Legion of Angels News Archive

Like many of his faith, Yousif Marei has been feeling particularly emotional about being a Muslim these days.

For one thing, the holy month of Ramadan is in full swing. It’s a time when Muslims worldwide take stock of their spiritual selves, fasting from sunrise to sunset as they meditate on the period when the first verses of the Quran are believed to have been revealed.

Then there is Thursday’s dreaded anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. The day is sure to be marked by replayed news footage of hijacked airplanes—painful reminders of attacks by Islamic extremists in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania that killed nearly 3,000 people and forever changed what it means to be Muslim in the U.S.

That negative image of Islam—reflected in the Internet rumors casting doubt on the Christian faith of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama as well as his denials of being a Muslim—bores into the psyche of many Muslim immigrants, said Marei, 53, a Palestinian who moved to Chicago in 1979.

Spurred by Ramadan and the Sept. 11 anniversary, community leaders are encouraging Muslim-Americans to assert their patriotic and civic identities by registering to vote, taking part in neighborhood block meetings and becoming active in their schools and other local institutions. Mosques, meanwhile, have been inviting non-Muslims to participate in evening iftar meals to foster understanding about Ramadan.

“It is our duty to show that we are good neighbors,” said Marei, a volunteer leader for Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy in his Albany Park neighborhood, where many Arab immigrants have moved near the stately Muslim Community Center on Elston Avenue. “All we hear about Islam—and we are listening with tears in our eyes—is Islam and terrorism. We must control our own image.”

During a recent call-in radio show that Marei hosts daily during Ramadan on WCEV-AM 1450, other Muslim leaders in Chicago, Washington and California echoed that sentiment.

Yet during a close presidential race where national security is again a prime concern, the specter of Sept. 11 has overshadowed all other Muslim efforts.

That was shown last week, when Mazen Asbahi resigned from the Obama campaign. The Chicago attorney had been assigned to repair ties with Muslim voters who were offended by the Illinois senator’s handling of the rumors about his faith. Asbahi, who couldn’t be reached Wednesday, stepped down after news surfaced that he briefly served on the board of an investment fund with the fundamentalist imam of a Bridgeview mosque. The Obama campaign issued a statement saying Asbahi resigned to keep from being a distraction.

Ahmed Rehab, the Chicago director of the Council of Islamic-American Relations, called the episode symptomatic of the “Islamophobia” in the U.S., where, after seven years, many are still unwilling to distinguish between law-abiding Muslims and criminal extremists.

“We are not out to bring about Sharia [Islamic law] in the United States,” Rehab said. “We are your average Americans who happen to be of Muslim faith.”

Proving so will be an uphill campaign measured in small steps as the community spreads through the region, said Mohammed Kaiseruddin, former president of the Muslim Community Center.

“Our presence and our involvement should be sufficient to say that, well, these are Muslims and these are not terrorists and these are people who are fully participating in civic issues,” Kaiseruddin said. He cited Muslim groups that work against violence on the Southwest Side and offer free health care on the North Side.

Marei is a one-man publicity machine in that regard. When he’s not helping to organize Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy meetings, his staccato voice can be heard “spreading the spirit of Ramadan over the skies of Chicago.”

Between recorded Arabic calls to prayer, Marei explained his Muslim faith to the English-speaking world, urging listeners to do the same.

“Isn’t it time to tell others who we are?” he asked, soliciting donations to establish a Muslim-owned radio station. “Otherwise we’ll keep shedding tears and blaming others, and that is not the way of the Prophet Muhammad.”

Source — Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON - None of us will ever forget this day.

That’s what President Bush said on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001. The country felt the same way.

But something fundamental has changed since then, and it says as much about Bush’s mindset as any part of his presidency.

He still lives Sept. 11, not as a memory, but in the present tense. It drives his decision-making, his politics, his legacy.

“He wakes up every day thinking about it and goes to bed thinking about it,” Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

But the country is an entirely different place.

The fears and feelings of that day aren’t fresh. They’re fading. A raft of new polling shows that most people do not worry that terrorists will strike again soon. Most Americans don’t fear that they or their family will be a victim of an attack.

Terrorism is still a concern, but as few as 1 percent of people polled chose it as the biggest problem facing the country today. That’s a pittance compared to economic fears.

Of course the memory still burns for those who lost family and friends on Sept. 11, and for those who fled the falling buildings.

Yet for most everyone else, it comes up like a sharp pain this time of year, then goes away about as fleetingly.

And that has created a striking contrast between the president and the people.

Bush was once the one who successfully encouraged people to move on from Sept. 11. Now he tries to keep them from forgetting it.

“No matter how calm it may seem here in America, an enemy lurks,” the president said this spring. He was speaking in defense of warrantless wiretapping on terror suspects, but has used similar refrains in backing interrogation techniques, the war in Iraq, and the whole way he goes about his job.

That lesson of Sept. 11 imbues so many of his speeches that, at this point in his presidency, the warning almost gets taken for granted.

People have moved on.

Since the attacks, the country has seen the onset of two wars, Hurricane Katrina, the collapse of the housing market. The nation is eager for the election between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama. Human nature has long kicked in.

After all, as Bush reminded the nation in great detail on Thursday, there has been no attack on U.S. soil in 2,557 days.

That’s a success story for the country and for Bush’s administration. It’s also the reason why terrorism is no longer paramount in people’s minds.

The president predicted this day would come.

“I knew that right after the attacks, the American psyche being what it is, people would tend to forget the grave threat posed by these people. I knew that,” Bush told an audience of troops in early 2007. “As a matter of fact, I was hoping that would happen so that life would go on.”

Yet these days, Bush sees danger in those fading memories — less support and less vigilance in a war against plotting killers.

“The temptation is to kind of say, well, maybe this isn’t really a war. Maybe this is just a bunch of disgruntled folks that occasionally come and hurt us,” he said in the Rose Garden this summer. “You know, that’s not the way I feel about it.”

When Bush scoffs at those who might minimize terrorism as a law enforcement matter, he’s targeting Democratic opponents. Politics are part of this, too. He made national security the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.

Polls show Americans favor McCain over Obama in confronting terrorism, mirroring a traditional election trend. If people are thinking about national security when they go to the polls, Republicans are most likely to gain.

Bush made the point this way in his speech to the Republican National Convention: “We need a president who understands the lessons of September the 11th, 2001: that to protect America, we must stay on the offense, stop attacks before they happen, and not wait to be hit again.”

The implication was that Obama would do the opposite.

The presidential reminders of Sept. 11 come up in many ways.

“Remember, when I mention al-Qaida, they’re the ones who attacked the United States of America and killed nearly 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001,” Bush said last year.

When the war in Iraq reached its own grim anniversary this year — five years and counting — Bush raised Sept. 11 again.

The independent Sept. 11 commission found no collaborative linkage between the two, but to Bush, a broader struggle unites them. Failing in Iraq, he said, would be “to ignore the lessons of September the 11th and make it more likely that America would suffer another attack.”

At times, Bush seems almost to lament how little Sept. 11 is on the public’s mind.

He is still responsible for stopping another attack. And his reminders are, in fact, daily.

Bush begins his workday listening to intelligence experts describe fresh threats to the country. The public, of course, never hears or sees those confidential briefings. But the leaders of the intelligence community have been blunt in public that the terror threat remains real.

Their message to Congress and the country: Don’t forget Sept. 11.

Bush hasn’t.

“Even when he’s not president anymore,” Perino said, “I am sure that he will think about it every day.”

Source — Yahoo!

NEW YORK - Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama made ground zero their common ground for one rare day, free of politics and infused with memory. Putting their partisan contest on a respectful hold, they walked together Thursday into the great pit where the World Trade Center towers once stood and, as one, honored the dead from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

They walked down a long ramp flanked with the flags of countries, chatting at times, silent other times, and sharing a quick laugh at one point. Right behind them, Cindy McCain clutched Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s arm — Michelle Obama was with her daughters in Chicago.

At the bottom of the ramp, the two rivals stopped to talk with a small group of relatives of the attacks’ victims of seven years ago. They laid flowers at the pit’s commemorative reflecting pool — a pink rose from Obama, a yellow rose from McCain — bowed their heads and walked off to speak with fire and police personnel. There were no speeches.

“Thanks, we’ll see ya,” McCain told Obama as the Democrat patted the Republican’s back and they shook hands and parted.

Earlier, McCain spoke briefly at a simple ceremony in remote, rural western Pennsylvania, held on a large hilly field close to where United Airlines Flight 93, the third of four airliners commandeered by terrorists, crashed. Investigators believe some of the 40 passengers and crew rushed the cockpit and thwarted terrorists’ plans to use that plane as a weapon like the ones that hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon. All aboard all planes died.

The Arizona senator said those on the flight might have saved his own life, as some believe the terrorists wanted to slam that plane into the U.S. Capitol. He said the only way to thank those who died on the flight is to “be as good an American as they were.”

“We might fall well short of their standard, but there’s honor in the effort,” McCain said.

Obama, in a statement, said that on Sept. 11, 2001, “Americans across our great country came together to stand with the families of the victims, to donate blood, to give to charity, and to say a prayer for our country. Let us renew that.”

The Illinois senator added: “Let us remember that the terrorists responsible for 9/11 are still at large, and must be brought to justice.”

Left unsaid by both was their sharp disagreement over the Iraq war, which McCain supported and Obama opposed as a distraction from the Afghanistan war and broader fight against terrorism.

It was not a day for spelling out differences but rather a respectful time-out in an otherwise heated campaign with 54 days to go. Both agreed to suspend TV ads critical of each other.

In Pennsylvania, grieving family members and a few dignitaries sat in front of a chain-link fence adorned with flags and mementos that serves as a temporary memorial while a permanent one is built. Bells were rung as each victim’s name was read. McCain and others laid wreaths at the foot of two flagpoles and a large wooden cross.

The political truce was evident in remarks thanking McCain for traveling to Shanksville by Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat who occasionally speaks against the Republican nominee as an Obama campaign surrogate. “It’s an honor to have him here, not just as a presidential candidate but as a great American patriot,” Rendell said.

Another display came near the ground zero pit, as McCain adviser Mark Salter huddled with Obama spokeswoman Linda Douglass, a former ABC News correspondent, to discuss Sarah Palin’s interview Thursday with the network.

Obama and McCain were intersecting again later, at a Columbia University forum on public service in the evening. Their sessions at the forum were separate, joined only by a handshake.

At the Twin Towers site, Bloomberg told them time was running out to touch the bedrock at the base of the pit. “This is the last year because the ramp goes away for the rebuilding,” he said.

Officials said the family members Obama and McCain talked with were Mary Fetchet, whose son Brad worked on the 89th floor of the South Tower; Michael Henry, brother of firefighter Joseph Henry; Joanne Langone, widow of policeman Tom Langone; and Maggie Lemagne, sister of Port Authority officer David Lemagne. Brian Cichetti, a World Trade Center site safety manager who is working on construction of the memorial and museum, also was with them.

At the top of the ramp on the way out, McCain and Obama shook hands with police officers.

“Appreciate everything you do,” Obama said. “God bless you all. We think about you this day and every day.”

Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, visited an American Legion post in suburban Cleveland for an invitation-only gathering of area police, firefighters and other first responders.

“Part of today is reminding Americans that every single day there are acts that are both ordinary and profound,” Biden said in recalling the attacks. “You suit up, head out on that vehicle not knowing what you’re going to find. If, God forbid, anything remotely close to that happens, it’s going to be you guys trying to save all of us.”

Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, was in her home state of Alaska to attend an Army ceremony to send her eldest son, Track, off to duty in Iraq.

Obama and McCain last appeared together in August when they shook hands at minister Rick Warren’s megachurch in Orange County, Calif., and spoke separately about faith and values. In June, they attended the funeral of NBC newsman Tim Russert, sitting next to each other at the family’s request.

Source — Yahoo!