veiled4allah: another lesson of Oklahoma City

There is no chair for Salam Mohammad. One hundred sixty-eight empty bronze chairs line the grassy field where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building used to stand, each one a solemn memorial to an individual killed in the April 19, 1995, bombing.

Salam did not perish on the day of the bombing. Nor did he die anywhere near the Murrah building. His name will not be mentioned on Tuesday morning, when Vice President Dick Cheney and former President Bill Clinton are scheduled to be among the dignitaries who are to speak at a 10th anniversary commemoration of the Oklahoma City bombing.

But to many here in Oklahoma City's small Muslim community, the 7-month fetus was a casualty of the attack just the same, one of countless collateral victims whose hidden stories have never been told.

Salam's pregnant mother, Sahar al-Moswi, was at home in her Oklahoma City apartment on the morning after the bombing caring for her two young children, listening to the news and wondering, like everyone else in America, who could have perpetrated such an awful crime.

The radio and television broadcasts were filled with expert opinions confidently asserting that the bombing bore all the hallmarks of a Middle Eastern terrorist attack.

Al-Moswi felt a chill. She and her husband, Haidar al-Saidi, both Shiite Muslims, had fled the persecution and torture of Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the early 1990s and, thanks to family ties, had landed in the middle American tranquility of Oklahoma City.

Like many refugees and immigrants, they had tried to keep a low profile in their new neighborhood, where they stood out as the only Muslims.

Suddenly the living room window shattered, sending shards of glass flying across the room. A rock landed on the carpet.

"I was scared somebody shooting," recalled al-Moswi, now 35. "I did not see the rock. I heard the noise. The glass is all over the place...

"I take the kids, and I go to the bathroom," she continued. "It's hard to move - big stomach and two kids. I go to the bathroom. I thought I might be safe there. I (feared) people that might come" and break into the apartment.

Moments later, al-Moswi doubled over in pain and started bleeding. But, terrified that attackers might be waiting outside the bathroom, she waited nearly an hour before sending one of her children to get a portable phone from another room so she could call for help.

The next day in the hospital - about the time authorities were discovering that they already had the suspected bomber, Timothy McVeigh, in custody on a traffic charge - al-Moswi suffered a miscarriage.

"The doctor, he says because she heard the noise, she jumped, she lost the control of the baby," al-Saidi said.

No one was ever arrested in the attack, but the family is certain they were singled out because of the initial surge of suspicion directed at Muslims. They even think they know who threw the rock - a neighbor who had always treated them warily - but they have no proof.

Devastated, frightened and unable to bear staying in Oklahoma City, the couple quickly fled with their children, selling their car and possessions at a loss to raise enough money to move to Maryland, near al-Saidi's brother.

"No government, no police, no anybody come and help us," al-Saidi said. "Nobody comes and says, `Sorry (for) what happened.'"

In those first frightening days after the bombing, it was assumed by many that "Middle Eastern terrorists" had carried out the attack. That faulty assumption sparked a wave of anti-Muslim hysteria that resulted in almost 250 incidents of harassment, discrimination and actual violence against American Muslims or those perceived to be Middle Eastern. Incidents ranged from a suspected arson attack on a mosque, to drive-by shootings at Islamic centers and assaults on Muslim students. Many Islamic institutions around America also reported phoned bomb threats, and in one case, a fake bomb was thrown at a Muslim day care facility. Individual Muslims reported a great increase in harassment by co-workers and in public. This harassment led to an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in the Muslim community. The collective realization that the attack was carried out by terrorists from the Midwest, not the Mideast, created a teaching moment in which the entire nation reassessed what it means to be a terrorist, and redefined terrorism to include people who look like "regular" Americans. My organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), documented the anti-Muslim backlash following the Oklahoma City bombing in a report called "A Rush to Judgment." That report was the first of CAIR's now-annual reports on the status of American Muslim civil rights. (CAIR's latest report is due out in May.) Unfortunately, the trend lines in each annual report have been up, not down, with a particularly sharp spike following the 9/11 terror attacks.

As we mark the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City attack, let us all remember that the use of violence and terrorism is not the sole preserve of any race, religion or ethnic group. Let us also redouble our efforts to understand one another and promote peaceful resolutions to all conflicts, whether domestic or foreign. The Quran, Islam's revealed text, states: "O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other (not that you may despise each other). Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him." (49:13) Indeed, terror knows no faith.