Crescent Magazine

Abu Dharr

September is the month of 9/11. How can anyone forget 9/11? Dare anyone forget 9/11?! And if it is beginning to slip out of a public’s mind that is really more interested in the New York Yankees than in the World Trade Center, then in comes the “controversy” to rekindle the flames of 9/11.

   That controversy is the celebrated news item about the Cordoba House. This is supposed to be a plan to build a 15-story Islamic Center on what is called “ground zero” by the imposing mainstream media. The site on which this Islamic Center is going to be built, we are told, is going to cost around $15 million. We know that the Muslims in the United States, even though they are, by and large, well-to-do, professionally prosperous, and financially capable of coming up with that amount if their pockets were as open as their minds are closed on the issue of sadaqat, zakah, and infaq. The sad truth of the matter is that the upper crust of the American Muslim community are scared stiff to contribute and donate to Islamic causes because they are afraid that the FBI or another arm of the American government will come knocking on their door, drawing them into a session of Q’s and A’s and then eventually accusing them in a court of law of aiding or financing terrorist causes!

Iqbal Siddiqui, Perspectives

Several articles in this issue of Crescent International discuss the problems faced by Muslims living in western countries, particularly since the launching of the “war on terror” after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Despite all the protestations of western politicians and others that their problem is not with Islam or Muslims per se, the reality is that Muslims in western countries are increasingly under attack because of their faith, not only from marginal and irrelevant extremists but also from government agencies and mainstream politicians and commentators. These attacks take many forms, from the political persecution of Islamist activists to the routine misrepresentation, disparagement and contempt for such fundamental and commonplace Islamic practices as hijab and halal meat. The current controversy in the US over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” is just the latest of so many such Islamopho-bic hysterias, which in different western countries are becoming routine and hardly remarkable.