religion."
Boston-area Muslim leaders and Muslim college students also criticized the terrorists' actions yesterday, saying they were as shocked as other Americans.
But after Tuesday's strike, Muslims around the country, often in traditional dress, have received death threats and been subject to verbal abuse, and mosques have been vandalized. Police in Dallas, TX are investigating the killing of a Pakistani grocer on Saturday and in Mesa, AZ, an Indian immigrant with a beard and a turban was shot to death at the gas station he managed. According to CNN, the FBI has launched 40 hate crime investigations in the past week.
"How disgraceful that any American thinks they are being patriotic with such acts of violence," Kerry said.
"At a time like this, there are no hyphenated Americans. No Irish Americans, no French Americans... no Israeli Americans," although he remembered America's internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Numan Waheed, the president of MIT's Muslim Students Association, said that students feel less secure when they leave campus.
But colleges have not been isolated from anti-Muslim sentiment. At MIT, xenophobic messages like "go home" appeared on a banner intended for written expressions of student grief.
At Tufts, no hate incidents have been officially reported, but Muslim students said they know of instances of verbal abuse.
"Those people causing harassment are not much better than the people who committed the attacks because they are invoking fear in people's lives," said Usman Khan, the former president of the Muslim Students Association.
On Monday, US President George W. Bush toured a mosque in Washington, DC to express concern about anti-Muslim retaliation. Kerry's visit to Tufts was an opportunity for him to publicly condemn anti-Arab sentiment and listen to concerns from college students in his home state.
Even though University administrators addressed such potential backlash during forums last week, attendees, especially Muslims, said yesterday's discussion was necessary.
"The President's message will only reach a certain segment of society," said Stevie Hamilton, a second-year Fletcher student who has decided to adopt Islam as his religion.
Kerry's visit, he explained, is part of a trickle-down process toward the grassroots. He estimated that it would take one or two months for the recent surge of anti-Islamic sentiment to subside entirely.
But some Americans' attitudes toward Muslims might need more than just time to change.
"People are led to believe that Muslims are barbarians," said Sophia Hassan, a public elementary school teacher, referring to how children are taught the history of events like the Crusades. She represented the Society for Islamic Brotherhood in Roxbury at the event.
Hassan and other speakers said that Muslims need to begin a public relations campaign of sorts to make Americans more aware of their religion. "Muslims need to move forward and define themselves," she said.
"We need all of you in the Muslim world, you must join in the effort [against terrorism]," Kerry said. "Make it clear where you stand."
Kerry also challenged Muslim leaders to reassure people of "what is going on behind the scenes... to diminish the hatred," and added that children as young as five and six can be instruments of hate.
Although the event was intended to address the issue of anti-Muslim sentiments, Fletcher is a training ground for future government decision makers, and attendees eventually began asking the Senator about US responses to the attacks. Kerry, apprehensive about "Wild West jargon [currently] being thrown around," said the US needs to proceed carefully, without resorting to terror.
Even though bin Laden is the only named suspect and many other countries have expressed their support for the US, the ruling Taliban government has stalled on a Pakistani ultimatum to turn over bin Laden or face military action. The government has warned Afghan citizens to prepare for a holy war.
But Rina Armiri, a Fletcher student born in Afghanistan, disassociated herself from the totalitarian movement that overtook her country five years ago.
"The Afghan population is not the Taliban," she said. "They are the Taliban's first victims."
Another attendee tried to explain the Taliban's response, saying that once the US provides concrete proof of bin Laden's involvement in the attacks, the Taliban would willingly extradite him.
An undergraduate said that because bin Laden was instrumental in ridding Afghanistan of the Soviets, the Taliban would have to be absolutely sure he is guilty of terrorism before turning him over.
But even if the US proves bin Laden's guilt, the Taliban said it will only extradite him for trial in an Islamic court, and Kerry said the US would probably not agree to such a compromise.
"The crimes were committed here," he said. "The victims' families would feel that it is a cop out."
That could leave decision makers with no choice but to attack. Kerry conceded that the US could not guarantee, even with a surgical strike, that innocent lives would not be lost.
No one, it seems, can come up with an alternative solution.
