Continue reading »]]> September 17, 2011
By Caroline Hailey – Carroll County Times

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks led some Americans to distrust and fear Muslims, Amjad Waince heard stories of fellow Muslims around the nation being attacked by strangers.
Waince, a co-owner of Little Jay’s Convenience Store in Westminster, said his experience directly following 9/11 couldn’t have been more different.
“I had police officers and people who lived around here coming into the store to check up on me, make sure I was OK, and tell me to let them know if I was having any trouble from people because I was Muslim,” Waince said. “Around this corner, we’re like a family, so I heard of Muslims getting persecuted in other places, I sort of experienced the opposite of that.”
Regardless of the strong community support Waince received, he said 9/11 cast the Islamic religion under a dark, dangerous cloud.
“Just because the terrorists behind 9/11 may have looked like me, doesn’t mean we are the same,” Waince said. “I don’t believe that the people that committed those acts could be Muslim, or even could be humans, because no Muslim, and no human, should ever do what they did.”
He said every nation and every religion has bad individuals that shouldn’t be used to judge a whole group. He knows some people unfairly judge him for being a Muslim, but Waince said there’s only one way Muslims can fight against being stereotyped.
“All we can do is work to wash those spots out through our own good character, behavior and conducting our business in the right way.”
Mohamed Esa, the chairman of McDaniel’s Department of Foreign Languages and the president of the Islamic Society of Carroll County, said that soon after 9/11, people would occasionally ask him what he thought of the attacks, as a Muslim.
Esa said it was a difficult question to answer because he didn’t just think of the attacks as a Muslim person.
“9/11 was not just an attack on Christian Americans or white Americans, but was an attack on the entire nation and all Americans,” Esa said. “I may not have been born here, but I am an American, and I grieved as an American for the innocent lives lost.”
Yet as a Muslim American, Esa said he also had to come to terms with the fact that the hijackers and terrorists behind the attacks were Muslims and claimed to adhere to his same beliefs. It wasn’t an easy task as first, Esa said.
“I would tell myself, ‘I wasn’t involved in the attacks, I shouldn’t feel guilty about that or feel ashamed as a Muslim,’” Esa said. “But I was and still am completely ashamed that people would do that in the name of Islam.”
He also said the attacks led some Americans to assume that Islam condoned violence and killing.

for the full story: http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/911/terrorist-attacks-lead-to-increase-of-interfaith-dialogue/article_fd7138ca-e19c-11e0-be17-001cc4c03286.html