19 September 2001

Arab and Muslim Americans Offer Key Skills to the Nation

By Vicki Silverman
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- American Muslims continue to condemn the terrorist attacks on the United States and offer their knowledge and skills to the investigators.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller thanked the Arab-American community and individuals who responded to his September 17 appeal for linguists with an "overwhelming" flood of calls to the Bureau in Washington. The FBI is seeking Arabic, Farsi and Pashto speakers.

Muslim and Arab American organizations, which have been working closely with law enforcement officials to prevent and prosecute ethnic backlash against the community, have now taken the call for translators back to their members, urging "every candidate for this position (translator) to contact the local FBI immediately."

"The response has been overwhelming," FBI field agent Dawn Clenney told the "Detroit Free Press" September 19. Michigan is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States, with approximately 320 thousand Arab American citizens.

"I see this outpouring as yet another example of the American Muslim community's condemnation of the attacks and its willingness to assist, to give what is needed to stop the perpetrators," said Farkhunda Ali, spokesman of the American Muslim Council.

On September 19, grassroots organizations representing the Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Sikh, Arab, Muslim, and Indian Americans met at the Japanese American Memorial in Washington, D.C. to remember the victims of September 11, express their outrage and reflect on the diversity of the United States today.

"The gathering was created to evoke the lessons of history," said Christine Minami of the Japanese American Citizens League, "lessons of 60 years ago with Japanese Americans were wrongly judged in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor."

"Today we stood side-by-side so that the terror and trauma of last Tuesday in not compounded by acts of intolerance," she said.

Reflecting on American history since the internment of Japanese Americans, Minami said, "That we stand together today is a statement about our society, how much we value multi-cultural identity and how far American has evolved since the pre-civil rights era."